A Hard Man To Forget Page 4

  The name had been on the envelope. Why? Who had written it? Clearly not this woman. She was scared of her own shadow. Plus, she claimed she’d never heard the name Jack Reacher.

  Pauling had gotten to know Reacher very well. She recognized in him an almost pathological need to fight for the little guy. The innocent being victimized by those in power abusing their position.

  Was this woman one of those people?

  Was Reacher unable to help this woman and so somehow had managed to send a message to Pauling?

  Too many questions.

  No answers whatsoever.

  “According to your cell phone number, you live in the Albuquerque area?” Pauling asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Is there a safe place we can meet? A public place?”

  “Probably. I mean, yes. There’s my office. Where I work.”

  Pauling ran through the time it would take her to get to the airport, and her best guess at flights out of New York.

  “Okay, I tell you what,” Pauling said. She hesitated for just a moment, a little surprised at herself for reaching the decision she was about to make. “I’m going to get on a plane, and come out and see if I can help you. If I can, great. If not, no harm done.”

  “Umm,” the woman said.

  “I’ll try to get there late tonight if possible. If not, first thing in the morning.”

  “It’s just that–”

  “Just what?”

  Another long pause and then the woman whispered.

  “I think they’re coming for me, too.”

  14

  The prisoner with the low IQ looked down at the mess on the floor. Blood. But with something mixed in. He kept looking at it, but nothing registered. It felt oddly familiar yet totally foreign.

  And then he realized what it was.

  His hair.

  Almost all of it. Most of it had come off in small chunks, literally melting from his head like an ice dam in a river finally breaking up in the spring.

  Along with the hair there were several chunks of skin.

  He screamed, or at least he thought he did, but he couldn’t hear anything. Great waves of red and yellow lights flashed in his eyes. His skin was on fire. Pressure from within his skull made him feel like his eyes were going to burst from their sockets.

  He’d known pain before.

  But nothing like this.

  He’d inflicted pain on others. Some of their faces flashed across his consciousness. There was the first woman he’d ever attacked. A former friend he’d nearly beaten to death. That, too, had been an attack he’d started. A cowardly blow from behind with a hammer.

  The screams in his mind echoed the screams that struggled to escape his burned throat and mouth.

  He couldn’t tell which agony was real and which were memories.

  With a lunge, his body surged against his restraints, but to no avail.

  He was trapped.

  And he was dying.

  Like every other time in his life when he had desperately needed someone, anyone, there had been no one.

  It was up to him

  If he couldn’t help himself, then there was no help at all.

  Another light flashed before his eyes, but this one was different. It didn’t register with him as one associated with pain.

  He wondered if it was God.

  He’d been to church as a kid, before all of the troubles began, and he wondered if he’d died and was going to see Jesus. Or heaven. Or maybe it was hell. Maybe he had died and this was hell.

  There had been no doubt in his mind that he would not be going to heaven. Then again he had stopped believing in God a long time ago. So it didn’t really matter.

  All he knew was that this kind of pain was pure hell.

  The real kind.

  More pain, this time in his arm and his neck. Sharp, stabbing pain.

  He recognized the sensation, even his full-throated agony.

  Needles.

  They were sticking needles into him.

  15

  Pauling flew first class, one of the perks of owning her own business. There was no one in accounting to question her spending.

  The buck stopped with her.

  When she had been a young FBI agent, on the government dime, accommodations had usually been less than premium. Despite public perception of government agencies being extravagant spenders - $800 toilet seats, anyone? – they had always been conscious of the fact they were funded by taxpayer dollars. So usually they were on the cheapest flights, in the worst hotel rooms, with the shoddiest rental cars. And with an extremely low per diem for meals, restaurants were usually fast and cheap.

  As a private investigator, a successful one at that, Pauling had become extremely well-versed in the business aspect of expense reporting and tax deductions.

  Now, she insisted on first-class flights, and first tier hotels. Rental cars she didn’t care about. And she still usually opted for quick, healthy meals.

  After the plane took off and they leveled at altitude, Pauling took out her laptop, connected to her paid in-flight Wi-Fi account, and launched her browser.

  After a lot of teeth-pulling and crying, she had been able to get the woman’s name in Albuquerque.

  It was Cassady Simmons.

  Cassady with an ‘a’ the woman had told her.

  Now, Pauling began to search for what she could find out about the mystery woman who had some connection to Reacher, and appeared to be in a great deal of trouble.

  Or, more accurately, in a great deal of fear.

  Whether or not that anxiety had any basis in reality, Pauling was about to find out.

  There was scant information on Cassady Simmons. The only social media account she had was a Facebook profile marked private. No way to hack around that. Pauling was able to look up tax records and parse through them, until she came to a Cassady Simmons who was married to a Rick Simmons. Their ages were 29 and 31, respectively. They had purchased a house two years ago. There was no employment information on paper, but Cassady had given Pauling her work address. It was for a supply company, Pauling discovered backtracking from the address, and it looked like a fairly mundane operation.

