27
"WHAT THE HELL’S going on?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“I can’t say it out loud,” he said. “You’d think I
was completely crazy. You’d just walk away from me.”
“What’s crazy? Tell me.”
“No, I can’t. Right now, it’s just a house of
cards. You’d blow it down. Anybody would blow it down. So you need
to see it for yourself. Hell, I need to see it for myself. But I want you there, for the arrest.”
“What arrest? Just tell me.”
He shook his head again. “Where’s your car?”
“In the lot.”
“So let’s go.”
REVEILLE HAD BEEN 0600 the whole of Rita
Scimeca’s service career, and she stuck to the habit in her new
civilian life. She slept six hours out of twenty-four, midnight
until six in the morning, a quarter of her life. Then she got up to
face the other three quarters.
An endless procession of empty days. Late fall,
there was nothing to be done in the yard. The winter temperatures
were too savage for any young vegetation to make it through. So
planting was restricted to the spring, and pruning and cleanup was
finished by the end of the summer. Late fall and winter, the doors
stayed locked and she stayed inside.
Today, she was scheduled to work on Bach. She was
trying to perfect the three-part inventions. She loved them. She
loved the way they moved forward, on and on, inescapably logical,
until they ended up back where they started. Like Maurits Escher’s
drawings of stair-cases, which went up and up and up all the way
back to the bottom. Wonderful. But they were very difficult pieces
to play. She played them very slowly. Her idea was to get the notes
right, then the articulation, then the meaning, and then last of
all to get the speed right. Nothing worse than playing Bach fast
and badly.
She showered in the bathroom and dressed in the
bedroom. She did it quickly, because she kept the house cold. Fall
in the Northwest was a chilly season. But today there was
brightness in the sky. She looked out of her window and saw streaks
of dawn spearing east to west like rods of polished steel. It would
be cloudy, she guessed, but with a halo of sun visible. It would be
like a lot of her days. Not good, not bad. But livable.
HARPER PAUSED FOR a second in the underground
corridor and then led Reacher to the elevator and up into the
daylight. Outside into the chill air and across the landscaping to
her car. It was a tiny yellow two-seater. He realized he had never
seen it before. She unlocked it and he ducked his head and folded
himself into the passenger seat. She glanced hard at him once and
dumped her bag in his lap and climbed down into the driver’s seat.
Shoulder room was tight. It was a stick shift, and her elbow hit
his when she put it in gear.
“So how do we get there?”
“We’ll have to go commercial,” he said. “Head for
National, I guess. You got credit cards?”
She was shaking her head.
“They’re all maxed out,” she said. “They’ll get
refused. ”
“All of them?”
She nodded. “I’m broke right now.”
He said nothing.
“What about you?” she asked.
“I’m always broke,” he said.
THE FIFTH OF Bach’s three-part inventions was
labeled BWV 791 by scholars and was one of the hardest in the
canon, but it was Rita Scimeca’s favorite piece in all the world.
It depended entirely on tone, which came from the mind, down
through the shoulders and the arms and the hands and the fingers.
The tone had to be whimsical, but confident. The whole piece was a
confection of nonsense, and the tone had to confess to that, but
simultaneously it had to sound utterly serious for the effect to
develop properly. It had to sound polished, but insane. Secretly,
she was sure Bach was crazy.
Her piano helped. Its sound was big enough to be
sonorous, but delicate enough to be nimble. She played the piece
all the way through twice, half speed, and she was reasonably
pleased with what she heard. She decided to play for three hours,
then stop and have some lunch, and then get ahead with the
housework. She wasn’t sure about the afternoon. Maybe she would
play some more.
YOU TAKE UP your position
early. Early enough to be settled before the eight o’clock
changeover. You watch it happen. It’s the same deal as yesterday.
