Jane slowed. She glanced from side to side. “We’re still headed west. Shouldn’t we be going north?”
Mark waited for her to catch up. Placing a hand on Jane’s back, he pointed deep into the trees. “There’s a lovely secluded spot not far ahead. I think it would be an ideal place for our ritual.”
Resisting the pressure of his hand, Jane stutter-stepped. “I thought we were going to the grassy hill,” she said in a small voice.
“Too many people,” Mark said. “A ritual like ours would attract attention. I know of a quiet place with a sloping rock behind a giant sycamore. A far better setting to pour out your heart.”
She stopped. “Where are you taking me?”
“If you truly long to be free, Jane,” he whispered into her ear, “then this is your only path.” Though his tone coaxed, it was the pressure of his hand on her back that propelled her through the trees. “Right through there.”
“Stop.” Her body went rigid. “Why did you bring me here?” Jane looked up, down, side to side, like a little bird caught in a surprise cage. Book tight against her chest, she stared past him, shaking her head. “No.” The refusal came out hoarse and soft. She tried again. “Please. No.”
“See?” He pointed deeper into the dense woods toward a stone outcropping just beyond a massive tree. “You can see it from here. A sacred place, don’t you agree?”
Again, Jane shook her head.
He locked a hand on her arm. “Come on, we’ll do this together.”
“Don’t make me go in there.”
“Wouldn’t Samantha want you to be brave, Jane?”
She sucked in a breath. “How do you know where Samantha died?” Wrenching out of his grip, she didn’t wait for an answer. Sprinting back the way they’d come, she’d gotten no more than twenty feet when, with a yelp, she stopped cold.
The old man in the overcoat blocked her path.
Mark shushed through the leaves to join her. “I think the better question is: How do you know?”
Clean shaven now, the old man held his missing beard in one hand and a gun in the other. He shook his head slowly but didn’t say a word.
“What’s happening?” Jane asked him. “What’s going on?”
Mark held out his hand. “Give me the book.”
“But … it’s all I have left of her,” she said.
“No,” Mark said. “It’s all we have left of her. Give it to me.”
Jane loosened her grip on the blue-bound copy and handed it to him.
Mark removed his glasses, placed them in a pocket, opened the book’s front cover and read aloud: “To Laura.” The corners of his mouth tugged downward. “May life be your Wonderland, Love, Dad.”
“I don’t know why it says that,” Jane said. “Samantha never explained that inscription.”
“How could she?” the old man asked. “She was dead when you took it from her.” He holstered his gun beneath his coat. “And her name wasn’t Samantha. It was Laura.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
He opened his collar wide enough to expose the White Rabbit necklace around his neck. “I’m her father, that’s who.”
“Samantha’s father?” Her mouth dropped open. “The police chief?”
“Laura,” he corrected again. “And only an inspector.”
“He tricked me into coming here.” She pointed at Mark. “He’s the one who killed her. Who else could have known where she died?”
“Who else, indeed?” The older man asked. “But what I don’t understand is how you lured my daughter in here. She never would have come this way on her own. Never.”
“She followed me. Really, she did.” Jane shook her head vehemently. “You have to believe me. I would never have hurt Samantha. She meant everything to me. Everything. I only took her book so that she’d talk to me.”
“She followed you in here?” The old man’s voice cracked. “Because you stole her book?”
Jane kept shaking her head. “But it turned out she wasn’t my Samantha. Samantha would never have pushed me away. She never would have said such terrible things.”
“She followed you in here?” he repeated as he grabbed the book from Mark’s hands. “For this?” Dropping his head, he pinched the bridge of his nose and covered his eyes.
“Don’t you see, there’s been a mistake.” Jane twisted between the two men. “It’s him. He did it.”
Mark laid a steadying hand on the older man’s shaking shoulders. “We were afraid we’d never find who murdered Laura. But you were right,” he said to Jane. “Victims return to the scene of the crime, too. Especially when it’s their only chance to catch a killer.”
“You’re the killer,” Jane screeched. “She must have told you how she felt about me. That’s how you knew I’d be here today.” Turning to the cop, she said, “Don’t you see? He bought that book to set me up. He’s the one you should be arresting.”
As the older man snapped handcuffs on Jane’s wrists, Mark pulled his book from the messenger bag. He opened the front cover. “To Mark.” His voice trembled and his eyes glistened. “Stay curious as life’s adventures unfold. Love, Dad.” He waited until the older man looked up again. “I’ve had this book for a very long time, haven’t I?”
The cop’s jaw was tight. “Long time.”
Jane swallowed. “I don’t understand.”
“My sister’s ritual was to read this book at the statue on her birthday every year,” Mark said.
“But … how could I know that? She wouldn’t talk to me.”
“Is that supposed to justify killing her?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” Jane said. “But she got so angry with me. I couldn’t make her understand. When she tried to get away, I lost my temper. I only meant to stop her long enough to listen.”
“You stopped her, all right.”
“I never would have hurt my Samantha,” Jane cried. “It was an accident.”
The older man faced her with bared teeth and red eyes. “Let’s go.”
