at that mailbox. Something not right about it.”
Gaspar limped and she walked along the rutted two-track driveway. The quiet of the November country afternoon was punctuated only by nearby bugs and distant crows and scraping soles on gravel. Sunshine warmed the chill.
Gaspar said, “Five minutes on foot to reach the destroyed mailbox.”
“Less if you’re mad and chasing vandals.”
He asked, “Why are we here?”
“I want a private look at things. Hands on.”
He said, “It worries me that I’m beginning to understand you.”
“How’s that?”
“You talked to the boss, didn’t you? We’re working the Black homicide now, and Reacher’s involved. We need to find Sylvia. I can see it in your twitches.”
“Sylvia confessed to killing Harry, but the confession’s hinky. At least as to chronology. Roscoe knows that. And where’s the motive? Not spouse abuse, for sure. No evidence of any kind to support that.”
Gaspar reached into his pocket and pulled out a fragment of scorched paper. “I found this in the grass not far from the Chevy. There were pieces all over the place.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Kim said. She showed him identical burnt fragments from her own pocket. “They were hundred dollar bills.”
Gaspar examined them. “Ragged edges, fibers, rough texture. The real deal. But they’re old. Ben’s face is bigger on new ones.”
“Reacher blew up a Chevy full of cash? Doesn’t make much sense.”
They stopped at the end of the driveway, under a stand of trees all choked by kudzu, and looked at the battered mailbox. Kim swiped her palms together to dust off the peanut salt, and hooked her thumbs in her back pockets. She said, “What’s bugging me about this mailbox is the repeated pounding. Had to make a hell of a racket in all this quiet.”
“Who’s gonna complain? The locusts?”
“Destroying the box is a felony and Harry’s a cop, right? Slugger knows he’ll get prison time and big money fines if Harry catches him, so he makes sure Harry’s not home somehow. Doesn’t make sense.”
“Why not?”
“Takes planning. Slugger’s going to a lot of trouble to piss Harry off and all he does is beat the mailbox. Why not burn the house down or at least trash the place?”
“What if they were cooking or dealing at the house, which is how they get a Chevy-full of hundred dollar bills? Slugger was a meth-head?”
“Crazy junky beats mailbox to hell?” Kim shook her head.
“Don’t like it?”
“Why didn’t Harry replace the box?”
“God, I’d hate to live inside your head, Cosette. Does everything bounce around in there like that?”
“Pretty much, la Mancha. It’s a curse.” She shrugged, mocking his favorite physical response.
“So what’s your best guess?”
“I think Sylvia destroyed the box and Harry didn’t care.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure it matters. Why do we care about their mail? They didn’t.”
Kim said, “Exactly. They cared enough at one time to have the mailbox, though. So what changed? Their connection to the postal service was destroyed and neither Harry nor Sylvia fixed it for months, judging by the rust in those cracks. How do they get their mail?”
“Several options, I guess. P.O. Box. Forward to Harry’s office. Whatever.”
“Neither rain nor sleet nor gloom of night stays mail couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
He raised his eyebrow. “You were a mail carrier? You memorized the creed?”
“The postal service doesn’t have a creed,” she said, smiling for the first time since the Chevy exploded. “That was in a Kevin Costner movie. Man, you Chicanos are slow.”
Gaspar laughed out loud and the sound made her feel normal. Almost.
She said, “How about this? The mail is delivered come rain or come shine, but only if there’s a place to leave it. And people aren’t
He finished the thought. “So what mail was Sylvia avoiding? Maxed out credit card bills for her high-ticket fashion habit? Wouldn’t be the first woman to spend her husband into bankruptcy. Might explain why she killed him, too, if he found out.”
“Find the mail, find the answer.”
“And how do we do that, Mrs. Einstein?”
She heard helicopters in the distance, pressing her. “We’ve got to get moving, Cheech.” She’d taken a couple of steps along the driveway before she realized he wasn’t following. He’d stepped closer to the box, balanced on a mossy limestone rock, and was peering down into the muck. He said, “I keep telling you, Cheech is Mexican, not Cuban. God, you Germans are dumb.”
“We have to go,” she said. She tapped his arm. And regretted it immediately. The moss on the rock and his bad leg and his poor balance all came together and he slipped into the weedy ditch, on his butt, legs flailing, arms in the air.
“Oh, man,” he said, as the water soaked his trousers.
He looked embarrassed.
She shook her head in mock despair. “You’re hopeless, you know that? Quit screwing around down there. Hubba hubba. We’ve got to go.”
He reached up. “Help me out of here.”
Kim secured her footing. Saw a fat stick floating toward him over the tops of murky ripples. Driftwood, maybe.
Not driftwood.
Gaspar reached up, ready to grasp her wrist.
Kim pulled her Sig and aimed an inch from Gaspar’s heel.
He covered his ears a split second too late.
She fired once. A sound like thunder. Then again. And again, to be certain.
He jerked his right foot back and sat up straight and crossed himself rapidly.
He said, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, are you out of your mind?”
The rattlesnake’s bloody head dangled from a still-wriggling body as big around as Gaspar’s ankle. Precisely three inches from where his right foot had been.
“Pray later,” she said. “That guy’s got friends and family nearby. We have to go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Harry Black’s house was practically empty. Nothing that could be vacuumed, picked up or bagged remained. The mattress was gone and the linens were gone.
Harry Black’s body was gone.
But his blood was still there. It had oxidized to rusty clumps on the wall pine. Dresser drawers were open and empty. Limp curtains were gone from the frosted jalousie window. The miniscule bathroom and the bedroom closet had been stripped of their meager contents.
There were seven new additions.
