Jack In A Box Read online

  Swiftly, the door opened, the cousin came out, looked Kim in the eye and said, “You're up. Good luck.”

  Kim considered whether it was too late to run, but she stood as tall as a four foot eleven and a half inch, ninety-nine pound Asian-American woman could stand, squared her shoulders and marched past the threshold, checking for a quick escape route, but finding none. Someone pushed the door and it sucked solidly shut behind her.

  Grandma Louisa's bed filled most of the room. An oxygen cannula rested in her nose but otherwise had changed not one iota since the last time Kim had seen her. She wore a pink brocade bed jacket, her grey hair was teased and lacquered as usual, and her hands were folded on her lap the better to display her rings and manicured nails. She wore pearl and sapphire earrings and a double strand of pearls around her sizeable neck. Mauve lipstick emphasized her still-full lips. Blush rosied her cheeks. Stylish eyeglasses rested on her nose visually enlarging her blue eyes to bowl size.

  Louisa Otto, matriarch of the Frankenmuth Ottos, held court as she always had, as if she were not just the head of one sizeable but important farming community but Empress Augusta herself.

  Whoever had closed the door gave Kim a little shove in the small of her back, prodding her closer to the bed.

  “Kimmy,” Louisa said, a moment before she reached out with a strong claw, restraining Kim by engulfing her hand inside a big fist, holding tight. Rough callouses on Louisa's palm scraped Kim's skin.

  Perhaps Grandma Louisa was near death, but she seemed a lot more alive than Kim had been led to believe.

  “You look great,” Kim said, clearing her throat and covering surprise as she leaned over to kiss a papery cheek dotted with lipstick from previous kissers.

  Grandma Louisa replied, “I really do, don't I?”

  Kim had to laugh. What could she possibly say in reply?

  Not that Grandma Louisa gave her a chance. Maybe Kim's mind had misplaced the facts of last argument, but Louisa's had not. She launched again as if the dispute had concluded ten minutes ago, not ten years ago. “Kimmy, I want to see you married to a good German Lutheran before I die. A baby on the way. Maybe two.”

  “You'll need to live a good long while then, Grandma,” Kim said, struggling to eliminate annoyance from her tone as the old feelings flooded back. They'd fought bitterly ten years ago because Grandma had arranged such a union for Kim and Kim had secretly married already, not to a German Lutheran but to a Vietnamese immigrant. Kim was divorced now, but she simply refused to have any part of the old tyrant's nosey meddling.

  “I will if you will,” Grandma Louisa said flatly, steely-eyed and uncompromising. She squeezed Kim's hand tighter before releasing her completely. “Now would be a good time to find good husband material before you leave Wisconsin. I've lined up a few prospects for you to see this afternoon back at my house.”

  Kim felt anger bubbling up from her now toasty feet, rising to levels that would have the family comparing her to Sen Li, and not favorably. Kim clamped her jaws closed and replied, “Thanks. I'm on my way.”

  She didn't say on her way where.

  Grandma Louisa beamed as if she'd settled the fortunes of the crown princess. “You'll be glad when you're settled, Kimmy. Like your cousins.”

  Damn that woman!

  Kim said nothing. She glanced at the uncles standing on either side of their mother, but neither could muster the guts to meet her gaze. She nodded, pulled her hand away, turned and left the room, saving thirty seconds for the next cousin in line, who was also single and probably wouldn't thank her for the extra time.

  No one seemed to notice when Kim continued walking, out of the waiting room, down the hallway, and left the hospital through the front exit where Otto cousins continued to throng the entrance.

  She stood at the cabstand and fumed, muttering suitable rejoinders to the old bat under her breath and louder epithets in her head. She barely noticed the frigid outside air for the first five minutes while the heat of her rage kept adrenaline pumping.

  Where are the damned taxis?

  Too quickly, the cold bulldozed into her bones. She hunched inside her suit jacket, stomped her feet to knock the snow away from her soles and keep her circulation going. It was freezing out here. Even colder than Grandma Louisa, if that was possible.

