Jack Reacher 01 - Killing Floor

shuffled out, down the hall, out through the door. Across the awkward path. We held hands as we walked back to the car.
    “What?” I asked her. “What’s in the photograph?”
    She was walking fast.
    “Wait,” she said. “I’ll show you in the car.”

19
    WE GOT IN THE CHEVY AND SHE SNAPPED ON THE DOME light. Pulled the photograph out of her pocket. Leaned over and tilted the picture so the light caught the shiny surface. Checked it carefully. Handed it to me.
    “Look at the edge,” she said. “On the left.”
    The picture was of Sherman Stoller standing in front of a yellow truck. Paul Hubble was turned away, in the background. The two figures and the truck filled the whole frame apart from a wedge of blacktop at the bottom. And a thin margin of background to the left. The background slice was even more out of focus than Hubble was, but I could see the edge of a modern metal building, with silver siding. A tall tree beyond. The frame of a door. It was a big industrial door, rolled up. The frame was a dark red color. Some kind of baked-on industrial coating. Partly decorative, partly preservative. Some kind of a shed door. There was gloom inside the shed.
    “That’s Kliner’s warehouse,” she said. “At the top of the county road.”
    “Are you sure?” I said.
    “I recognize the tree,” she said.
    I looked again. It was a very distinctive tree. Dead on one side. Maybe split by lightning.
    “That’s Kliner’s warehouse,” she said again. “No doubt about that.”
    Then she clicked her car phone on and took the photograph back. Dialed DMV in Atlanta and called in the number from the front of Stoller’s truck. Waited a long moment, tapping her index finger on the steering wheel. I heard the crackle of the response in the earpiece. Then she clicked the phone off and turned to me.
    “The truck is registered to Kliner Industries,” she said. “And the registered address is Zacarias Perez, Attorneys-at-Law, Jacksonville, Florida.”
    I nodded. She nodded back. Sherman Stoller’s buddies. The ones who had got him out of Jacksonville Central in fifty-five minutes flat, two years ago.
    “OK,” she said. “Put it all together. Hubble, Stoller, Joe’s investigation. They’re printing counterfeit money down in Kliner’s warehouse, right?”
    I shook my head.
    “Wrong,” I said. “There’s no printing going on inside the States. It all happens abroad. Molly Beth Gordon told me that, and she ought to know what she’s talking about. She said Joe had made it impossible. And whatever Stoller was doing, Judy said he stopped doing it a year ago. And Finlay said Joe only started this whole thing a year ago. Around the same time Hubble fired Stoller.”
    Roscoe nodded. Shrugged.
    “We need Molly’s help,” she said. “We need a copy of Joe’s file.”
    “Or Picard’s help,” I said. “We might find Joe’s hotel room and get hold of the original. It’s a race to see who’s going to call us first, Molly or Picard.”
    Roscoe clicked off the dome light. Started the car for the ride back to the airport hotel. I just sprawled out beside her, yawning. I could sense she was getting uptight. She had run out of things to do. Run out of distractions. Now she had to face the quiet vulnerable hours of the night. The first night after last night. The prospect was making her agitated.
    “You got that gun, Reacher?” she asked.
    I squirmed around in the seat to face her.
    “It’s in the trunk,” I said. “In that box. You put it in there, remember?”
    “Bring it inside, OK?” she said. “Makes me feel better.”
    I grinned sleepily in the dark. Yawned.
    “Makes me feel better too,” I said. “It’s a hell of a gun.”
    Then we lapsed back into silence. Roscoe found the hotel lot. We got out of the car and stood stretching in the dark. I opened the trunk. Lifted the box out and slammed the lid. Went in through our lobby and up in the elevator.
    In the room we just crashed out. Roscoe laid her shiny .38 on the carpet on her side of the bed. I reloaded my giant .44 and laid it on my side. Cocked and locked. We wedged a chair under the door handle. Roscoe felt safer that way.

    I WOKE EARLY AND LAY IN BED, THINKING ABOUT JOE . Wednesday morning. He’d been dead five days. Roscoe was already up. She was standing in the middle of the floor, stretching. Some kind of a yoga thing. She’d taken a shower and she was only half dressed. She had no trousers on. Just a shirt. She had her back to