Ли Чайлд - "Этаж смерти" with W_cat

[414] He was in a state of some agitation. He placed his palms on the reception desk and then turned and dropped his hands to his sides. I saw sandy forearms and the flash of a heavy gold watch. I could see his natural approach would be to act like a friendly rich guy. Visiting the station house like our campaigning president would visit a factory. But he was distracted. Uptight. I didn’t know what Baker had said to him. How much he had revealed. Probably nothing. A good sergeant like Baker would leave the bombshells to Finlay. So Hubble didn’t know why he was here. But he knew some-thing. I was a policeman of sorts for thirteen years and I can smell a worried man a mile away. Hubble was a worried man.

[415] I stayed leaning up on the bars, motionless. Baker signaled Hubble to walk with him around the far side of the squad room. Toward the rosewood office in back. As Hubble rounded the end of the reception desk, I saw his feet. Tan boat shoes. No socks. The two men walked out of sight into the office. The door closed. The desk sergeant left his post and went outside to park Baker’s cruiser.

[416] He came back in with Finlay at his side. Finlay walked straight back toward the rosewood office where Hubble waited for him. Ignored me as he crossed the squad room. Opened the office door and went inside. I waited in my corner for Baker to come out. Baker couldn’t stay in there. Not while his partner’s bowling buddy entered the orbit of a homicide investigation. That would not be ethical. Not ethical at all. Finlay struck me as a guy who would go big on ethics. Any guy with a tweed suit like that and a moleskin vest and a Harvard education would go big on ethics. After a moment the door opened and Baker came out. He walked into the big open room and headed for his desk.

[417] “Hey, Baker,” I called. He changed course and walked over to the cells. Stood in front of the bars. Where Roscoe had stood.

[418] “I need to go to the bathroom,” I said. “Unless I got to wait until I get up to the big house for that, too?”

[419] He cracked a grin. Grudging, but a grin. He had a gold tooth way back. Gave him a rakish air. A bit more human. He shouted something to the desk guy. Probably a code for a procedure. He took out his keys and activated the electric lock. The bolts popped back. I wondered briefly how they did it if there was a power outage. Could they unlock these gates without electricity? I hoped so. Probably lots of thunderstorms down here. Lots of power lines crashing down.

[420] He pushed the heavy gate inward. We walked to the back of the squad room. Opposite corner to the rosewood office. There was a lobby. Off the lobby were two bathrooms. He reached past me and pushed open the men’s room door.

[421] They knew I wasn’t their guy. They weren’t taking care. No care at all. Out there in the lobby I could have decked Baker and taken his revolver. No problem at all. I could have had his weapon off his belt before he hit the floor. I could have shot my way out of the station house and into a patrol car. They were all parked right out front. Keys in, for sure. I could have got out toward Atlanta before they organized effective opposition. Then I could have disappeared. No problem at all. But I just went into their bathroom.

[422] “Don’t lock it,” Baker said.

[423] I didn’t lock it. They were underestimating me in a big way. I had told them I had been a military policeman. Maybe they believed me, maybe they didn’t. Maybe it didn’t mean much to them either way. But it should. A military policeman deals with military lawbreakers. Those lawbreakers are service guys. Highly trained in weapons, sabotage, unarmed combat. Rangers, Green Berets, marines. Not just killers. Trained killers. Extremely well trained, at huge public expense. So the military policeman is trained even better. Better with weapons. Better unarmed. Baker had to be ignorant of all that. Hadn’t thought about it. Otherwise he would have had a couple of shotguns aimed at me for the trip to the bathroom. If he thought I was their guy.

[424] I zipped up and came back into the lobby. Baker was waiting. We walked back to the cell area. I stepped inside my cell. Leaned up in my corner. Baker pulled the heavy gate shut. Operated the electric lock with his key. The bolts snicked in. He walked away into the squad room.

[425] There was silence for the next twenty minutes. Baker worked at a desk. So did Roscoe. The desk sergeant sat up on his stool. Finlay was in the big office with Hubble. There was a modern clock over the front doors. Not as elegant as the antique in the office, but it ticked around just as slowly. Silence. Four thirty. I leaned up against the titanium bars and waited. Silence. Quarter of five.