The Bureau guy, still awake, but no longer
very attentive. The arrival of the cold Crown Vic. The
flank-to-flank pleasantries. The Buick starts up, the Crown Vic
turns in the road, the Buick rolls away down the hill, the Crown
Vic crawls forward and settles into its space. The engine dies, and
the guy’s head turns. He sinks low in his seat, and his last shift
as a cop begins. After today, they won’t trust him to direct
traffic around the Arctic Circle.
"SO HOW DO we get there?” Harper asked
again.
Reacher paused.
“Like this,” he said.
He opened her pocketbook and took out her phone and
flipped it open. Closed his eyes and tried to recall sitting in
Jodie’s kitchen, dialing the number. Tried to remember the precious
sequence of digits. He entered them slowly. Hopefully. He pressed
send. Heard ring tone for a long moment. Then the call was
answered. A deep voice, slightly out of breath.
“Colonel John Trent,” it said.
“Trent, this is Reacher. You still love me?”
“What?”
“I need a ride, two people, Andrews to Portland,
Oregon.”
“Like when?”
“Like right now, immediately.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, we’re on our way there. We’re a half hour
out.”
Silence for a second.
“Andrews to Portland, Oregon, right?” Trent
said.
“Right.”
“How fast do you need to get there?”
“Fastest you got.”
Silence again.
“OK,” Trent said.
Then the line went dead. Reacher folded the
phone.
“So is he doing it?” Harper asked.
Reacher nodded.
“He owes me,” he said. “So let’s go.”
She let in the clutch and drove out of the lot,
into the approach road. The tiny car rode hard over the speed
bumps. She passed by the FBI guard and accelerated into the curve
and blasted through the first Marine checkpoint. Reacher saw heads
turning in the corner of his eye, startled faces under green
helmets.
“So what is it?” she asked again.
“Truth, and lies,” he said. “And means, motive,
opportunity. The holy trinity of law enforcement. Three out of
three is the real deal, right?”
“I can’t even get one out of three,” she said.
“What’s the key?”
They cleared the second Marine checkpoint,
traveling fast. More swiveling helmeted heads watched them
go.
“Bits and pieces,” he said. “We know everything we
need to know. Some of it, we’ve known for days. But we screwed up
everywhere, Harper. Big mistakes and wrong assumptions.”
She made the blind left, north onto 95. Traffic was
heavy. They were in the far outer echoes of D.C.’s morning rush
hour. She changed lanes and was balked by the cars ahead and braked
hard.
“Shit,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Scimeca’s guarded out
there. They all are.”
“Not well enough. Not until we get there. This is a
cool, cool customer.”
She nodded and dodged left and right, looking for
the fastest lane. They were all slow. Her speed dropped from forty
to thirty. Then all the way down to twenty.
YOU USE YOUR field glasses
and you watch his first bathroom break. He’s been in the car an
hour, swilling the coffee he brought with him. Now he needs to
unload it. The driver’s door opens and he pivots in his seat and
puts his big feet down on the ground and hauls himself out. He’s
stiff from sitting. He stretches, steadying himself with a hand on
the roof of the car. He closes the door and walks around the hood,
into the driveway. Up the path. You see him step up onto the porch.
You see his hand move to the bell push. You see him step back and
wait.
You don’t see her at the door.
The angle is wrong. But he nods and smiles at something and steps
inside. You keep the field glasses focused and three or four
minutes later he’s back on the porch, moving away, looking over his
shoulder, talking. Then he turns ahead and walks back down the
path. Down the driveway. Around the hood of his car. He gets back
in. The suspension eases downward on his side and his door closes.
He sinks down in his seat. His head turns. He watches.
SHE FLICKED THE tiny car right and put it on the
shoulder. Eased the speed up to thirty, thirty-five, and hauled
past the stalled traffic on the inside. The shoulder was rough and
littered with gravel and debris. On their left, the tires on the
stationary eighteen-wheelers were taller than the car.
“What mistakes?” she said. “What wrong assumptions?
”
“Very, very ironic ones, in the circumstances,” he
said. “But it’s not entirely our fault. I think we swallowed a few
big lies, too.”