  She continued to search, but could find little else.

  Pauling closed her laptop and thought about the potential of what she might find. The flight went quickly, and she got up once to stretch her legs, use the restroom, and work out the kinks in her neck from sitting so long. Business travel was never the glamorous enterprise so often portrayed in the media or in films.

  She got back to her seat and her thoughts inevitably turned to Jack Reacher. The thought had occurred to her that she might see him in Albuquerque. Maybe he had taken on Cassady Simmons’ case and needed her help. She caught herself again. Jack Reacher was a one-man army who never called for backup.

  And Pauling was too realistic to think that he simply wanted to see her again.

  No, there was something else going on in Albuquerque.

  Cassady Simmons either was in trouble, or for some reason deeply believed she was in some sort of danger.

  Pauling was slightly torn. On the one hand, she hoped this woman wasn’t in any kind of trouble. On the other hand, that would mean she would be wasting the better part of two days flying back and forth across the country.

  The plane eventually reached its destination and after a smooth landing, Pauling hit the terminal, heading fast for the rental car shuttle.

  It was time to meet Cassady Simmons.

  16

  “Who do we have out there?” Rollins asked the group.

  They were still sitting around the long, black table. They’d been at it for hours and fatigue had set in. Irritability. Answers had become more clipped. Impatient.

  “The SAC is Ray Ostertag,” said Petrie, the small man with the hooked nose. “He’s a good man. But obviously the initial call came to us because of the potential situation.”

  “Ostertag’s qualifications,” Rollins
stated.

  “He’s a good man,” Petrie continued. His voice had become more enthusiastic, reflecting his satisfaction in being able to supply an answer. Even if it was to something fairly mundane like the qualifications of the people underneath him. “Ostertag spent a lot of time in Chicago working gangs. Also a fair amount of intelligence background.”

  “Good, he may need it,” Rollins said.

  He shifted his attention from Petrie and looked around the room.

  His gaze settled briefly on the woman who’d made the comment about the taillights. He moved on from her and once again landed on Petrie. The others around the table again shifted slightly in their chairs, waiting for what came next.

  Just as Petrie was about to offer a suggestion, Rollins spoke, cutting him off.

  “Agent Hess,” Rollins said. The woman seated last at the table lifted her gaze.

  “Sir,” she answered.

  “Get out there. Assess the situation. Report back to us within twenty-four hours.”

  Without waiting for a reply, he turned to Petrie.

  “You need to have a full threat assessment on my desk by noon tomorrow. I want every possibility researched with specific counter measures and damage estimates. This has the potential to get out of control fast. We can’t let that happen.”

  He left the room.

  Petrie looked at Hess. “We’ll give Ostertag a heads up. The minute you’re there and have done an initial download, call me. Tell me what they’ve got, what they can and can’t do, and what you need.”

  Hess closed her laptop and stood.

  “Will do,” she said.

  17

  Pauling’s rental car was a white Impala. A big, roomy four-door. Some habits died hard. She’d spent so many hours riding in and driving the Lincoln Town Cars that she was simply used to the size.

  Now, she let it cruise down the freeway toward Albuquerque. Cassady Simmons had told her that she worked for a company called Industrial Supply & Wholesale. According to Google, it was on the south side of the city, on the other side of the Rio Grande.

  Pauling always marveled at cities of this size. About a million people if you included the suburbs.

  Cities of this size were always nice. Very contained. Being a frequent traveler, she always enjoyed the smaller airports which tended to be cleaner and much faster to get through.

  Albuquerque also enjoyed a picturesque setting. The mountains in the background, shouldering shadows down to the banks of the big river. It was easy to see why someone had stopped here and decided to stay.

  Pauling recognized that she liked the feel of a smaller city, but wasn’t fooling herself. She was a big fan of New York. It was her home.

  The allure of going somewhere smaller, cheaper, and more accessible was understandable. Pauling had no real hometown to speak of. Her father had been in the military and they’d traveled far and wide. It was probably the military life that had nudged her toward the Bureau, a quasi-military operation. And maybe it explained why she’d had such a powerful attraction to Jack Reacher.

  It took Pauling less than twenty minutes to reach Industrial Supply & Wholesale’s office. It was a brick building, cream-colored, that looked like it was at least fifty years old. Probably part warehouse with a section that had been converted into offices.

  The area in general was a warehouse district that appeared to be at the beginning of some gentrification attempts. Sandwiched in around the warehouses were converted factory buildings that now housed condos. On one corner, she saw a brewpub and an organic coffee shop. Maybe the gentrification was further along than she’d first reckoned.

  Pauling found a parking spot a block from the office building and eased the Impala into its space. She left the car running with the air conditioning on. It was hot. It was time to get ready to meet Cassady Simmons.

