Make Me (16 page)

“You don’t know that.”

“But suppose they did. Suppose there’s something weird out there, with two hundred dead people. That’s a story, right? That’s something the
LA Times
would eat up with a spoon. You could run it for weeks. You could get a Pulitzer. You could get on TV. You could get a movie deal.”

“Get back to me as soon as you’ve got something solid.”

“What do you think the chances are of that happening?”

“A hundred to one.”

“Not two hundred?”

“Your theories aren’t evidence.”

“Here’s another theory. We walk out of here, leaving behind the hundred-to-one possibility there’s a big story out there, but because we’re gone it’s no longer a
Times
exclusive anymore, which means if the hundred-to-one pays off and it breaks, there’s going to be a crazy scramble, with all the papers competing for pole position. So if you’re a smart science editor, even though it’s only a hundred to one, you can see a tiny advantage in using what you know so far to get somewhat prepared ahead of time. So my guess is as soon as we’re back in the elevator, you’re going to check the database for calls from a guy named Maloney. Just to put your mind at rest.”

Westwood said nothing.

Reacher said, “So what difference would it make if we were still in the room?”

No response for a long moment. Then Westwood turned his chair to face his screens, and he clicked the mouse and typed a few letters in two different boxes. User ID and password, Reacher figured. The database, hopefully. Chang leaned forward. The screen showed a search page. Some kind of proprietary software, no doubt suitable for the job at hand, but ugly. Westwood clicked on a bunch of options. Isolating his own notes, possibly. To avoid irrelevant results. Maybe there were a hundred newsworthy Maloneys in LA. Maybe there were two hundred. Sports stars, businesspeople, actors, musicians, civic dignitaries.

Westwood said, “All theories should be tested. That’s a central part of the scientific method.”

He typed
Maloney
.

He clicked the mouse.

He got three hits.

—

The database showed
contact made by a caller named Maloney on three separate occasions. The most recent was just shy of a month previously, and the second was three weeks before that, and the oldest was two weeks before the second. A five-week envelope, all told, four weeks ago. The incoming phone number was the same on all three occasions. It had a 501 area code, which no one recognized.

Westwood had made no notes about the subject or the content of any of the three conversations. Instead he had simply routed name, number, day, and time straight to a folder marked
C
.

“Which is?” Reacher asked.

“Conspiracies,” Westwood said.

“What kind of thing?”

“It’s a fairly wide category.”

“Give me an example.”

“Smoke alarms are compulsory in homes because they contain cameras and microphones wirelessly linked to the government. With poison gas capsules too, in case the government doesn’t like what you’re saying or doing.”

“Keever wouldn’t waste time on a thing like that.”

“And I wouldn’t ignore something more serious.”

“Maybe it wasn’t well explained.”

“I guess it can’t have been.”

“You sure you don’t remember this Maloney guy at all?”

As a response Westwood clicked his way through to an unfiltered list of all the calls he had received. The screens were big and he had two of them, but even so there was space only for a small part of the calendar year.

Reacher said, “Are we in there?”

Westwood nodded. “From this morning.”

“What folder did you put us in?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Chang took out her phone and dialed Maloney’s number. The 501 area code, and seven more digits. She put her phone on speaker. There was hiss and dead air as the cellular system hooked her up. Then the number rang.

And rang, and rang.

No answer, and no voice mail.

Chang hung up, after a whole long minute, and the office went quiet.

Reacher said, “We need to know where the 501 area code is.”

Westwood clicked off his database and opened up a web browser. Then he glanced at the door and said, “So I guess we’re really doing this.”

“No one will know,” Reacher said. “Until the movie comes out.”

The computer told them 501 was one of three area codes given to cell phones in Arkansas. Chang said, “Was there an Arkansas number you blocked about nine weeks ago? Maybe our guy switched from his land line to his cell, simple as that.”

