Gone Tomorrow

The view got murky farther down, due to dirt and green impurities in the layers of glass. But I could see the cops opening doors car by car, checking, clearing, turning the passengers out and hustling them upstairs to the street. It was a lightly loaded night train and it didn’t take long for them to reach us. They checked through the windows and saw the body and the gun and tensed up. The doors hissed open and they swarmed onboard, two through each set of doors. We all raised our hands, like a reflex.
    One cop blocked each of the doorways and the other three moved straight toward the dead woman. They stopped and stood off about six feet. Didn’t check for a pulse or any other sign of life. Didn’t hold a mirror under her nose, to check for breathing. Partly because it was obvious she wasn’t breathing, and partly because she didn’t have a nose. The cartilage had torn away, leaving jagged splinters of bone between where the internal pressure had popped her eyeballs out.
    A big cop with sergeant’s stripes turned around. He had gone a little pale but was otherwise well into a pretty good impersonation of just another night’s work. He asked, “Who saw what happened here?”
    There was silence at the front of the car. The Hispanic woman, the man in the NBA shirt, and the African lady. They were all sitting tight and saying nothing. Point eight: a rigid stare ahead. They were all doing it. If I can’t see you, you can’t see me . The guy in the golf shirt said nothing. So I said, “She took the gun out of her bag and shot herself.”
    “Just like that?”
    “More or less.”
    “Why?”
    “How would I know?”
    “Where and when?”
    “On the run-in to the station. Whenever that was.”
    The guy processed the information. Suicide by gunshot. The subway was the NYPD’s responsibility. The deceleration zone between 41st and 42nd was the 14th Precinct’s turf. His case. No question. He nodded. Said, “OK, please all of you exit the car and wait on the platform. We’ll need names and addresses and statements from you.”
    Then he keyed his collar microphone and was answered by a loud blast of static. He answered that in turn with a long stream of codes and numbers. I guessed he was calling for paramedics and an ambulance. After that it would be up to the transportation people to get the car unhooked and cleaned and the schedule back on track. Not difficult, I thought. There was plenty of time before the morning rush hour.
    We got out into a gathering crowd on the platform. Transport cops, more regular cops arriving, subway workers clustering all around, Grand Central personnel showing up. Five minutes later an FDNY paramedic crew clattered down the stairs with a gurney. They came through the barrier and stepped on the train and the first-response cops stepped off. I didn’t see what happened after that because the cops started moving through the crowd, looking around, making ready to find a passenger each and walk them away for further inquiries. The big sergeant came for me. I had answered his questions on the train. Therefore he made me first in line. He led me deep into the station and put me in a hot stale white-tiled room that could have been part of the transport police facility. He sat me down alone in a wooden chair and asked me for my name.
    “Jack Reacher,” I said.
    He wrote it down and didn’t speak again. Just hung around in the doorway and watched me. And waited. For a detective to show up, I guessed.

Chapter 7
    The detective who showed up was a woman and she came alone. She was wearing pants and a gray short-sleeve shirt. Maybe silk, maybe man-made. Shiny, anyway. It was untucked and I guessed the tails were hiding her gun and her cuffs and whatever else she was carrying. Inside the shirt she was small and slim. Above the shirt she had dark hair tied back and a small oval face. No jewelry. Not even a wedding band. She was somewhere in her late thirties. Maybe forty. An attractive woman. I liked her immediately. She looked relaxed and friendly. She showed me her gold shield and handed me her business card. It had numbers on it for her office and her cell. It had an NYPD e-mail address. She said the name on it out loud for me. The name was Theresa Lee, with the t and the h pronounced together, like the or theme or therapy. Theresa . She wasn’t Asian. Maybe the Lee came from an old marriage or was an Ellis Island version of Leigh, or some other longer and more complicated name. Or