  Pauling got out of the car, went to the trunk, and opened her lone suitcase. She had supplied all of the necessary permits to check her handgun. Now, she retrieved the case and brought it back into the car in the front seat, opened it, and removed her gun. She loaded it, cocked and locked it, and slipped it into a holster on her left hip.

  Next, she retrieved a small notebook and pen from her briefcase and looked at her phone. She had added Cassady as a contact and sent her a text. They had agreed to meet on Cassady’s lunch hour. Apparently there was a park nearby with a picnic table where they could chat.

  Pauling’s phone buzzed and she saw the response.

  Coming now.

  She got out of the car, locked it, and headed toward the entrance of the supply company. She was near the front door when it opened and a fresh-faced young woman with light brown hair, blue eyes and a mask of intense stress stepped out.

  Pauling immediately knew it was Cassady.

  The woman turned and barely glanced at Pauling as she hurried down the sidewalk, her shoulders hunched forward like she was expecting a raincloud to open up and dump a torrential downpour at any minute.

  But the sky was blue.

  Not a cloud to be seen.

  Pauling turned as well and walked on the opposite side of the street until Cassady turned onto a side street and eventually arrived at the small park she’d mentioned. There was a stand of trees isolating the park from the busy nearby road. A small play structure. A walking path. A family of squirrels scampering around the base of a tree.

  The need for subterfuge seemed a little overboard to Pauling, but the fear and anxiety on the woman’s face was very real.

  Pauling watched Cassady Simmons choose a picnic table on the far side of the park, where she could sit and see the entrance. A little light blue lunch bag was in the woman’s hand and she set it on the picnic table.

  Good place for a weapon, Pauling thought as she carefully approached.

  She slid onto the bench seat across from Cassady.

  “Cassady,” Pauling said. More of a statement than a question.

  The woman closed her eyes. Nodded.

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” Pauling said.

  Cassady opened her baby blues and for the first time, the fear dissipated for just a moment.

  “I’m surprised I’ve lived long enough to meet you,” she said.

  18

  “Now that you see me face-to-face, why don’t we start at the beginning?” Pauling asked.

  She had her notebook, pen, and cell phone in front of her.

  Cassady glanced around, as if someone might be standing nearby with a hyperbolic microphone.

  “There’s no one here,” Pauling assured her. “Just you and me.”

  Cassady dipped her head as if she was about to literally plunge forward. A long, shaky, breath and then, “It’s my husband,” she said.

  “Rick.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Public records,” Pauling said. “I did a little homework.”

  “Okay, I guess,” Cassady said. “He said he thought he was being followed. He got more and more paranoid and then one day, he just didn’t come home.”

  “Come home from where?”

  “From work.”

  “Did you go to the police?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Rick told me not to.”

  Pauling knitted her brow. “He told you not to? When? Before he disappeared?”

  Cassady nodded. “He said that if he ever didn’t contact me for awhile, that I shouldn’t worry. And he said the police wouldn’t be able to help.”

  “What does he do?”

  “He’s a truck driver.”

  Pauling started writing.

  “For who?”

  “It’s called Rio Grande Trucking.”

  “Did he say who he thought was following him?”

  “No.”

  “Did anyone you know of want to hurt him? Did he have enemies?”

  “No. He’s an easy going guy,” Cassady said. “He hates trouble. It was hard to make him mad, even when we were fighting.”r />
  Pauling was tempted to ask how often they fought, but she decided to hold off on that one for now.

  “How are your finances? Any money trouble?” Pauling knew more often than not, money was the root of the crime. Or, the lack of money, more accurately.

  “Fine,” Cassady said. “We’re fairly frugal.”

  “What about drugs and alcohol? Any problems there?”

  “Rick likes to drink beer on the weekends, but that’s about it. I like white wine. Maybe a mojito when I’m getting crazy,” she said. This time, she laughed a little bit and Pauling felt a swell of compassion.

  Despite that, she had to ask the next question. “I just have to ask this, I’m sure the answer is no, but was there any infidelity on either side? I don’t care one way or the other, I just have to know if I’m going to look into this for you.”

  “I can’t pay you,” Cassady said, quickly.

  “I understand,” Pauling replied.

  “And no, no infidelity. That would be–”

  She stopped herself, but Pauling instantly intuited what she was going to say. Maybe it was the way Cassady had caught herself, or the insinuation.

  “Oh,” she said.

  Cassady looked at her. “Oh, what?”

  “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?” Pauling asked.

  Cassady burst into tears.

  19

  In the desert, nothing goes to waste. Every drop of water. Every ounce of protein. Every opportunity to obtain sustenance is utilized.

  So when the coyote smelled something in the air, its instincts immediately kicked in. She was hungry, and the smell was familiar.

  Blood.

  Where there was the smell of blood, usually, there was meat.

  It took the coyote the better part of ten minutes to triangulate the location of the scent and there, she found the first drop of blood.

  One drop led to the next.

  And the next.

  Soon, there were multiple scent markers telling the coyote a meal was most likely close at hand.