LEE CHILD. KILLING FLOOR

`You’re happy with my alibi, right?’ I said.

He saw where I was going. Like we were colleagues on a knotty case. He flashed me a brief grin.

`It held up,’ he said. `You were in Tampa when: this was going down.’

`OK,’ I said. `And is Chief Morrison comfortable with that?’

`He doesn’t know about it,’ Finlay said. `He’s not answering his phone.’

`I don’t want any more convenient mistakes,’ I said. `The fat moron said he saw me up there. I want him to know that won’t fly any more.’

Finlay nodded. Picked up the phone on the desk and dialled a number. I heard the faint purr of the ring tone from the earpiece. It rang for a long time and cut off when Finlay put the phone back down.

`Not at home,’ he said. `Sunday, right?’

Then he pulled the phone book out of a drawer. Opened it to H. Looked up Hubble’s number on Beckman Drive. Dialled it and got the same result. A lot of ring tone and nobody home. Then he tried the mobile number. An electronic voice started to tell him the phone was switched off. He hung up before it finished.

`I’m going to bring Hubble in, when I find him,’ Finlay said. `He knows stuff he should be telling us. Until then, not a lot I can do, right?’

I shrugged. He was right. It was a pretty cold trail. The only spark that Finlay knew about was the panic Hubble had shown on Friday.

`What are you going to do, Reacher?’ he asked me.

`I’m going to think about that,’ I said.

Finlay looked straight at me. Not unfriendly, but very serious, like he was trying to communicate an order and an appeal with a single stern eye-to-eye gaze.

`Let me deal with this, OK?’ he said. `You’re going to feel pretty bad, and you’re going to want to see justice done, but I don’t want any independent action going on here, OK? This is police

business. You’re a civilian. Let me deal with it, OK?’

I shrugged and nodded. Stood up and looked at them both.

`I’m going for a walk,’ I said.

I left the two of them there and strolled through the squad room. Pushed out through the glass doors into the hot afternoon. Wandered through the parking lot and crossed the wide lawn in front, over as far as the bronze statue. It was another tribute to Caspar Teale, whoever the hell he had been. Same guy as on the village green on the southern edge of town. I leaned up against his warm metal flank and thought.

The United States is a giant country. Millions of square miles. Best part of three hundred million people. I hadn’t seen Joe for seven years, and he hadn’t seen me, but we’d ended up in exactly the same tiny spot, eight hours apart. I’d walked within fifty yards of where his body had been lying. That was one hell of a big coincidence. It was almost unbelievable. So Finlay was doing me a big favour by treating it like a coincidence. He should be trying to tear my alibi apart. Maybe he already was. Maybe he was already on the phone to Tampa, checking again.

But he wouldn’t find anything, because it was a coincidence. No point going over and over it. I was only in Margrave because of a crazy last-minute whim. If I’d taken a minute longer looking at the guy’s map, the bus would have been past the cloverleaf and I’d have forgotten all about Margrave. I’d have gone on up to Atlanta and never known anything about Joe. It might have taken another seven years before the news caught

up with me. So there was no point getting all stirred up about the coincidence. The only thing I had to do was to decide what the hell I was going to do about it.

I was about four years old before I caught on to the loyalty thing. I suddenly figured I was supposed to watch out for Joe the way he was watching out for me. After a while, it became second nature, like an automatic thing. It was always in my head to scout around and check he was OK. Plenty of times I would run out into some new schoolyard and see a bunch of kids trying it on with the tall skinny newcomer. I’d trot over there and haul them off and bust a few heads. Then I’d go back to my own buddies and play ball or whatever we were doing. Duty done, like a routine. It was a routine which lasted twelve years, from when I was four right up to the time Joe finally left home. Twelve years of that routine must have left faint tracks in my mind, because for ever afterwards I always carried a faint echo of the question: where’s Joe? Once he was grown up and away, it didn’t much matter where he was. But I was always aware of the faint echo of that old routine. Deep down, I was always aware I was supposed to stand up for him, if I was needed.

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