We called them death messages. My skills were widely held to be deficient. I used to walk in and just tell them. I thought that was the nature of a message. But apparently I was wrong. So I was sent to Rucker. I learned good stuff there. I learned to take emotions seriously. Above all I learned that cafes and diners and coffee shops were good environments for bad news. The public atmosphere limits the likelihood of falling apart, and the process of ordering and waiting and sipping punctuates the flow of information in a way that makes it easier to absorb.
We took a booth next to a mirror. That helps, too. You can look at each other in the glass. Face to face, but not really. The place was about half full. Cops from the precinct, taxi drivers on their way to the West Side garages. We ordered coffee. I wanted food too, hut I wasn’t going to eat if he didn’t. Not respectful. He said he wasn’t hungry. I sat quiet and waited. Let them talk first, the Rucker psychologists had said.
He told me that his name was Jacob Mark. Originally Markakis in his grandfather’s day, back when a Greek name was no good to anyone, except if you were in the deli business, which his grandfather wasn’t. His grandfather was in the construction business. Hence the change. He said I could call him Jake. I said he could call me Reacher. He told me he was a cop. I told him I had been one once, in the military. He told me he wasn’t married and lived alone. I said the same went for me. Establish common ground, the teachers at Rucker had said. Up close and looking past his physical disarray he was a squared-away guy. He had any cop’s weary gloss, but under it lay a normal suburban man. With a different guidance counsellor he might have become a science teacher or a dentist or an auto parts manager. He was in his forties, already very grey, but his face was youthful and unlined. His eyes were dark and wide and staring, but that was temporary. Some hours ago, when he went to bed, he must have been a handsome man. I liked him on sight, and I felt sorry for his situation.
He took a breath and told me his sister’s name was Susan Mark. At one time Susan Molina, but many years divorced and reverted. Now living alone. He talked about her in the present tense. He was a long way from acceptance.
He said, ‘She can’t have killed herself. It’s just not possible.’
I said, ‘Jake, I was there.’
The waitress brought our coffee and we sipped in silence for a moment. Passing time, letting reality sink in just a little more. The Rucker psychologists had been explicit: the suddenly bereaved have the IQ of Labradors. Indelicate, because they were army, but accurate, because they were psychologists.
Jake said, ‘So tell rue what happened.’
I asked him, ‘Where are you from?’
He named a small town in northern New Jersey, well inside the New York metro area, full of commuters and soccer moms, prosperous, safe, contented. He said the police department was well funded, well equipped, and generally understretched. I asked him if his department had a copy of the Israeli list. He said that after the Twin Towers every police department in the country had been buried under paper, and every officer had been required to learn every point on every list.
I said, ‘Your sister was behaving strangely, Jake. She rang every bell. She looked like a suicide bomber.’
‘Bullshit,’ he said, like a good brother should.
‘Obviously she wasn’t,’ I said. ‘But you would have thought the same thing. You would have had to, with your training.’
‘So the list is more about suicide than bombing.’
‘Apparently.’
‘She wasn’t an unhappy person.’
‘She must have been.’
He didn’t reply. We sipped a little more. People came and went. Checks were paid, tips were left. Traffic built up on Eighth.
I said, ‘Tell me about her.’
He asked, ‘What gun did she use?’
‘An old Ruger Speed-Six.’
‘Our dad’s gun. She inherited it.’
‘Where did she live? Here, in the city?’
He shook his head. ‘ Annandale, Virginia.’
‘Did you know she was up here?’ He shook his head again.
‘Why would she come?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why would she be wearing a winter coat?’
‘I don’t know.’
I said, ‘Some federal agents came and asked me questions. Then some private guys found me, just before you did. They were all talking about a woman called Lila Hoth. You ever hear that name from your sister?’
‘No.’
‘What about John Sansom?’
‘He’s a congressman from North Carolina. Wants to be a senator. Some kind of hard-ass.’
I nodded. I remembered, vaguely. Election season was gearing up. I had seen newspaper stories and television coverage. Sansom had been a late entrant to politics and was a rising star. He was seen as tough and uncompromising. And ambitious. He had done well in business for a spell and before that he had done well in the army. He hinted at a glamorous Special Forces career without supplying details. Special Forces careers arc good for that kind of thing. Most of what they do is secret, or can be claimed to be.
I asked, ‘Did your sister ever mention Sansom?’
He said, ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Did she know him?’
‘I can’t see how.’
I asked, ‘What did she do for a living?’
He wouldn’t tell me.
TWELVE
He didn’t need to tell me. I already knew enough for a ballpark guess. Her fingerprints were on file and three shiny pink ex-staff officers had hustled up the highway but had left again within minutes. Which put Susan Mark somewhere in the defence business, but not in an elevated position. And she lived in Annandale, Virginia. Southwest of Arlington, as I recalled. Probably changed since I was last there. But probably still a decent place to live, and still an easy commute to the world’s largest office building. Route 244, one end to the other.
‘She worked at the Pentagon,’ I said.
Jake said, ‘She wasn’t supposed to talk about her job.’
I shook my head. ‘If it was really a secret, she would have told you she worked at Wal-Mart.’
He didn’t answer. I said, ‘I had an office in the Pentagon once. I’m familiar with the place. Try me.’
He paused a beat and then he shrugged and said, ‘She was a civilian clerk. But she made it sound exciting. She worked for an outfit called CGUSAHRC. She never told me much about it. She made it sound like a hush-hush thing. People can’t talk so much now, after the Twin Towers.’
‘It’s not an outfit,’ I said. ‘It’s a guy. CGUSAHRC means Commanding General, United States Army, Human Resources Command. And it’s not very exciting. It’s a personnel department. Paperwork and records.’
Jake didn’t reply. I thought I had offended him, by belittling his sister’s career. Maybe the Rucker seminar hadn’t taught me enough. Maybe I should have paid more attention. The silence went on a beat too long and grew awkward. I asked, ‘Did she tell you anything about it at all?’
‘Not really. Maybe there wasn’t much to tell.’ He said it with a hint of bitterness, as if his sister had been caught in a lie.
I said, ‘People dress things up, Jake. It’s human nature. And usually there’s no harm in it. Maybe she just wanted to compete, with you being a cop.’
‘We weren’t close.’
‘You were still family.’