[426] TIME RESTARTED JUST BEFORE FIVE O’CLOCK. I HEARD A commotion coming out of the big rosewood office in back. Shouting, yelling, things banging. Somebody getting really stirred up. A buzzer sounded on Baker’s desk and the intercom crackled. I heard Finlay’s voice. Stressed. Asking Baker to get in there. Baker got up and walked over. Knocked and went in.

[427] The big plate-glass door at the entrance sucked open and the fat guy came in. Chief Morrison. He headed straight back to the rosewood office. Baker came out as Morrison went in. Baker hurried over to the reception desk. Whispered a long excited sentence to the desk sergeant. Roscoe joined them. There was a huddle. Some big news. I couldn’t hear what. Too far away.

[428] The intercom on Baker’s desk crackled again. He headed back to the office. The big front door opened again. The afternoon sun was blazing low in the sky. Stevenson walked into the station house. First time I’d seen him since my arrest. It was like the excitement was sucking people in.

[429] Stevenson spoke to the desk sergeant. He became agitated. The desk sergeant put a hand on Stevenson’s arm. Stevenson shook it off and ran toward the rosewood office. He dodged desks like a football player. As he got to the office door it opened. A crowd came out. Chief Morrison. Finlay. And Baker, holding Hubble by the elbow. A light but efficient grip, the same as he’d used on me. Stevenson stared blankly at Hubble and then grabbed Finlay by the arm. Pulled him back into the office. Morrison swiveled his sweating bulk and followed them in. The door slammed. Baker walked Hubble over toward me.

[430] Hubble looked like a different guy. He was gray and sweating. The tan had gone. He looked smaller. He looked like someone had let the air out and deflated him. He was bent up like a man racked with pain. His eyes behind the gold rims were blank and staring with panic and fear. He stood shaking as Baker unlocked the cell next to mine. He didn’t move. He was trembling. Baker caught his arm and levered him inside. He pulled the gate shut and locked it. The electric bolts snicked in. Baker walked back toward the rosewood office.

[431] Hubble just stood where Baker had left him. Staring blankly into space. Then he slowly walked backward until he reached the rear wall of the cell. He pressed his back against it and slid to the floor. Dropped his head to his knees. Dropped his hands to the floor. I could hear the rattle of his thumb trembling on the stiff nylon carpet. Roscoe stared in at him from her desk. The sergeant at the reception counter gazed across. They were watching a man fall apart.

[432] I HEARD RAISED VOICES IN THE ROSEWOOD OFFICE IN BACK. The tenor of argument. The slap of a palm on a desk. The door opened and Stevenson walked out with Chief Morrison. Stevenson looked mad. He strode down the side of the open area. His neck was rigid with fury. His eyes were fixed on the front doors. He was ignoring the fat police chief. He walked straight past the reception counter and out through the heavy door into the bright afternoon. Morrison followed him.

[433] Baker came out of the office and walked over to my cell. Didn’t speak. Just unlocked the cage and gestured me out. I shrugged my coat tighter and left the newspaper with the big photographs of the president in Pensacola on the cell floor. Stepped out and followed Baker back into the rosewood office.

[434] Finlay was at the desk. The tape recorder was there. The stiff cords trailed. The air was still and cool. Finlay looked harassed. His tie was pulled down. He blew out a big lungful of air in a rueful hiss. I sat down in the chair and Finlay waved Baker out of the room. The door closed softly behind him.

[435] “We got us a situation here, Mr. Reacher,” Finlay said. “A real situation.”

[436] He lapsed into a distracted silence. I had less than a half hour before the prison bus came by. I wanted some conclusions pretty soon. Finlay looked up and focused again. Started talking, rapidly, the elegant Harvard syntax under pressure.

[437] “We bring this Hubble guy in, right?” he said. “You maybe saw him. Banker, from Atlanta, right? Thousand-dollar Calvin Klein outfit. Gold Rolex. Very uptight guy. At first I thought he was just annoyed. Soon as I started talking he recognized my voice. From the phone call on his mobile. Accuses me of deceitful behavior. Says I shouldn’t impersonate phone company people. He’s right, of course.”

[438] Another lapse into silence. He was struggling with his ethics problem.

[439] “Come on, Finlay, move along,” I said. I had less than a half hour.

