I looked hard at the three of them in turn. Old Teale was staring at me with all kinds of hate showing in his leathery old face. He was shaken up. He looked like a man under terrible stress. He looked
desperate. Like he was near collapse. He looked twenty years older than the smooth old guy I’d met on Monday. Picard looked better. He had the calm of a great athlete. Like a football star or an Olympic champion on a visit to his old high school. But there was a tightening around his eyes. And he was rattling his thumb against his thigh. There was some strain there.
I stared sideways at Kliner. Looked hard at him. But there was nothing on show. He was lean and hard and dried out. He didn’t move. He was absolutely still. His face and body betrayed nothing. He was like a statue hewn from teak. But his eyes burned with a kind of cruel energy. They sneered at me out of his blank, bone-hard face.
Teale rattled open a drawer in the rosewood desk. Pulled out the cassette recorder Finlay had used on me. Handed it to Picard, behind him. Picard put his revolver down on the desk and fiddled with the stiff cords. He plugged in the power. Didn’t bother with the microphone. They weren’t going to record anything. They were going to play us something. Teale leaned forward and thumbed the intercom button on the desk. In the stillness, I heard the buzzer sound faintly outside in the squad room.
`Baker?’ Teale said. `In here, please.’
Kliner moved off the door and Baker came in. He was in his uniform. A .38 in his holster. He looked at me. Didn’t grin. He was carrying two cassettes. Teale took them from him. Selected the second one.
`A tape,’ he said. `Listen up. You’re going to find this interesting.’
He fiddled the cassette in and clicked the little door shut. Pressed play. The motor whirred and
the speaker hissed. Underneath the hiss, I could hear a boomy acoustic. Then we heard Roscoe’s voice. It was loud with panic. It filled the silent office.
`Reacher?’ Roscoe’s voice said. `This is a message for you, OK? The message is you better do what they tell you, or I’m in trouble. The message is if you’re in any doubt about what kind of trouble, you should go back down to the morgue and pull Mrs Morrison’s autopsy report. That’s the kind of trouble I’m going to be in. So help me out, OK? End of message, Reacher.’
Her voice tailed off into the boomy hiss. I heard a faint gasp of pain as if she’d been roughly dragged away from the microphone. Then Teale snapped the recorder off. I stared at him. My temperature had dropped away to nothing. I didn’t feel human any more.
Picard and Baker were looking at me. Beaming in satisfaction. Like they were holding the winning hole card. Teale clicked the little door open and took the tape out. Laid it on one side on the desk. Held up the other tape for me to see and then put it in the machine. Closed the little door again and pressed play.
`Another one,’ he said. `Listen up.’
We heard the same hiss. The same boomy acoustic. Then we heard Charlie Hubble’s voice. She sounded hysterical. Like she had on Monday morning, standing out on her bright gravel driveway.
`Hub?’ Charlie’s voice said. `This is Charlie. I’ve got the children with me. I’m not at home, you understand what that means? I’ve got to give you a message. If you don’t come back, something will happen to the children. They tell me you know
what that something is. It’s the same thing they said would happen to you and me, but it’ll be the children instead. So you have to come back straight away, OK?’
The voice ended on a rising note of panic and then died away in the boomy hiss. Teale stabbed the stop button. Took the tape out and placed it carefully on the edge of the desk. Right in front of me. Then Kliner walked around into my field of vision and spoke.