Killing Floor

“Yes, Hubble,” I said again. “Go for it, it’s the best you can do.”

The cell stayed locked all day. The floor was silent. We lay on our beds and drifted through the rest of the afternoon. No more talking. We were all talked out. I was bored and wished I had brought that newspaper with me from the Margrave station house. I could have read it all over again. All about the president cutting crime prevention so he could get re-elected. Saving a buck on the Coast Guard today so he could spend ten bucks on prisons like this one tomorrow.

At about seven the old orderly came by with di

AT SEVEN IN THE MORNING THE LIGHTS CAME BACK ON. Sunday. I woke up tired, but I forced myself to get up. Forced myself to do a bit of stretching to ease off my sore body. Hubble was awake, but silent. He was vaguely watching me exercise. Still drifting. Breakfast arrived before eight. The same old guy dragging the meal cart. I ate the breakfast and drank the coffee. As I finished up the flask, the gate lock clunked and sprang the door. I pushed it open and stepped out and bumped into a guard aiming to come in.

“It’s your lucky day,” the guard said. “You’re getting out.”

“I am?” I said.

“You both are,” he said. “Reacher and Hubble, released by order of the Margrave PD. Be ready in five minutes, OK?”

I stepped back into the cell. Hubble had hauled himself up onto his elbows. He hadn’t eaten his breakfast. He looked more worried than ever.

“I’m scared,” he said.

“You’ll be OK,” I said.

“Will I?” he said. “Once I’m out of here, they can get to me.”

I shook my head.

“It would have been easier for them to get you in here,” I said. “Believe me, if they were looking to kill you, you’d be dead by now. You’re in the clear, Hubble.”

He nodded to himself and sat up. I picked up my coat and we stood together outside the cell, waiting. The guard was back within five minutes. He walked us along a corridor and through two sets of locked gates. Put us in a back elevator. Stepped in and used his key to send it down. Stepped out again as the doors began to close.

“So long,” he said. “Don’t come back.”

The elevator took us down to a lobby and then we stepped outside into a hot concrete yard. The prison door sucked shut and clicked behind us. I stood face up to the sun and breathed in the outside air. I must have looked like some guy in a corny old movie who gets released from a year in solitary.

There were two cars parked in the yard. One was a big dark sedan, an English Bentley, maybe twenty years old, but it looked brand-new. There was a blond woman in it, who I guessed was Hubble’s wife, because he was on his way over to her like she was the sweetest sight he ever saw. The other car had Officer Roscoe in it.

She got out and walked straight over to me. Looked wonderful. Out of uniform. Dressed in jeans and a soft cotton shirt. Leather jacket. Calm intelligent face. Soft dark hair. Huge eyes. I’d thought she was nice on Friday. I’d been right.

“Hello, Roscoe,” I said.

“Hello, Reacher,” she said, and smiled.

Her voice was wonderful. Her smile was great. I watched it for as long as it lasted, which was a good long time. Ahead of us, the Hubbles drove off in the Bentley, waving. I waved back and wondered how things would turn out for them. Probably I would never know, unless they got unlucky and I happened to read about it in a newspaper somewhere.

Roscoe and I got into her car. Not really hers, she explained, just a department unmarked she was using. A brand-new Chevrolet something, big, smooth and quiet. She’d kept the motor ru

“SO WHAT HAPPENED?” I SAID AFTER A MILE. “TELL ME.”

She told me a pretty straightforward story. They’d started work on my alibi late Friday evening. She and Finlay. A dark squad room. A couple of desk lights on. Pads of paper. Cups of coffee. Telephone books. The two of them cradling phones and chewing pencils. Low voices. Patient enquiries. A scene I’d been in myself a thousand times.

They’d called Tampa and Atlanta and by midnight they’d gotten hold of a passenger from my bus and the ticket clerk at the Tampa depot. Both of them remembered me. Then they got the bus driver as well. He confirmed he’d stopped at the Margrave cloverleaf to let me out, eight o’clock Friday morning. By midnight my alibi was looking rock solid, just like I’d said it would be.

Saturday morning, a long fax was in from the Pentagon about my service record. Thirteen years of my life, reduced to a few curling fax pages. It felt like somebody else’s life now, but it backed my story. Finlay had been impressed by it. Then my prints came back from the FBI database. They’d been matched by the tireless computer at two thirty in the morning. U.S. Army, printed on induction, thirteen years ago. My alibi was solid, and my background checked out.

“Finlay was satisfied,” Roscoe told me. “You are who you say you are, and midnight Thursday you were over four hundred miles away. That was nailed down. He called the medical examiner again just in case he had a new opinion on the time of death, but no, midnight was still about right.”

I shook my head. Finlay was one very cautious guy.

“What about the dead guy?” I said. “Did you run his prints again?”

She concentrated on passing a farm truck. The first vehicle we’d seen in a quarter hour. Then she looked across and nodded.

“Finlay told me you wanted me to,” she said. “But why?”

“They came back too quickly for a negative result,” I said.

“Too quickly?” she said.

“You told me there was a pyramid system, right?” I said. “The top ten, then the top hundred, then the top thousand, all the way down, right?”

She nodded again.

“So take me as an example,” I said. “I’m in the database, but I’m pretty low down the pyramid. You just said it took fourteen hours to get down to me, right?”

“Right,” she said. “I sent your prints in about twelve thirty at lunchtime and they were matched at two thirty in the morning.”

“OK,” I said. “Fourteen hours. So if it takes fourteen hours to reach nearly to the bottom of the pyramid, it’s got to take more than fourteen hours to get all the way down to the bottom. That’s logical, right?”

“Right,” she said.

“But what happened with this dead guy?” I said. “The body was found at eight o’clock, so the prints went in when? Eight thirty, earliest. But Baker was already telling me there was no match on file when they were talking to me at two thirty. I remember the time, because I was looking at the clock. That’s only six hours. If it took fourteen hours to find out that I’m in there, how could it take just six hours to say the dead guy’s not in there?”

“God,” she said. “You’re right. Baker must have screwed up. Finlay took the prints and Baker sent them. He must have screwed up the scan. You got to be careful, or it doesn’t transmit clearly. If the scan’s not clear, the database tries to decipher it, then it comes back as unreadable. Baker must have thought that meant a null result. The codes are similar. Anyway, I sent them again, first thing. We’ll know soon enough.”