  Why in the name of God didn't you bring a coat and boots? Better yet, why didn't you just say no, Dad, I'm not going. Not now. Not ever. Forget it.

  Ranting didn't heat the atmosphere even one degree.

  Global warming, my ass.

  Kim felt her corneas might frost. She squeezed her eyes shut and shivered a bit more attempting to raise her body temperature. She wasn't going back inside to wait, even if her feet froze to the sidewalk and her eyelids ice-glued themselves together.

  She heard the growl of an engine and opened her eyes expecting to see a yellow cab. Instead, a black SUV had pulled up alongside, Captain Lothar Otto at the wheel. He lowered the passenger window and said, “I'm headed toward the airport. Can I drop you somewhere?”

  Kim wasted no body heat demurring. She hopped up into the passenger seat and immediately put her frozen fingers near the blasting heat vent.

  “Frontier?” she said.

  “Nonstop, huh? You can’t be afraid of flying.” When she failed to reply, he said, “Jumping out of moving planes, now that’s a lot harder.” Still no response. He took a deep breath. “Okay then. Dane County, Frontier Airlines it is.” Lothar attended to driving the heavy vehicle expertly through snow-covered streets through towns unprepared for the early winter storm.

  After she'd warmed up enough to sit a normal distance from the fan's blasting heat, Lothar glanced toward her and asked, “Did she give you the business about getting married and having babies before she dies?”

  Kim nodded. She didn't know this man. She had no intention of discussing her personal life with him, no matter how angry she was.

  He grinned. “She does that to me every time I see her.”

  “Really? I thought it was only me she subjected to never-ending ridicule.”

  Lothar laughed, the kind of deep belly laugh that only emerged from genuine mirth, the contagious kind. “When did you get so special?”

  Kim smiled, felt better, almost as if she'd found an Otto family ally for the first time in her life, knowing the feeling was supremely foolish. Relief lasted about twenty seconds before the SUV swerved on a black ice patch and she grabbed the armrest to avoid being slung across the seat. She snugged up her seatbelt several notches.

  Traffic slogged along, slowing their progress. Several vehicles less suited to the conditions slipped on patches of invisible black ice. They'd dodged two fender-benders already. Snow plows and salt trucks clogged the roadway, but drivers willingly waited as they passed.

  Lothar concentrated intently on driving, but he must have sensed her anxiety because he said, “Planes take off in these conditions all the time around here. They'll de-ice. Two or three times if they need to. You'll be fine.”

  Kim's stomach started doing backflips and the two antacids she held on her tongue weren't helping in the least. De-icing two or three times? Seriously? Didn't these people know how dangerous ice on airplanes was? Didn't they understand that de-icing two or three times made crashing more likely, not less? Was she completely surrounded by hostiles here?

  When they reached the curbside drop off for Frontier Airlines, Lothar turned toward her and placed a hand on her arm. “Hang on a minute. I have something for you.”

  Kim knew she looked puzzled because that was how she felt. Lothar reached inside his jacket and pulled a photograph from his breast pocket. He handed it to her.

  She bit her lip to suppress a gasp. Major Jack Reacher's official Army head shot. She flipped the photo over and on the back was a sticker sporting typewritten information: Tonight. 10:00 p.m. National Gallery of Art, East Building, front entrance.

  “What is this?”

  “Following orders.”

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sp; “What do you mean?”

  “I was ordered to deliver that to you.”

  “By whom?”

  “The point is someone wants to see you. They knew I could deliver the message. You understand?”

  “Spell it out for me,” she said, but she knew. She wanted him to voice her concern aloud so she would know she wasn't crazy. Because it was crazy to think that someone would manipulate her father to manipulate her to come to Wisconsin to meet a reliable cousin to give her a meeting back in Washington DC which is where she started from this morning and where she was returning in thirty-three minutes if she survived her flight.