Westwood went back into his database, to the unfiltered list of calls, and he scrolled back nine weeks, and said, “How much limbo should we give him? How fast would he have come up with the idea of changing his name and number?”

“Pretty fast,” Reacher said. “It isn’t brain surgery. But I’m guessing there was some limbo. Most likely because of hurt feelings. You rejected him. It might have taken him a week to swallow his pride and call you back.”

Westwood scrolled some more. Ten weeks back. He opened the list of area codes on his second screen, and went back and forth, comparing, line by line, and when he was finished he said, “I blocked four guys that week. But none of them was from Arkansas.”

Reacher said, “Try the week before. Maybe he’s more sensitive than we thought.”

Westwood scrolled again, backward through the next seven days, and then forward again, checking against the list of area codes, and he said, “I blocked two guys the previous week, for a fourteen-day total of six, but still no one from Arkansas.”

Reacher said, “We’re getting somewhere anyway. The Maloney calls started nine weeks ago, from a guy who had just gotten blocked, in a recent window of time, and in that category there are six possible candidates. Logic says our guy is one of them. And we could be talking to him thirty seconds from now. On his other line. Because you have all the original phone numbers.”

Chapter
26

Westwood copied and pasted the
six names and numbers to a new blank screen. The names were a standard American mixture. They could have been the first six up for any team in the Majors, or they could have been any six guys in line at the pawn shop, or the ER, or the first-class lounge at the airport. Half the numbers were cell phones, Reacher guessed, because he didn’t recognize the area codes, but there was a 773 for Chicago in there, and a 505 for somewhere in New Mexico, and a 901, which he figured could be Memphis, Tennessee.

Westwood put his phone in a dock on his desk and dialed the first number direct from his computer. There were speakers in the dock, and Reacher heard the
beep-boop-bap
of the electronic pulses, and then nothing but hiss, and then a pre-recorded voice, pitched somewhere between scolding and sympathetic.

The number was out of service.

Westwood hung up and checked the area code on his screen. He said, “That was a cell phone, in northern Louisiana, maybe Shreveport, or close by. The contract was probably terminated or canceled, as happens in the normal run of things, and the number will be reissued sooner or later.”

He dialed the second number.

Same thing. The dialing sounds, then nothing, then the phone company voice, its script apologetic, its tone faintly incredulous that anyone would do anything as pitifully dumb as try to call a telephone number that was currently out of service.

“A cell in Mississippi,” Westwood said. “Somewhere north. Oxford, probably. A lot of college students there. Maybe his parents threw him off the family plan.”

“Or maybe it was a burner phone,” Reacher said. “A pay-as-you-go from a drugstore, that ran out of minutes. Or was trashed. Maybe they’re all burners.”

“Possible,” Westwood said. “Bad guys have done that for years, to stop the government building a case. And these days citizens are learning to do the same thing. Especially the kind of citizens who call newspapers with hot tips about conspiracies. Such is the modern world.”

He dialed the third number. Another cell, according to the list of area codes, this one in Idaho.

And this one was answered.

A guy’s voice came over the speakers, loud and clear. It said, “Hello?”

Westwood sat up straight, and spoke to the screen. He said, “Good morning, sir. This is Ashley Westwood, from the
LA Times,
returning your call.”

“It is?”

“I apologize for the delay. I had some checking to do. But now I agree. What you told me has to be exposed. So I need to ask you some questions.”

“Well, yes, sure, that would be great.”

The voice was pitched closer to alto than tenor, and it was a little fast and shaky with nerves. A thin guy, Reacher thought, always quivering and vibrating. Thirty-five, maybe, or younger, but not much older. Could be Idaho born and bred, but probably wasn’t.

Westwood said, “First I need to start with a trust-builder. I need you to confirm the name of the private detective you hired.”

The voice said, “The name of the what?”

“The private detective.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Did you hire a private detective?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because it has to be stopped.”

“What does?”

“What you told me about.”

