dead maybe an hour.
He checked inside the jacket. The overloaded wallet was gone. Then he saw the hands. The fingertips had been sliced off. All ten of them. Quick efficient angled cuts, with something neat and sharp. Not a scalpel. A broader blade. Maybe a linoleum knife.
2
“’IT’S MY FAULT,“ Reacher said.
Crystal shook her head.
“You didn’t kill the guy,” she said.
Then she looked up at him, sharply. “Did you?”
“I got him killed,” Reacher said. “Is there a difference?”
The bar had closed at one o’clock and they were side by side on two chairs next to the empty stage. The lights were off and there was no music. No sound at all, except the hum of the air-conditioning running at quarter speed, sucking the stale smoke and sweat out into the still, night air of the Keys.
“I should have told him,” Reacher said. “I should have just told him sure, I’m Jack Reacher. Then he’d have told me whatever he had to tell me, and he’d be back home by now, and I could have just ignored it all anyway. I’d be no worse off, and he’d still be alive.”
Crystal was dressed in a white T-shirt. Nothing else. It was a long T-shirt, but not quite long enough. Reacher was not looking at her.
“Why do you care?” she asked.
It was a Keys question. Not callous, just mystified at his concern about a stranger down from another country. He looked at her.
“I feel responsible,” he said.
“No, you feel guilty,” she said.
He nodded.
“Well, you shouldn’t,” she said. “You didn’t kill him.”
“Is there a difference?” he asked again.
“Of course there is,” she said. “Who was he?”
“A private detective,” he said. “Looking for me.”
“Why?”
He shook his head.
“No idea,” he said.
“Were those other guys with him?”
He shook his head again.
“No,” he said. “Those other guys killed him.”
She looked at him, startled. “They did?”
“That’s my guess,” he said. “They weren’t with him, that’s for sure. They were younger and richer than he was. Dressed like that? Those suits? Didn’t look like his subordinates. Anyway, he struck me as a loner. So the two of them were working for somebody else. Probably told to follow him down here, find out what the hell he was doing. He must have stepped on some toes up north, given somebody a problem. So he was tailed down here. They caught up with him, beat out of him who he was looking for. So then they came looking, too.”
“They killed him to get your name?”
“Looks that way,” he said.
“Are you going to tell the cops?”
Another Keys question. Involving the cops with anything was a matter for long and serious debate. He shook his head for the third time.
“No,” he said.
“They’ll trace him, then they’ll be looking for you, too.”
“Not right away,” he said. “There’s no ID on the body. And no fingerprints, either. Could be weeks before they even find out who he was.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to find Mrs. Jacob,” he said. “The client. She’s looking for me.”
“You know her?”
“No, but I want to find her.”
“Why?”
He shrugged.
“I need to know what’s going on,” he said.
“Why?” she asked again.
He stood up and looked at her in a mirror on the wall. He was suddenly very restless. Suddenly more than ready to get right back to reality.
“You know why,” he said to her. “The guy was killed because of something to do with me, so that makes me involved, OK?”
She stretched a long, bare leg onto the chair he had just vacated. Pondered his feeling of involvement like it was some kind of an obscure hobby. Legitimate, but strange, like folk dancing.
“OK, so how?” she asked.
“I’ll go to his office,” he said. “Maybe he had a secretary. At least there’ll be records there. Phone numbers, addresses, client agreements. This Mrs. Jacob was probably his latest case. She’ll probably be top of the pile.”
“So where’s his office?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “ New York somewhere, according to the way he sounded. I know his name, I know he was an ex-cop. An ex-cop called Costello, about sixty years old. Can’t be too hard to find.”
“He was an ex-cop?” she asked. “Why?”
“Most private dicks are, right?” he said. “They retire early and poor, they hang out a shingle, they set up as one-man bands, divorce and missing persons. And that thing about my bank? He knew all the details. No way to do that, except through a favor from an old buddy still on the job.”
She smiled, slightly interested. Stepped over and joined him near the bar. Stood next to him, close, her hip against his thigh.
“How do you know all this complicated stuff?”
He listened to the rush of the air through the extractors.
“I was an investigator myself,” he said. “Military police. Thirteen years. I was pretty good at it. I’m not just a pretty face.”
“You’re not even a pretty face,” she said back. “Don’t flatter yourself. When do you start?”
He looked around in the darkness.
“Right now, I guess. Certain to be an early flight out of Miami.”
She smiled again. This time, warily.
“And how are you going to get to Miami?” she asked. “This time of night?”
He smiled back at her. Confidently.
“You’re going to drive me,” he said.
“Do I have time to get dressed?”
“Just shoes,” he said.
He walked her around to the garage where her old Porsche was hidden. He rolled the door open and she slid into the car and fired it up. She drove him the half mile north to his motel, taking it slowly, waiting until the oil warmed through. The big tires banged on broken pavement and thumped into potholes. She eased to a stop opposite his neon lobby and waited, the motor running fast against the choke. He opened his door, and then he closed it again, gently.
“Let’s just go,” he said. “Nothing in there I want to take with me.”
She nodded in the glow from the dash.
