Jack Reacher 01 - Killing Floor

precautions escorting an innocent passerby to the bathroom?
    And he had brought Hubble in for questioning. I’d noticed his body language. He was all twisted up with conflict. I had figured he was feeling awkward because Hubble was Stevenson’s buddy and his relative by marriage. But it wasn’t that. He was all twisted up because he was caught in a trap. He knew bringing Hubble in was a disaster. But he couldn’t disobey Finlay without alerting him. He was trapped. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.
    And there had been a deliberate attempt to conceal Joe’s identity. Baker had deliberately screwed up the prints thing with the computer so that Joe would remain unidentified. He knew Joe was a government investigator. He knew Joe’s prints would be in the Washington database. So he tried to make damn sure they didn’t get matched. But he had blown his cover by announcing the null result far too early. It was inexperience. He’d always left the technical work to Roscoe. So he didn’t know the system. But I hadn’t put two and two together. I had been too overwhelmed when the second attempt with the prints had brought back my brother’s name.
    Since then, he had been poking and prying, hovering around on the edge of our hidden investigation. He had wanted in and he had been a willing helper. Finlay had used him on lookout duty. And all the time he was running to Teale with the snippets he was getting from us.
    Finlay was blasting north at a hell of a speed. He flung the Chevy around the cloverleaf and mashed the pedal. The big car hurtled forward up the highway.
    “Could we try the Coast Guard?” he said. “Get them to stand by Sunday for when they start shipping out? Some kind of an extra patrol?”
    “You’re joking,” I said. “The political flak the president’s taken over that, he’s not going to reverse himself the very first day, just because you ask him to.”
    “So what do we do?” he said.
    “Call Princeton back,” I told him. “Get hold of that research assistant again. He may be able to piece together what Bartholomew figured out last night. Hole up somewhere safe and get busy.”
    He laughed.
    “Where the hell’s safe now?” he said.
    I told him to use the Alabama motel we’d used Monday. It was in the middle of nowhere and it was as safe as he needed to get. I told him I’d find him there when I got back. Asked him to bring the Bentley to the airport and to leave the key and the parking claim at the arrivals information desk. He repeated all the arrangements back to me to confirm he was solid. He was doing more than ninety miles an hour, but he was turning his head to look at me every time he spoke.
    “Watch the road, Finlay,” I said. “No good to anybody if you kill us in a damn car.”
    He grinned and faced forward. Jammed his foot down harder. The big police Chevy eased up over a hundred. Then he turned again and looked straight into my eyes for about three hundred yards.
    “Coward,” he said.

25
    NO EASY WAY TO GET THROUGH THE AIRPORT SECURITY hoops with a sap and a knife and a big metal gun, so I left my camouflage jacket in Finlay’s car and told him to transfer it to the Bentley. He ducked into departures with me and put the best part of seven hundred bucks on his credit card for my round trip ticket on Delta to New York. Then he took off to find the Alabama motel and I went through to the gate for the plane to La Guardia.
    I was airborne for a shade over two hours and in a cab for thirty-five minutes. Arrived in Manhattan just after four-thirty. I’d been there in May and it looked pretty much the same in September. The summer heat was over and the city was back to work. The cab took me over the Triborough Bridge and headed west on 116th. Slid around Morningside Park and dropped me at Columbia University’s main entrance. I went in and found my way to the campus security office. Knocked on the glass.
    A campus policeman checked a clipboard and let me in. Led me through to a room in back and pointed to Professor Kelvin Kelstein. I saw a very old guy, tiny, wizened with age, sporting a huge shock of white hair. He looked exactly like that cleaner I’d seen on the third floor at Warburton, except he was white.
    “The two Hispanic guys been back?” I asked the college cop.
    He shook his head.
    “Haven’t seen them,” he said. “The old guy’s office told them that the lunch date was canceled. Maybe they went away.”
    “I hope so,” I said.