Jack Reacher 01 - Killing Floor

creaking inside. Someone was coming. The door opened. A woman stood there. Maybe thirty, but she looked older. Short, nervous, tired. Blond from a bottle. She looked out at us.
    “We’re police officers, ma’am,” Roscoe said. “We’re looking for the Sherman Stoller residence.”
    There was silence for a moment.
    “Well, you found it, I guess,” the woman said.
    “May we come in?” Roscoe asked. Gently.
    Again there was silence. No movement. Then the blond woman turned and walked back down the hallway. Roscoe and I looked at each other. Roscoe followed the woman. I followed Roscoe. I shut the door behind us.
    The woman led us into a living room. A decent-sized space. Expensive furniture and rugs. A big TV. No stereo, no books. It all looked a bit halfhearted. Like somebody had spent twenty minutes with a catalog and ten thousand dollars. One of these, one of those, two of that. All delivered one morning and just kind of dumped in there.
    “Are you Mrs. Stoller?” Roscoe asked the woman. Still gentle.
    “More or less,” the woman said. “Not exactly Mrs., but as near as makes no difference anyhow.”
    “Is your name Judy?” I asked her.
    She nodded. Kept on nodding for a while. Thinking.
    “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Judy said.
    I didn’t answer. This was the part I wasn’t good at. This was Roscoe’s part. She didn’t say anything, either.
    “He’s dead, right?” Judy said again, louder.
    “Yes, he is,” Roscoe said. “I’m very sorry.”
    Judy nodded to herself and looked around the hideous room. Nobody spoke. We just stood there. Judy sat down. She waved us to sit as well. We sat, in separate chairs. We were all sitting in a neat triangle.
    “We need to ask you some questions,” Roscoe said. She was sitting forward, leaning toward the blond woman. “May we do that?”
    Judy nodded. Looked pretty blank.
    “How long did you know Sherman?” Roscoe asked.
    “About four years, I guess,” Judy said. “Met him in Florida, where I lived. Came up here to be with him four years ago. Lived up here ever since.”
    “What was Sherman’s job?” Roscoe asked.
    Judy shrugged miserably.
    “He was a truck driver,” she said. “He got some kind of a big driving contract up here. Supposed to be long-term, you know? So we bought a little place. His folks moved in too. Lived with us for a while. Then we moved out here. Left his folks in the old house. He made good money for three years. Busy all the time. Then it stopped, a year ago. He hardly worked at all since. Just an odd day, now and then.”
    “You own both the houses?” Roscoe said.
    “I don’t own a damn thing,” Judy said. “Sherman owned the houses. Yes, both of them.”
    “So he was doing well for the first three years?” Roscoe asked her.
    Judy gave her a look.
    “Doing well?” she said. “Grow up, for God’s sake. He was a thief. He was ripping somebody off.”
    “You sure?” I said.
    Judy swung her gaze my way. Like an artillery piece traversing.
    “It don’t need much brains to figure it out,” she said. “In three years he paid cash for two houses, two lots of furniture, cars, God knows what. And this place wasn’t cheap, either. We got lawyers and doctors and all sorts living here. And he had enough saved so he didn’t have to work at all since last September. If he did all that on the level, then I’m the First Lady, right?”
    She was giving us a defiant stare. She’d known about it all along. She’d known what would happen when he was found out. She was challenging us to deny her the right to blame him.
    “Who was his big contract with?” Roscoe asked her.
    “Some outfit called Island Air-conditioning,” she said. “He spent three years hauling air conditioners. Taking them down to Florida. Maybe they went on to the islands, I don’t know. He used to steal them. There’s two old boxes in the garage right now. Want to see?”
    She didn’t wait for a reply. Just jumped up and stalked out. We followed. We all went down some back stairs and through a basement door. Into a garage. It was empty except for a couple of old cartons dumped against a wall. Cardboard cartons, could have been a year or two old. Marked with a manufacturer’s logo. Island Air-conditioning, Inc. This End Up. The sealing tape was torn and hanging off. Each box had a long serial number written on by hand. Each box must have held a single unit. The sort you jam in your window frame, makes a hell of a noise. Judy glared at the