Killing Floor

We took a good look at them. Peered at them, felt them, smelled them, rubbed them between our fingers. Finlay opened up his billfold and pulled out a hundred of his own. We compared the three notes. Passed them back and forth. Couldn’t see any difference at all.

“If these are fakes, they’re damn good,” Finlay said. “But what you said makes sense. Probably the whole of the Kliner Foundation is funded with fakes. Millions every year.”

He put his own hundred back in his billfold. Slid the fakes into his pocket.

“I’m going back to the station house,” he said. “You two come in tomorrow, about noon. Teale will be gone for lunch. We’ll take it from there.”

ROSCOE AND I DROVE FIFTY MILES SOUTH, TO MACON. I wanted to keep on the move. It’s a basic rule for safety. Keep moving around. We chose an anonymous motel on the southeastern fringe. As far from Margrave as you can get in Macon, with the city sprawl between us and our enemies. Old Mayor Teale had said a motel in Macon would suit me. Tonight, he was right.

We showered in cold water and fell into bed. Fell into a restless sleep. The room was warm. We tossed around fitfully most of the night. Gave it up and got up again with the dawn. Stood there yawning in the half light. Thursday morning. Felt like we hadn’t slept at all. We groped around and got dressed in the dark. Roscoe put her uniform on. I put my old things on. I figured I’d need to buy some new stuff soon. I’d do it with Kliner’s forgeries.

“What are we going to do?” Roscoe said.

I didn’t answer. I was thinking about something else.

“Reacher?” she said. “What are we going to do about all this?”

“What did Gray do about it?” I said.

“He hung himself,” she said.

I thought some more.

“Did he?” I asked her.

There was a silence.

“Oh God,” Roscoe said. “You think there’s some doubt about that?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Think about it. Suppose he confronted one of them? Suppose he was found poking around somewhere he shouldn’t have been?”

“You think they killed him?” she asked. There was panic in her voice.

“Maybe,” I said again. “I think they killed Joe and Stoller and the Morrisons and Hubble and Molly Beth Gordon. I think they tried to kill you and me. If somebody is a threat, they kill him. That’s how Kliner operates.”

Roscoe was quiet for a while. Thinking about her old colleague. Gray, the dour and patient detective. Twenty-five years of meticulous work. A guy like that was a threat. A guy who took thirty-two patient days to cross-check a suspicion was a threat. Roscoe looked up and nodded.

“He must have made a wrong move,” she said.

I nodded gently at her.

“They lynched him,” I said. “Made it look like suicide.”

“I can’t believe it,” she said.

“Was there an autopsy?” I asked her.

“Guess so,” she said.

“Then we’ll check it out,” I said. “We’ll have to speak to that doctor again. Down in Yellow Springs.”

“But he’d have said, right?” she asked me. “If he’d had doubts, wouldn’t he have raised them at the time?”

“He’d have raised them with Morrison,” I said. “Morrison would have ignored them. Because his people had caused them in the first place. We’ll have to check it out for ourselves.”

Roscoe shuddered.

“I was at his funeral,” she said. “We were all there. Chief Morrison made a speech on the lawn outside the church. So did Mayor Teale. They said he was a fine officer. They said he was Margrave’s finest. But they killed him.”

She said it with a lot of feeling. She’d liked Margrave. Her family had toiled there for generations. She was rooted. She’d liked her job. Enjoyed the sense of contribution. But the community she’d served was rotten. It was dirty and corrupted. It wasn’t a community. It was a swamp, wallowing in dirty money and blood. I sat and watched her world crumble.

WE DROVE NORTH ON THE ROAD BETWEEN MACON AND MARGRAVE. Halfway home Roscoe hung a right and we headed for Yellow Springs down a back road. Over toward the hospital. I was hungry. We hadn’t eaten breakfast. Not the best state for revisiting the morgue. We swung into the hospital lot. Took the speed bumps slowly and nosed around to the back. Parked up a little way from the big metal roller door.

We got out of the car. Stretched our legs on a roundabout route to the office door. The sun was warming the day up. It would have been pleasant to stay outside. But we ducked in and went looking for the doctor. We found him in his shabby office. He was at his chipped desk. Still looking tired. Still in a white coat. He looked up and nodded us in.

“Morning, folks,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

We sat down on the same stools as Tuesday. I stayed away from the fax machine. I let Roscoe do the talking. Better that way. I had no official standing.

“February this year,” she said. “My chief of detectives up at the Margrave PD killed himself. Do you remember?”

“Was that some guy called Gray?” the doctor said.

Roscoe nodded and the doctor got up and walked around to a file cabinet. Pulled open a drawer. It was tight and made a screeching sound. The doctor ran his fingers backward over the files.

“February,” he said. “Gray.”

He pulled a file and carried it back to his desk. Dropped it on his blotter. Sat back down heavily and opened it up. It was a thin file. Not much in it.

“Gray,” he said again. “Yes, I remember this guy. Hung himself, right? First time we had a Margrave case in thirty years. I was called up to his house. In the garage, wasn’t it? From a rafter?”

“That’s right,” Roscoe said. She went quiet.

“So how can I help you?” the doctor said.

“Anything wrong with it?” she asked.

The doctor looked at the file. Turned a page.

“Guy hangs himself, there’s always something wrong with it,” he said.

“Anything specially wrong with it?” I said.

The doctor swung his tired gaze over from Roscoe to me.

“Suspicious?” he said.

He was nearly smiling the same little smile he’d used on Tuesday.

“Was there anything suspicious about it?” I asked him.

He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “Suicide by hanging. Open and shut. He was on a kitchen stool in his garage. Made himself a noose, jumped off the stool. Everything was consistent. We got the background story from the local people up there. I couldn’t see a problem.”

“What was the background story?” Roscoe asked him.

He swung his gaze back to her. Glanced through the file.

“He was depressed,” he said. “Had been for a while. The night it happened he was out drinking with his chief, who was the Morrison guy we just had in here, and the town mayor up there, some guy called Teale. The three of them were drowning their sorrows over some case Gray had screwed up on. He got falling down drunk and they had to help him home. They got him in to his house and left him there. He must have felt bad. He made it to the garage and hung himself.”

“That was the story?” Roscoe said.

“Morrison signed a statement,” the doctor said. “He was real upset. Felt he should have done more, you know, stayed with him or something.”

“Did it sound right to you?” she asked him.

“I didn’t know Gray at all,” he said. “This facility deals with a dozen police departments. I’d never seen anybody from Margrave before then. Quiet sort of a place, right? At least, it used to be. But what happened with this guy is consistent with what usually happens. Drinking sets people off.”

“Any physical evidence?” I asked him.

The doctor looked back in the file. Looked over at me.

“Corpse stank of whiskey,” he said. “Some fresh bruising on the upper and lower arms. Consistent with him being walked home by two men while inebriated. I couldn’t see a problem.”

“Did you do a postmortem?” Roscoe asked him.