“What lies?”
“Big, beautiful, breathtaking lies,” he said. “So
big and so obvious, nobody even saw them for what they were.”
SHE BREATHED HARD and tried to relax again after
the cop went back out. He was in and out, in and out, all day long.
It ruined her concentration. To play this thing properly, you
needed to be in some kind of trance. And the damn silly cop kept on
interrupting it.
She sat down and played it through again, a dozen
times, fifteen, twenty, all the way from the first measure to the
last. She was note-perfect, but that was nothing. Was the meaning
there? Was there emotion in the sound? Thought? On the whole, she
reckoned there was. She played it again, once, then twice. She
smiled to herself. Saw her face reflected back from the glossy
black of the keyboard lid and smiled again. She was making
progress. Now all she had to do was bring the speed up. But not too
much. She preferred Bach played slowly. Too much speed trivialized
it. Although it was fundamentally trivial
music. But that was all part of Bach’s mind game, she thought. He
deliberately wrote trivial music that just begged to be played with
great ceremony.
She stood up and stretched. Closed the keyboard lid
and walked out to the hallway. Lunch was the next problem. She had
to force herself to eat. Maybe everybody who lived alone had the
same problem. Solo mealtimes weren’t much fun.
There were footprints on the hallway parquet. Big
muddy feet. The damn cop, ruining everything. Spoiling her musical
concentration, spoiling the shine of her floors. She stared at the
mess, and while she was staring, the doorbell rang. The idiot was
here again. What the hell was the matter
with him? Where was his bladder control? She stepped around the
footprints and opened the door.
“No,” she said.
“What?”
“No, you can’t use the bathroom. I’m sick of
it.”
“Lady, I need to,” he said. “That was the
arrangement. ”
“Well, the arrangement has changed,” she said. “I
don’t want you coming in here anymore. It’s ridiculous. You’re
driving me crazy.”
“I have to be here.”
“It’s ridiculous,” she said again. “I don’t need
your protection. Just go away, will you?”
She closed the door, firmly. Locked it tight and
walked away to the kitchen, breathing hard.
HE DOESN’T GO in. You watch
very carefully. He just stands there on the porch, at first
surprised. Then a little disgruntled. You can see it right there in
his body language. He says three things, leaning fractionally
backward in self-defense, and then the door must be closing in his
face, because he steps back suddenly. He looks wounded. He stands
still and stares and then turns around and walks back down the
path, twenty seconds after walking up it. So what’s that
about?
He walks around the hood of his
car and opens the door. Doesn’t get all the way in. He sits
sideways with his feet still out on the road. He leaned over and
picks up his radio mike. Holds it in his hand for thirty seconds,
looking at it, thinking. Then he puts it back. Obviously he’s not
going to call it in. He’s not going to tell his sergeant, Sir, she
won’t let me pee anymore. So what’s he
going to do? Is this going to change anything?
THEY GOT TO Andrews by driving most of the way on
the shoulder and pushing in and out of the inside lane when
necessary. The base itself was an oasis of calm. Nothing much was
happening. There was a helicopter in the air, but it was far enough
away to be noiseless. Trent had left Reacher’s name at the gate.
That was clear, because the guard was expecting them. He raised the
barrier and told them to park at the Marine transport office and
inquire within.
Harper put the yellow car in line with four dull
olive Chevrolets and killed the motor. Joined Reacher on the
blacktop and followed him to the office door. A corporal stared at
her and passed them to a sergeant who stared at her and passed them
to a captain. The captain stared at her and told them a new
transport Boeing’s flight test was being rerouted to Portland
instead of San Diego. He said they could hitch a ride on it. He
said they would be the only passengers. Then he said takeoff was
scheduled in three hours.
“Three hours?” Reacher repeated.
“Portland’s a civilian airport,” the captain said.
“It’s a flight plan problem.”
Reacher was silent. The guy just shrugged.
“Best the colonel could do,” he said.