“But he promised me a chance to tell her how I felt.” Jane’s voice was thin and shrill as she spun to face Mark. “You promised. What about my closure?”
“Her name was Laura,” the cop said. “And you’ll get your closure in court.” He tugged Jane by her handcuffs. “Today, we have ours.”
Mark gripped the older man’s shoulder. “Good to have you back, Dad.”
JULIE HYZY is a New York Times best-selling author who has won the Anthony, Barry, and Derringer Awards for her crime fiction. She currently writes two amateur-sleuth mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime: the White House Chef Mysteries and the Manor House Mysteries. Her favorite pastimes include traveling with her husband and hanging out with her kids. She lives in the Chicago area.
THE PICTURE OF THE LONELY DINER
Lee Child
Jack Reacher got out of the R train at Twenty-Third Street and found the nearest stairway blocked off with plastic police tape. It was striped blue and white, tied between one handrail and the other, and it was moving in the subway wind. It said: POLICE DO NOT ENTER. Which, technically, Reacher didn’t want to do anyway. He wanted to exit. Although to exit, he would need to enter the stairwell. Which was a linguistic complexity. In which context, he sympathized with the cops. They didn’t have different kinds of tape for different kinds of situations. POLICE DO NOT ENTER IN ORDER TO EXIT was not in their inventory.
So Reacher turned around and hiked half the length of the platform to the next stairway. Which was also taped off. POLICE DO NOT ENTER. Blue and white, fluttering gently in the last of the departing train’s slipstream. Which was odd. He was prepared to believe the first stairway might have been the site of a singular peril, maybe a chunk of fallen concrete, or a buckled nose on a crucial step, or some other hazard to life and limb. But not both stairways. Not both at once. What were the odds? So maybe the sidewalk above was the problem. A whole block’s length. Maybe there had been a car wreck. Or a bus wreck. Or a suicide fr
om a high window above. Or a drive-by shooting. Or a bomb. Maybe the sidewalk was slick with blood and littered with body parts. Or auto parts. Or both.
Reacher half-turned and looked across the track. The exit directly opposite was taped off, too. And the next, and the next. All the exits were taped off. Blue and white, POLICE DO NOT ENTER. No way out. Which was an issue. The Broadway Local was a fine line, and the Twenty-Third Street station was a fine example of its type, and Reacher had slept in far worse places many times, but he had things to do and not much time to do them in.
He walked back to the first stairway he had tried, and he ducked under the tape.
He was cautious going up the stairs, craning his neck, looking ahead, and especially looking upward, but seeing nothing untoward. No loose rebar, no fallen concrete, no damaged steps, no thin rivulets of blood, no spattered fragments of flesh on the tile.
Nothing.
He stopped on the stairs with his nose level with the Twenty-Third Street sidewalk and he scanned left and right.
Nothing.
He stepped up one stair and turned around and looked across Broadway’s humped blacktop at the Flatiron Building. His destination. He looked left and right. He saw nothing.
He saw less than nothing.
No cars. No taxis. No buses, no trucks, no scurrying panel vans with their business names hastily handwritten on their doors. No motorbikes, no Vespa scooters in pastel colors. No deliverymen on bikes from restaurants or messenger services. No skateboarders, no rollerbladers.
No pedestrians.
It was summer, close to eleven at night, and still warm. Fifth Avenue was crossing Broadway right in front of him. Dead ahead was Chelsea, behind him was Gramercy, to his left was Union Square, and to his right the Empire State Building loomed over the scene like the implacable monolith it was. He should have seen a hundred people. Or a thousand. Or ten thousand. Guys in canvas shoes and T-shirts, girls in short summer dresses, some of them strolling, some of them hustling, heading to clubs about to open their doors, or bars with the latest vodka, or midnight movies.
There should have been a whole big crowd. There should have been laughter and conversation, and shuffling feet, and the kind of hoots and yelps a happy crowd makes at eleven o’clock on a warm summer’s evening, and sirens and car horns, and the whisper of tires and the roar of engines.
There was nothing.
Reacher went back down the stairs and under the tape again. He walked underground, north, to the site of his second attempt, and this time he stepped over the tape because it was slung lower. He went up the stairs just as cautiously, but faster, now right on the street corner, with Madison Square Park ahead of him, fenced in black iron and packed with dark trees. But its gates were still open. Not that anyone was strolling in or strolling out. There was no one around. Not a soul.
He stepped up to the sidewalk and stayed close to the railing around the subway stair head. A long block to the west he saw flashing lights. Blue and red. A police cruiser was parked sideways across the street. A roadblock. DO NOT ENTER. Reacher turned and looked east. Same situation. Red and blue lights all the way over on Park Avenue. DO NOT ENTER. Twenty-Third Street was closed. As were plenty of other cross streets, no doubt, and Broadway and Fifth Avenue and Madison, too, presumably, at about Thirtieth Street.
No one around.