[440] “OK, so he’s uptight and annoyed,” Finlay said. “I ask him if he knows you. Jack Reacher, ex-army. He says no. Never heard of you. I believe him. He starts to relax. Like all this is about some guy called Jack Reacher. He’s never heard of any guy called Jack Reacher, so he’s here for nothing. He’s cool, right?”

[441] “Go on,” I said.

[442] “Then I ask him if he knows a tall guy with a shaved head,” he said. “And I ask him about Pluribus. Well, my God! It’s like I stuck a poker up his ass. He went rigid. Like with shock. Totally rigid. Won’t answer. So I tell him we know the tall guy is dead. Shot to death. Well, that’s like another poker up the ass. He practically fell off the chair.”

[443] “Go on,” I said. Twenty-five minutes before the prison bus was due.

[444] “He’s shaking all over the place,” Finlay said. “Then I tell him we know about the phone number in the shoe. His phone number printed on a piece of paper, with the word ‘Pluribus’ printed above it. That’s another poker up the ass.”

[445] He stopped again. He was patting his pockets, each one in turn.

[446] “He wouldn’t say anything,” he went on. “Not a word. He was rigid with shock. All gray in the face. I thought he was having a heart attack. His mouth was opening and closing like a fish. But he wasn’t talking. So I told him we knew about the corpse getting beaten up. I asked him who else was involved. I told him we knew about hiding the body under the cardboard. He wouldn’t say a damn word. He just kept looking around. After a while I realized he was thinking like crazy. Trying to decide what to tell me. He just kept silent, thinking like mad, must have been forty minutes. The tape was running the whole time. Recorded forty minutes of silence.”

[447] Finlay stopped again. This time for effect. He looked at me.

[448] “Then he confessed,” he said. “I did it, he said. I shot him, he said. The guy is confessing, right? On the tape.”

[449] “Go on,” I said.

[450] “I ask him, do you want a lawyer?” he said. “He says no, keeps repeating he killed the guy. So I Mirandize him, loud and clear, on the tape. Then I think to myself maybe he’s crazy or something, you know? So I ask him, who did you kill? He says the tall guy with the shaved head. I ask him, how? He says, shot him in the head. I ask him, when? He says last night, about midnight. I ask him who kicked the body around? Who was the guy? What does Pluribus mean? He doesn’t answer. Goes rigid with fright all over again. Refuses to say a damn word. I say to him, I’m not sure you did anything at all. He jumps up and grabs me. He’s screaming I confess, I confess, I shot him, I shot him. I shove him back. He goes quiet.”

[451] Finlay sat back. Folded his hands behind his head. Looked a question at me. Hubble as the shooter? I didn’t believe it. Because of his agitation. Guys who shoot somebody with an old pistol, in a fight or in a temper, a messy shot to the chest, they get agitated afterward. Guys who put two bullets in the head, with a silencer, then collect up the shell cases, they’re a different class of person. They don’t get agitated afterward. They just walk away and forget about it. Hubble was not the shooter. The way he had been dancing around in front of the reception counter proved it. But I just shrugged and smiled.

[452] “OK,” I said. “You can let me go now, right?”

[453] Finlay looked at me and shook his head.

[454] “Wrong,” he said. “I don’t believe him. There were three guys involved here. You persuaded me of that yourself. So which one is Hubble claiming to be? I don’t think he’s the maniac. I can’t see enough strength in him for that. I don’t see him as the gofer. And he’s definitely not the shooter, for God’s sake. Guy like that couldn’t shoot pool.”

[455] I nodded. Like Finlay’s partner. Worrying away at a problem.

[456] “Got to throw his ass in the can for now,” he said. “No option. He’s confessed, couple of plausible details. But it definitely won’t hold up.”

[457] I nodded again. Sensed there was something more to come. “Go on,” I said. With resignation.

[458] Finlay looked at me. A level gaze.

[459] “He wasn’t even there at midnight,” he said. “He was at some old couple’s anniversary party. A family thing. Not far from where he lives. Got there around eight last night. He’d walked down with his wife. Didn’t leave until after two o’clock in the morning. Two dozen people saw him arrive, two dozen people saw him leave. He got a ride home from his sister-in-law’s brother-in-law. He got a ride because it was already pouring rain by then.”