Gone Tomorrow

I didn’t find out exactly who they were. Not then. They wouldn’t tell me. At five in the morning three men in suits came in and woke me up. They were polite and businesslike. Their suits were mid-priced and clean and pressed. Their shoes were polished. Their eyes were bright. Their haircuts were fresh and short. Their faces were pink and ruddy. Their bodies were stocky but toned. They looked like they could run half-marathons without much trouble, but without much enjoyment, either. My first impression was recent ex-military. Gung-ho staff officers, head-hunted into some limestone building inside the Beltway. True believers, doing important work. I asked to see ID and badges and credentials, but they quoted the Patriot Act at me and said they weren’t obliged to identify themselves. Probably true, and they certainly enjoyed saying so. I considered clamming up in retaliation, but they saw me considering, and quoted some more of the Act at me, which left me in no doubt at all that a world of trouble lay at the end of that particular road. I am afraid of very little, but hassle with today’s security apparatus is always best avoided. Franz Kafka and George Orwell would have given me the same advice. So I shrugged and told them to go ahead and ask their questions.

They started out by saying that they were aware of my military service and very respectful of it, which was either a bullshit boilerplate platitude, or meant that they had been recruited out of the MPs themselves. Nobody respects an MP except another MP. Then they said that they would be observing me very closely and would know whether I was telling the truth or lying. Which was total bullshit, because only the best of us can do that, and these guys weren’t the best of us, otherwise they would have been in very senior positions, meaning that right then they would have been home and asleep in a Virginia suburb, rather than running up and down 1- 95 in the middle of the night.

But I didn’t have anything to hide, so I told them again to go ahead.

They had three areas of concern. The first: Did I know the woman who had killed herself on the train? Had I ever seen her before?

I said, ‘No.’ Short and sweet, quiet but firm.

They didn’t follow up with supplementaries. Which told me roughly who they were and exactly what they were doing. They were somebody’s B team, sent north to dead-end an open investigation. They were walling it off, burying it, drawing a line under something somebody had been only half suspicious about to begin with. They wanted a negative answer to every question, so that the file could be closed and the matter put to bed. They wanted a positive absence of loose ends, and they didn’t want to draw attention to the issue by making it a big drama. They wanted to get back on the road with the whole thing forgotten.

The second question was: Did I know a woman called Lila Hoth?

I said, ‘No,’ because I didn’t. Not then.

The third question was more of a sustained dialogue. The lead agent opened it. The main man. He was a little older and a little smaller than the other two. Maybe a little smarter, too. He said, ‘You approached the woman on the train.’

I didn’t reply. I was there to answer questions, not to comment on statements.

The guy asked, ‘How close did you get?’

‘Six feet,’ I said. ‘Give or take.’

‘Close enough to touch her?’

‘No.’

‘If you had extended your arm, and she had extended hers, could you have touched hands?’

‘Maybe,’ I said.

‘Is that a yes or a no?’

‘It’s a maybe. I know how long my arms are. I don’t know how long hers were.’

‘Did she pass anything to you?’

‘No.’

‘Did you accept anything from her?’

‘Did you take anything from her after she was dead?

‘No.’

‘Did anyone else?’

‘Not that I saw.’

‘Did you see anything fall from her hand, or her bag, or her clothing?’

‘No.’

‘Did she tell you anything?’

‘Nothing of substance.’

‘Did she speak to anyone else?’

‘No.’

The guy asked, ‘Would you mind turning out your pockets?’

I shrugged. I had nothing to hide. I went through each pocket in turn and dumped the contents on the battered table. A folded wad of cash money and a few coins. My old passport. My ATM card. My clip-together toothbrush. The Metrocard that had gotten mc into the subway in the first place. And Theresa Lee’s business card.

The guy stirred through my stuff with a single extended finger and nodded to one of his underlings, who stepped up close to pat me down. He did a semi-expert job and found nothing more and shook his head.

The main guy said, ‘Thank you, Mr Reacher.’