Blue Moon - Lee Child Page 0,92
his contorted position and got to his feet. He saw a total of twelve sprawled bodies, in a ragged line stretching back fifty feet. He saw blood on the concrete. He saw a wide pool of brown preservative. It was still dripping out of the drum.
Plink, plink, plink.
He said, “All good now.”
Abby looked up at him.
She didn’t speak.
He shook pebbles of glass out of his jacket and put it on. He put the guns back in the pockets. He made a mental note: forty-four rounds remaining.
He said, “We should go check the back offices.”
She said, “Why?”
“They might have money.”
* * *
—
Reacher and Abby stepped and minced around the bodies and the blood and the chemical spill, all the way to the far back corner. Ahead of them through the archway was a long narrow corridor. Doors to the left, doors to the right. First on the left was a windowless room with four laminate tables pushed together end to end. Like a boardroom. First on the right was a plain office with a desk and a chair and file cabinets. No clue about its function. No cash in the cabinets. Nothing in the desk either, except normal office crap and a dozen cigars and a box of kitchen matches. They moved on. They found nothing of interest, until the last door on the left.
There was an outer office, and an inner office. Like a suite. Some kind of a CEO set-up. Like a commanding officer and an executive officer. The doorway between the two was piled high with bodies. There were more in the room beyond. Twelve in total. Including a guy behind a big desk, shot once in the face, and a guy in a chair, shot three times in the chest. A bizarre, static tableau. Infinitely still. Absolutely silent. It was impossible to reconstruct what had happened. It looked like everyone had shot everyone else. Some kind of unexplained rampage.
Abby stayed out of the inner office. Reacher went in. He put his hands high on the door jambs and clambered over the piled bodies. He trod on backs and necks and heads. Once inside he picked his way around behind the desk. The guy who had been shot in the face was slumped in a leather chair with wheels. Reacher moved it out the way. He checked the desk drawers. Right away in the bottom left he found a metal cash box, about the size of a family bible, painted stern metallic colors, like something from an old-time country savings and loan. It was locked. He pulled the chair closer again and patted the dead guy’s pockets. Felt keys in the pants, right side. A decent bunch. He pulled them out, finger and thumb. Some were big, some were small. The third small key he tried opened the box.
In it was a lift-out tray at the top, with a handful of greasy ones and fives, and a scattering of nickels and dimes. Not good. But it got better. Under the tray was a banded brick of hundred dollar bills. Brand new. Unbroken. Fresh from the bank. A hundred notes. Ten thousand dollars. Close to what the Shevicks needed. Short by a grand, but better than a poke in the eye.
Reacher put the money in his pocket. He threaded his way back to the door. He climbed over the bodies again.
Abby said, “I want to go.”
“Me, too,” Reacher said. “Just one more thing.”
He led her back to the first office they had seen. On the right, opposite the boardroom. The cigar smoker. Newly dead, Reacher assumed. But not from smoking. He took the box of kitchen matches from his desk. And paper, from everywhere he could find it. He struck a match and lit a sheet. He held it until it flamed up high. Then he dropped it in a trash basket.
Abby asked him, “Why?”
“It’s never enough just to win,” he said. “The other guy has got to know for sure he lost. Plus it’s safer this way. We were here. We probably left traces. Best to avoid any kind of confusion later on.”
They struck match after match and lit sheet after sheet of paper. They dropped them in every room. Gray smoke was drifting when they left the corridor. They lit the shrink wrap around the piles of boards. Reacher dropped a match in the pool of preservative, but it sputtered out immediately. Not flammable. Which made sense, in a lumber yard. But gasoline was flammable.