Jack Reacher 01 - Killing Floor

parked her car at her door and rang her bell. The children dashed around from somewhere as Charlie opened up and let me in. She was looking pretty tired and strained. The children looked happy enough. They hadn’t picked up on their mother’s worries. She chased them off and I followed her back to the kitchen. It was a big, modern room. I got her to make me some coffee. I could see she was anxious to talk, but she was having trouble getting started. I watched her fiddling with the filter machine.
    “Don’t you have a maid?” I asked her.
    She shook her head.
    “I don’t want one,” she said. “I like to do things myself.”
    “It’s a big house,” I said.
    “I like to keep busy, I guess,” she said.
    Then we were silent. Charlie switched on the coffee machine and it started with a faint hiss. I sat at a table in a window nook. It overlooked an acre of velvet lawn. She came and sat opposite me. Folded her hands in front of her.
    “I heard about the Morrisons,” she said at last. “Is my husband involved in all of this?”
    I tried to think exactly what I could say to her. She waited for an answer. The coffee machine burbled away in the big silent kitchen.
    “Yes, Charlie,” I said. “I’m afraid he was. But he didn’t want to be involved, OK? Some kind of blackmail was going on.”
    She took it well. She must have figured it out for herself, anyway. Must have run every possible speculation through her head. This explanation was the one which fit. That was why she didn’t look surprised or outraged. She just nodded. Then she relaxed. She looked like it had done her good to hear someone else say it. Now it was out in the open. It was acknowledged. It could be dealt with.
    “I’m afraid that makes sense,” she said.
    She got up to pour the coffee. Kept talking as she went.
    “That’s the only way I can explain his behavior,” she said. “Is he in danger?”
    “Charlie, I’m afraid I have no idea where he is,” I said.
    She handed me a mug of coffee. Sat down again on the kitchen counter.
    “Is he in danger?” she asked again.
    I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t get any words out. She moved off the counter and came to sit opposite me again at the table in the window. She cradled her cup in front of her. She was a fine-looking woman. Blond and pretty. Perfect teeth, good bones, slim, athletic. A lot of spirit. I had seen her as a plantation type. What they call a belle. I had said to myself that a hundred and fifty years ago she would have been a slave owner. I began to change that opinion. I felt a crackle of toughness coming from her. She enjoyed being rich and idle, sure. Beauty parlors and lunch with the girls in Atlanta. The Bentley and the gold cards. The big kitchen which cost more than I ever made in a year. But if it came to it, here was a woman who might get down in the dirt and fight. Maybe a hundred and fifty years ago she would have been on a wagon train heading west. She had enough spirit. She looked hard at me across the table.
    “I panicked this morning,” she said. “That’s not really like me at all. I must have given you a very bad impression, I’m afraid. After you left, I calmed down and thought things out. I came to the same conclusion you’ve just described. Hub’s blundered into something and he’s got all tangled up in it. So what am I going to do about it? Well, I’m going to stop panicking and start thinking. I’ve been a mess since Friday and I’m ashamed of it. That’s not the real me at all. So I did something, and I hope you’ll forgive me for it?”
    “Go on,” I said.
    “I called Dwight Stevenson,” she said. “He had mentioned he had seen a fax from the Pentagon about your service as a military policeman. I asked him to find it and read it to me. I thought it was an excellent record.”
    She smiled at me. Hitched her chair in closer.
    “So what I want to do is to hire you,” she said. “I want to hire you in a private capacity to solve my husband’s problem. Would you consider doing that for me?”
    “No,” I said. “I can’t do that, Charlie.”
    “Can’t or won’t?” she said.
    “There would be a sort of a conflict of interest,” I said. “It might mean I couldn’t do a proper job for you.”
    “A conflict?” she said. “In what way?”
    I paused for a long moment. Tried to figure out how to explain it.
    “Your husband felt bad, OK?” I said. “He got hold of some kind of an investigator, a government guy, and they