“A private detective would be no good for that. They’d do the same to him they do to everyone else. As soon as they saw him. I mean, literally. I told you, it’s a line of sight thing. No one can avoid it. You don’t understand. The beam cannot be beaten.”

“So you didn’t hire a private detective?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Do you use another cell phone, with a 501 area code?”

“No, I don’t.”

Westwood hung up on him without another word. He said, “I think I remember that guy. Apparently our minds are being controlled by beams.”

Reacher said, “What kind of beams?”

“Mind-controlling beams. They come off the bottom of civilian airliners. The FAA requires them. That’s why they charge for checked bags now, so people will use carry-on instead, which leaves more space in the hold for the equipment. And the operator. He’s down there, too, like an old-fashioned bomb aimer, zapping people. The guy in Idaho won’t go out unless it’s cloudy. He says obviously the flyover states are especially vulnerable. All part of the elitist conspiracy.”

“Except the most-flown-over state is nowhere near Idaho.”

“Where is it?”

“Pennsylvania.”

“Really?”

Chang said, “Yes, really, because there’s a lot of regular East Coast traffic, plus all the shuttles between D.C. and New York and Boston. Now can we move on? Can we dial the next number?”

Westwood dialed the next number, which was the fourth, which was 901 for Memphis. The first land line, probably. They heard the dialing noises, and then the ring tone, loud in the room.

The call was answered.

There was a hollow
clonk
as a heavy handset was lifted, and a male voice said, “Yes?”

Westwood sat up straight again, and ran through the same bullshit as before, his name, the
LA Times,
the returned call, the apology for the delay.

The voice said, “Sir, I’m not sure I understand.”

The guy was old, Reacher figured, slow-spoken and courtly, and if he wasn’t from Memphis, he was from somewhere very close by.

Westwood said, “You called me at the
LA Times,
two or three months ago, with something on your mind.”

The old guy said, “Sir, if I did, I surely have no recollection of it. And if I offended you in any way at all, why then, certainly I apologize.”

“No, you didn’t offend me, sir. No apology required. I want to know more about your concerns. That’s all.”

“Oh, I have very few concerns. My situation is blessed.”

“Then why did you call me?”

“I really can’t answer that question. I’m not even certain I did.”

Westwood glanced at Chang, and back to the screen, and took a breath ready to speak again, but there was a muffled sound on the speaker, and another
clonk,
apparently as the handset was wrestled away, because at that point a woman’s voice came on the line and said, “Who is this, please?”

Westwood said, “Ashley Westwood, ma’am, at the
LA Times,
returning a call from this number.”

“A recent call?”

“Two or three months ago.”

“That will have been my husband.”

“May I speak with him?”

“You just were.”

“I see. He didn’t remember the call.”

“He wouldn’t. Two or three months is a very long time.”

“Would you have any idea what the call might have been about?”

“Don’t you?”

Westwood didn’t answer.

The woman said, “I’m not judging you. If I could tune him out, I would. Are you a political writer or a science writer?”

Westwood said, “Science.”

“Then it will have been about granite countertops being radioactive. That’s this year’s topic. Which they are, as a matter of fact, but it’s a question of degree. I’m sure he asked you to write a story about it. You and many others.”

“Do you know how many others?”

“A small number compared to the population of the United States, but a large number compared to how many hours an old man should spend on the telephone.”

Westwood said, “Ma’am, is it possible he hired a private detective?”

The woman said, “For what?”

“To help him with his investigations into the granite situation.”

“No, it would be most unlikely.”

“Can you be certain?”

“The facts are not in dispute. There’s nothing to investigate. And he has no access to money. He couldn’t hire anybody.”

“Not even cash?”

“Not even. Don’t ask. And don’t get old.”

“Does your husband have a cell phone?”

“No.”

“Could he have gotten one, maybe from a drugstore?”

“No, he never leaves the house.”

“Have people died because of the granite?”

“He says so.”

“How many, exactly?”

“Oh, thousands.”