Never Go Back

Reacher patted his pockets and found Sullivan’s personal cell number, on the torn-in-half scratch pad page that Leach had given him. He dialled, and counted the ring tones. She picked up after six, which he thought was pretty good. A light sleeper, apparently.

She said, ‘Hello?’

‘This is Jack Reacher,’ he said. ‘Remember me?’

‘How could I forget? We need to talk.’

‘We are talking.’

‘About your situation.’

‘Later, OK? Right now we have stuff to do.’

‘Right now? It’s the middle of the night.’

‘Either right now or as soon as possible. Depending on your level of access.’

‘To what?’

‘I just spoke with the lawyer who did the Big Dog’s affidavit.’

‘On the phone?’

‘Face to face.’

‘That was completely inappropriate.’

‘It was a very short conversation. We left when requested.’

‘We?’

‘Major Turner is with me. An officer of equal rank and equal ability. An independent witness. She heard it too. Like a second opinion.’

‘Heard what?’

‘Does your legal archive have a computer search function?’

‘Of course it does.’

‘So if I typed Reacher, complaint against, what would I get?’

‘Exactly what you got, basically. The Big Dog’s affidavit, or similar.’

‘Is the search fast and reliable?’

‘Did you really wake me up in the middle of the night to talk about computers?’

‘I need information.’

‘The system is pretty fast. Not a very intuitive search protocol, but it’s capable of taking you straight to an individual document.’

‘I mentioned the case to the lawyer and he remembered it immediately. He called it the thing with the army. Then he asked me what my interest was, and I told him, and he said, haven’t I suffered enough?’

‘What did he mean by that?’

‘You had to be there to hear it. It was all in his tone of voice. The Big Dog affidavit was not just a complaint he mailed in and forgot about. It was not routine. It was a thing. It was a whole story, with a beginning, and a middle, and an end. And I’m guessing it was a bad end. That’s what we heard. He made it sound like a negative episode in his life. He was looking back on it, with regret.’

‘Reacher, I’m a lawyer, not a dialogue coach. I need facts, not the way people make things sound.’

‘And I’m an interrogator, and an interrogator learns plenty by listening. He asked me what my interest was, as if he was wondering what possible interest was there left to have? Hadn’t all possible interests been exhausted years ago?’

‘Reacher, it’s the middle of the night. Do you have a point?’

‘Hang in there. It’s not like you have anything else to do. You won’t get back to sleep now. The point is, then he said, haven’t I suffered enough? And simultaneously his wife started yelling and screaming and throwing us out the door. They’re living in reduced circumstances, and they’re very unhappy about it. And the Big Dog was a hot button. Like a defining event, years ago, with ongoing negative consequences. That’s the only way to make sense of the language. So now I’m wondering whether this whole thing was actually litigated at the time, all those years ago. And maybe the lawyer got his butt kicked. And maybe he got his first ethics violation. Which might have been the first step on a rocky road that terminated four years ago, when he got disbarred. Such that neither he nor his wife can bear to hear about that case ever again, because it was the start of all their troubles. Haven’t I suffered enough? As in, I’ve had sixteen years of hell because of that case, and now you want to put me through it all again?’

‘Reacher, what are you smoking? You didn’t remember the case. Therefore you didn’t litigate it. Or you’d remember it. And if it was litigated sixteen years ago, to the point where the lawyer got his butt kicked, why are they relitigating it now?’

‘Are they relitigating it now?’

‘I’m about to hang up.’

‘What would happen if someone searched Reacher, complaint against, and ordered up the Big Dog affidavit, and fed it into the system at unit level? With a bit of smoke and mirrors about how serious it was?’

No answer.