CHAPTER NINETEEN

We got into the Crown Vic and headed back the way we came. We sat with our thoughts for a while. He wasn’t much of a small talker, which suited me fine. About halfway back to the Nashville airport, he said, “Are you going to call or should I?”

He meant that one of us was going to have to open the padded envelopes in the back seat and fire up the Boss’s cell phones. The phones were tracking us now, no doubt. But if I wanted an appointment with General Matthew Clifton on the base at Fort Herald in Dallas—and if I didn’t before, I certainly did now—I’d need some heavy-duty help to make that happen.

The Boss could easily pave the way if he was so inclined. The FBI can go just about anywhere these days. And Gaspar was an Army veteran with a veteran’s card, which sometimes allowed him access to military installations without prior notice, depending on the threat level each day. But it made no sense to travel all the way to Dallas before solving the administrative issues.

The other option was to accept Major Tony Clifton’s offer to intercede with his brother for us. Gaspar’s question meant that he had considered Tony as an option and rejected it.

“There’s an exit up ahead. Let’s stop for coffee,” I replied, which was a way to let him know I wanted to discuss the options away from the Boss’s ears and before we went any further.

Gaspar glanced at me and returned his gaze to the road. “Whatever you say.”

We never assumed we were truly under the radar. Usually, someone was watching and listening and manipulating. Usually, that was the Boss, but other eyes and ears were on us, too. Some of them, we were by now well convinced, were connected to Reacher. When we wanted privacy, evasive maneuvers were required.

Listening to conversations in the open air is doable, but it’s harder than monitoring inside a vehicle. Roadside restaurants are typically busy. There would be lots of conflicting cell phone traffic. It was complicated to isolate particular conversations amid dozens of others and it required extra time, more equipment. Which gave us small windows of privacy when we could manage to immerse ourselves in crowds.

At the next exit, Gaspar chose a parking lot surrounded by a clump of restaurants, gas stations and a strip mall knotted together by concrete. He parked the Crown Vic in one of the lot’s busier areas. We left our personal cell phones in the car, too, and walked fifty yards away before either of us spoke again.

Gaspar’s limp slowed us down, but we weren’t headed anywhere in particular so it didn’t matter. He had popped at least two Tylenol already when he thought I wasn’t looking.

“We can agree that Tony Clifton sent us to Lesley Browning for a reason.” His voice held a question although the words did not. “Did you hear the reason from her?”

“Not exactly. But the connection is there,” I said. “Jack and Joe Reacher and Joe’s ex, Lesley Browning, were all connected to General Matthew and Major Tony Clifton because they were all friends. They lived in the same neighborhood and the four men went to West Point. Colonel Summer was connected to Jack Reacher and Tony Clifton because she worked with them both.”

“Summer was connected to Matthew Clifton, too. Because she’d worked with him prosecuting the events in the old JAG report, if nothing else. Senior officers are a small and exclusive club. They all know each other.”

I smiled. He really was beginning to understand how I think. Which was a little scary, but more convenient than having to explain all the time. “And how about Lesley’s husband?”

He gave me the side-eye. “Possible. We know Thomas O’Connor signed off on that old corruption case as the junior JAG with Matthew Clifton. But he’s been out of the Army for a long time.”

“Chico, in my book, being a defense contractor is not being out of the Army.” He raised an eyebrow. “The Army is his one and only customer. You’ve never worked as a civilian and I have. I’m here to tell you, customers are king.”

We walked and he thought about it a bit. “Let’s say you’re right. Where are you going with this?”

I’d been hunched into my blazer and now took a deep breath and stretched the tension from my shoulders. “I think I’m still going to Fort Herald. But the question is whether we should go to O’Connor’s office before or after.”

“Cuts down on the plane travel if we do it now.”

“Exactly.”

“Are you going to tell him?” He meant the Boss.

“He already knows. The question is why he wants us to interview O’Connor. What he wants us to find out that he doesn’t already know.”

We turned and walked back toward the car.

“You get the coffee and I’ll make the call,” Gaspar said.

“10-4,” I replied and he grinned.

I chose the busiest of the fast food joints and the longest line waiting to order.

Gaspar could bring the Boss up to speed. I had no intention of joining any conversation with him just yet. The man was using me as a gun dog to serve some purpose he refused to disclose. More than once, his secrets had almost gotten me killed, and Gaspar too. He showed zero remorse for that and zero interest in changing the dynamic. Which meant I had zero interest in chatting with him except when communication was essential.

I ran the events through my head again. Somehow Jack Reacher was at the center of this thing, whatever the thing actually was. He had not been to Fort Bird since 1990. Yet, one or more of his actions in the few days he was there had caused ripples like dropping a stone into an ocean. Only Reacher’s effect was more like dropping a boulder into a puddle.

Motives for murder were not much debated in law enforcement circles. The FBI manual limited the options to four classes and a bunch of sub-classifications, but they boiled down to six motives: profit, revenge, jealousy, to conceal a crime, to avoid humiliation or disgrace, and homicidal mania. In the case of The Lucky Bar shooter, homicidal mania was the clear favorite. But it didn’t sit right with me. And the motive for killing Summer? Could have been any of the others.

My turn at the register finally came. I ordered black coffee for me and coffee with a quart of cream and half a cup of sugar for Gaspar. I added a couple of fried apple pies and paid the bill and carried the paper bag toward the Crown Vic.

The thing that I’d been worrying around in my head since The Lucky Bar shootout was a single question: What could Reacher have possibly done that would cause a long-dormant situation to erupt into murder all these years later?

The answer teased me like a mouse hiding in the dark. I could hear it scurrying around, but every time I turned on the light, I couldn’t find it. All I saw was evidence that the mouse had been there.