Jack Reacher 01 - Killing Floor

and steepled his fingers.
    “You know what this is about,” he said. “Homicide. With some very disturbing features. Victim was found this morning up at the Kliner warehouse. North end of the county road, up at the highway cloverleaf. Witness has reported a man seen walking away from that location. Shortly after eight o’clock this morning. Description given was that of a white man, very tall, wearing a long black overcoat, fair hair, no hat, no baggage.”
    Silence again. I am a white man. I am very tall. My hair is fair. I was sitting there wearing a long black overcoat. I didn’t have a hat. Or a bag. I had been walking on the county road for the best part of four hours this morning. From eight until about eleven forty-five.
    “How long is the county road?” I said. “From the highway all the way down to here?”
    Finlay thought about it.
    “Maybe fourteen miles, I guess,” he said.
    “Right,” I said. “I walked all the way down from the highway into town. Fourteen miles, maybe. Plenty of people must have seen me. Doesn’t mean I did anything to anybody.”
    He didn’t respond. I was getting curious about this situation.
    “Is that your neighborhood?” I asked him. “All the way over at the highway?”
    “Yes, it is,” he said. “Jurisdiction issue is clear. No way out for you there, Mr. Reacher. The town limit extends fourteen miles, right up to the highway. The warehousing out there is mine, no doubt about that.”
    He waited. I nodded. He carried on.
    “Kliner built the place, five years ago,” he said. “You heard of him?”
    I shook my head.
    “How should I have heard of him?” I said. “I’ve never been here before.”
    “He’s a big deal around here,” Finlay said. “His operation out there pays us a lot of taxes, does us a lot of good. A lot of revenue and a lot of benefit for the town without a lot of mess, because it’s so far away, right? So we try to take care of it for him. But now it’s a homicide scene, and you’ve got explaining to do.”
    The guy was doing his job, but he was wasting my time.
    “OK, Finlay,” I said. “I’ll make a statement describing every little thing I did since I entered your lousy town limits until I got hauled in here in the middle of my damn breakfast. If you can make anything out of it, I’ll give you a damn medal. Because all I did was to place one foot in front of the other for nearly four hours in the pouring rain all the way through your precious fourteen damn miles.”
    That was the longest speech I had made for six months. Finlay sat and gazed at me. I watched him struggling with any detective’s basic dilemma. His gut told him I might not be his man. But I was sitting right there in front of him. So what should a detective do? I let him ponder. Tried to time it right with a nudge in the right direction. I was going to say something about the real guy still running around out there while he was wasting time in here with me. That would feed his insecurity. But he jumped first. In the wrong direction.
    “No statements,” he said. “I’ll ask the questions and you’ll answer them. You’re Jack-none-Reacher. No address. No ID. What are you, a vagrant?”
    I sighed. Today was Friday. The big clock showed it was already more than half over. This guy Finlay was going to go through all the hoops with this. I was going to spend the weekend in a cell. Probably get out Monday.
    “I’m not a vagrant, Finlay,” I said. “I’m a hobo. Big difference.”
    He shook his head, slowly.
    “Don’t get smart with me, Reacher,” he said. “You’re in deep shit. Bad things happened up there. Our witness saw you leaving the scene. You’re a stranger with no ID and no story. So don’t get smart with me.”
    He was still just doing his job, but he was still wasting my time.
    “I wasn’t leaving a homicide scene,” I said. “I was walking down a damn road. There’s a difference, right? People leaving homicide scenes run and hide. They don’t walk straight down the road. What’s wrong about walking down a road? People walk down roads all the damn time, don’t they?”
    Finlay leaned forward and shook his head.
    “No,” he said. “Nobody has walked the length of that road since the invention of the automobile. So why no address? Where are you from? Answer the questions. Let’s get this done.”
    “OK, Finlay, let’s get it done,” I said. “I don’t have an address because I don’t live anywhere. Maybe one day I’ll