Reacher looked at the Flatiron Building. A narrow triangle, sharp at the front. Like a thin wedge, or a modest slice of cake. But to him it looked most like the prow of a ship. Like an immense ocean liner moving slowly toward him. Not an original thought. He knew many people felt the same way. Even with the cowcatcher glasshouse on the front ground floor, which some said ruined the effect, but which he thought added to it, because it looked like the protruding underwater bulge on the front of a supertanker, visible only when the vessel was lightly loaded.
Now he saw a person. Through two panes of the cowcatcher’s windows. A woman. She was standing on the Fifth Avenue sidewalk, staring north. She was wearing dark pants and a dark short-sleeved shirt. She had something in her right hand. Maybe a phone. Maybe a Glock 19.
Reacher pushed off the subway railing and crossed the street. Against the light, technically, but there was no traffic. It was like walking through a ghost town. Like being the last human on earth. Apart from the woman on Fifth Avenue. Whom he headed straight for. He aimed at the point of the cowcatcher. His heels were loud in the silence. The cowcatcher had a triangular iron frame, a miniature version of the shape it was backing up against, like a tiny sailboat trying to outrun the liner chasing it. The frame was painted green, like moss, and it had gingerbread curlicues here and there, and what wasn’t metal was glass, whole panels of it, as long as cars, and tall, from above a person’s head to his knees.
The woman saw him coming.
She turned in his direction but backed off, as if to draw him toward her. Reacher understood. She wanted to pull him south into the shadows. He rounded the point of the cowcatcher.
It was a phone in her hand, not a gun.
She said, “Who are you?”
He said, “Who’s asking?”
She turned her back and then straightened again, one fast fluid movement, like a fake-out on the basketball court, but enough for him to see FBI in yellow letters on the back of her shirt.
“Now answer my question,” she said.
“I’m just a guy.”
“Doing what?”
“Looking at this building.”
“The Flatiron?”
“No, this part in front. The glass part.”
“Why?”
Reacher said, “Have I been asleep for a long time?”
The woman said, “Meaning what?”
“Did some crazy old colonel stage a coup d’état? Are we living in a police state now? I must have blinked and missed it.”
“I’m a federal agent. I’m entitled to ask for your name and ID.”
“My name is Jack Reacher. No middle initial. I have a passport in my pocket. You want me to take it out?”
“Very slowly.”
So he did, very slowly. He used scissored fingers, like a pickpocket, and drew out the slim blue booklet and held it away from his body, long enough for her to register what it was, and then he passed it to her, and she opened it.
She said, “Why were you born in Berlin?”
He said, “I had no control over my mother’s movements. I was just a fetus at the time.”
“Why was she in Berlin?”
“Because my father was. We were a Marine family. She said I was nearly born on a plane.”
“Are you a Marine?”
“I’m unemployed at the moment.”
“After being what?”
“Unemployed for many previous moments.”
“After being what?”
“Army.”
“Branch?”
“Military Police.”
She handed back the passport.
She said, “Rank?”
He said, “Does it matter?”
“I’m entitled to ask.”
She was looking past his shoulder.
He said, “I was terminal at major.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Bad, mostly. If I had been any good at being a major, they would have made me stay.”
She didn’t reply.
He said, “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Rank?”
“Special Agent in Charge.”
“Are you in charge tonight?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Outstanding.”
She said, “Where did you come from?”
He said, “The subway.”
“Was there police tape?”
“I don’t recall.”
“You broke through it.”
“Check the First Amendment. I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to walk around where I want. Isn’t that part of what makes America great?”
“
You’re in the way.”
“Of what?”
She was still looking past his shoulder.
She said, “I can’t tell you.”
“Then you should have told the train not to stop. Tape isn’t enough.”
“I didn’t have time.”
“Because?”
“I can’t tell you.”
Reacher said nothing.
The woman said, “What’s your interest in the glass part of this building?”
Reacher said, “I’m thinking of putting in a bid as a window washer. Might get me back on my feet.”
“Lying to a federal agent is a felony.”
“A million people every day look in these windows. Have you asked them?”
“I’m asking you.”
Reacher said, “I think Edward Hopper painted Nighthawks here.”
“Which is what?”
“A painting. Quite famous. Looking in through a diner’s windows, late at night, at the lonely people inside.”
“I never heard of a diner called Nighthawks. Not here.”
“The night hawks were the people. The diner was called Phillies.”
“I never heard of a diner here called anything.”
“I don’t think there was one.”
“You just said there was.”
“I think Hopper saw this place, and he made it a diner in his head. Or a lunch counter, at least. The shape is exactly the same. Looked at from right where we’re standing now.”
“I think I know that picture. Three people, isn’t it?”
“Plus the counter man. He’s kind of bent over, doing something in the well. There are two coffee urns behind him.”
“First there’s a couple, close but not touching, and then one lonely guy all by himself. With his back to us. In a hat.”
“All the men wear hats.”
“The woman is a redhead. She looks sad. It’s the loneliest picture I’ve ever seen.”
Reacher looked through the real-life glass. Easy to imagine bright fluorescent light in there, pinning people like searchlight beams, exposing them in a merciless way to the dark streets all around. Except the streets all around were empty, so there was no one to see.