  Lothar asked a question instead. “You recognized the photo, didn't you? How are you involved with that guy? Is he the reason you were so incensed at Grandma Louisa’s meddling in your personal life? You’re not dating that guy?”

  He seemed genuinely concerned about her, which worried her more than the message. No one in the extended Otto family had shown her the least bit of concern her entire life. Why start now?

  She said, “Do you know him?”

  “By reputation. Otherwise, before my time. Reacher was discharged in 1997. Something hinky about it, though. His situation was definitely not normal, Kim. Wherever that guy went, bodies piled up. And I'm not talking about normal battlefield casualties. Nobody is that unlucky.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I'm a Captain in the U.S. Army. Like you, Agent Otto, I follow orders and don't ask questions, or I pay the consequences. Before today, I never had a problem with that because the Army never ordered me to do anything this odd; something not right is going on here.”

  No shit, she thought. “Like what?”

  He shrugged, giving up. “Friends come and go in life, but enemies pile up. Reacher made a lot of enemies. You be careful, little 'cuz, or you’ll never reach Grandma Louisa’s age with or without those Vietnamese longevity genes.”

  A vehicle behind the SUV laid on the horn letting Lothar know it was long past time to move.

  Kim slipped Reacher’s photo into her jacket pocket, popped open the door, and slid out to the ground.

  Before she closed herself outside in the cold, Lothar said, “You need anything, here’s my card. I feel responsible for you now. Don’t let them be calling me to your funeral.”

  4.

  Washington, D.C. was full of shadowy men these days. Some were harmless. Some were crazy. Sometimes it was impossible to tell the difference. Always safer to avoid confrontation, just in case.

  He stood motionless in a shadowed doorway, an intimidating giant, waiting. He carried his broad frame tall and straight. He wore indigo jeans and brown work boots on his feet. Both hands were stuffed into leather jacket pockets, probably for warmth. Fair hair fell shaggy around his ears and collar, his only cap against winter's cold. Sunglasses covered his eyes and reflected the weak sunset like cat pupils. Without visible effort, he seemed infinitely patient, self-possessed, self-confident, alert and relaxed, harmless and dangerous.

  Few pedestrians raised their heads from the biting November wind enough to notice him; those who did veered wide, walked along the curb, as far away as possible from the boxy doorway. Just in case.

  When the burner cell phone vibrated he pulled it out of his pocket and held the speaker to his ear. The woman’s voice reported just the facts, “Messages delivered; on their way.”

  He said nothing.

  He dropped the phone to the concrete, smashed it casually with the heel of his heavy boot, picked up the largest pieces, scattered the smallest, and walked unhurried toward Pennsylvania Avenue, dropping the rest into random trash bins along his route.

  5.

  Agent Carlos Gaspar flashed his badge at the entrance to the Pentagon, provided appropriate identification and after his approved visitor status was confirmed, he was flagged through.

  As he expected, the building was busy even though it was five o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. Gaspar had slept an hour on the plane; Tylenol, the strongest pain killer he allowed himself, never lasted longer. He'd stopped for coffee after he passed security.

  No one knew him here, but both civilians and military personnel were busy with more pressing matters. He’d passed security so they ignored him, likely accepting that his clearance was high enough. Which it was.

  He glanced at the digital clock on the wall. Two hours before he’d meet Otto in the coffee shop. Plenty of time.

  The first step in any follow-up investigation was to review and analyze all the previous reports. Because Otto and Gaspar were tasked by one of the FBI’s most powerful leaders and assigned a rush under-the-radar project, this step hadn’t been completed.

  He knew where he was going, what to look for, and what he should find there.

  He also knew he wouldn't find it. The absence of what should be present would speak volumes.

  Archived service records, defined as records for veterans sixty-two years or more post-separation, were stored and open to the public at the new National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri. Nothing pertaining to Reacher would be archived there because he’d been discharged in March 1997.

  All inactive personnel records for veterans with a discharge date less than sixty-two years ago remained the property of the Department of Defense and its individual branches. In Reacher’s case, that meant the Army.

  Gaspar was an active, practicing Catholic. He believed in divine providence. At first, it felt like he was on the right investigative path and he might find what he sought, even without an official archive. A fire had destroyed service records at the prior St. Louis center in 1973, but Reacher was only thirteen then.

  But then Gaspar ran into several official gaps that concealed Reacher’s history more effectively than youth or fire.

  The Army didn’t begin retaining records electronically until 2002, five years after Reacher’s separation. This meant his files weren’t retained in electronic format by the Army or electronically shared with the NPRC.

  Worse, the Army’s policies on maintaining and releasing service records were changed in April, 1997 and several times thereafter. The rules filled more than fifty-five pages, regularly revised, of course.

  All of which meant that Reacher’s records were once and should remain hard copies, resting in files owned by the Army that could be and probably were buried so deep in bullshit that no one would ever find them.

  Unless.

  Unless Reacher did something to get himself inscribed by bits and bytes into the electronic records after he left the army.

  Which, Gaspar was betting, Reacher had done. Probably many times. For sure, at least once barely six months after the army let him go. If Gaspar could find that record, he’d have verified hard proof and Reacher’s trail might begin to unravel.

  Gaspar knew Reacher had been arrested in Margrave, Georgia, and his fingerprints were taken and sent to FBI headquarters. A report was returned to the Margrave Police Department. Margrave PD records were also destroyed in a fire, which Gaspar was as sure as he could possibly be was no coincidence.

  Even so, the initial fingerprint request should exist in FBI files. Gaspar had checked. The request did not exist in FBI files. Which Gaspar was sure, but could not prove, was no coincidence, either.

  This was where the government’s redundancy and repetitive nature might be harnessed, Gaspar hoped. The Margrave PD request and FBI reply should also have been noted in Reacher’s military file, as should any request and reply about Reacher at any time from the date of his discharge until this very moment and into the future. Anything after 2002 should be electronically recorded for sure. And anything before 1997 might also have been updated because of the later electronic entries.

  It was this army record Gaspar sought now. Positive paper trail proof of the legally admissible kind that Jack Reacher had been present in Margrave in September 1997, six months after his Army discharge, that Reacher was there. Not a shadow. Not a ghost. Not a rumor. But a real person.
r />   Tangible proof of Reacher’s Margrave presence was important because it provided the immovable, rock hard foundation he needed to nail down. Gaspar’s training said it was required and his gut said it mattered and that was enough for him. He and Otto were assigned to build the Reacher file and by God, he’d do it right, and he wouldn’t make his wife a widow or his five children orphans in the process if he could possibly help it.

  First things first. The Margrave PD print request and the Army’s reply.

  Then they would take the next steps.

  Whatever those steps were.

  And if the print request and reply documents were missing from the army files?

  Starting here and now, he would confirm one way or the other.

  Gaspar was a practicing Catholic. He believed in divine intervention. But he was an FBI Special Agent who also believed in hard proof and his gut. So he knew. He knew before he opened the box marked Jack (none) Reacher and sifted through the paperwork.

  Relevant records ended when Reacher separated from the army in March 1997.

  After Gaspar confirmed it, he and Otto could move forward. But to where?

  6.

  An hour before the scheduled meeting, Otto and Gaspar stepped out of the coffee shop located across the street from the J. Edgar Hoover building into the mild autumn weather. Full dark had fallen a while back, but streetlights and headlights and floodlights eliminated all blackness. The trees were partially clothed in fall finery; grass remained green and a few flowers still bloomed. No breeze ruffled to cool the temperature.

  After Wisconsin, Kim found the evening weather pleasantly warm. After Miami, Gaspar might have been a bit chilled. Both were energized by the anticipated confrontation. Maybe they were finally going to catch a break.

  Saturday night on Pennsylvania Avenue NW was subdued. Traffic moved at posted speeds or less. Couples and small groups populated the sidewalks, strolling with discrete distances between them. Nothing out of the ordinary to notice.