The Sentinel (Jack Reacher #25)(53)

‘Please come in,’ she said. Hers was the voice they’d heard on the intercom. Quiet and cold. There was no question about that. ‘Can I offer you gentlemen some refreshment? Iced tea?’

They declined and the woman led the way along a narrow hallway. There was tile on the floor. Family portraits on the walls. Four doors. A pair on each side. Plain, pale wood. No panels. Narrow architraves. The woman paused outside the second door on the right, knocked, then opened it and stood aside to let Rutherford and Reacher enter. She didn’t follow.

There was one person already in the room. A man, slim, rangy, with a mane of white hair. Like Einstein if he’d worked in a bank, Reacher thought. He looked around seventy. Probably born around the time the house was built. Maybe born right there in the house. The man put down his newspaper, hauled himself out of his armchair, and offered his hand.

‘Mr Rutherford, I’m Henry Klostermann. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I know you by reputation, of course. And I don’t envy the position you’re in. I’ve done work for the town in the past. I’m essentially retired now but I make sure my company doesn’t even bid for municipal contracts any more. The penny-pinching. The endless finger-pointing. It drove me up the wall. Made it impossible to do a job properly. I can only imagine what it was like to work there permanently. And your friend?’

‘Reacher.’ Reacher didn’t offer his hand. ‘Jack. I’m Mr Rutherford’s life coach.’

‘Really?’ Klostermann said. ‘How interesting. Now please. Gentlemen. Take a seat.’

Klostermann lowered himself into his chair. Rutherford perched on the edge of a couch with thin tweed cushions and a slender wood frame. Reacher joined him, hoping it would take his weight.

‘Now that you’re here, how can we help each other?’ Klostermann said.

‘Well,’ Rutherford said. ‘As you can imagine, I have some time on my hands right now. I’m trying to put it to good use, following up on things that fell by the wayside when I was working around the clock after the computer system was attacked. One of them is an email. Actually an email and a voicemail. I received them from a journalist. She was asking about property records to do with your home.’

Klostermann steepled his fingers. ‘The journalist. That would be Toni Garza, I presume. You heard she was killed? Such a tragedy.’

‘We heard.’ Rutherford paused. ‘It sounds awful, what happened.’

‘It was. Toni was such a lovely girl. She had so much talent. So much integrity.’

‘You knew her?’

‘Of course I knew her. She was working for me. In fact, it was me who suggested she should contact you. I was hoping you could help with some research she was doing.’

‘To do with your home?’ Reacher said. ‘Its unusual history?’

‘Goodness, no.’ Klostermann frowned. ‘There’s no need. What little there is of that stupid story has been done to death.’

‘Living in a nest of Cold War spies? That sounds like a great story. If the problem is you’re tired of telling it, why not have someone write a book about it? A journalist would be an obvious choice. Specially one with talent and integrity.’

‘It wouldn’t be a book. More like a haiku. There’s not enough material. And this place was hardly a nest. There were only two of them. They were brothers. They only owned the place for eighteen months. And they didn’t even do any spying while they lived here. They wrote a textbook. On math. I wish that was the angle the public latched on to. Imagine if this place was known as the Math House. Then I wouldn’t be swamped with tourists every time a new Bond movie comes out.’

‘If not your house, what was she researching?’

‘Parts of my family history. My father fled to the States from Germany in the 1930s. He could see the way things were going politically, and somehow of all the places in the world he settled here in Tennessee. He founded a business. Started a family. Did all kinds of things. But the details of his early years in the States are sketchy. I felt it was time to find out as much as I could and record it before it was too late. Where he lived before he moved here. When exactly he bought this house. I think someone else owned it between him and the spies, but I’d like to be sure. I want as much detail as I can get. Including the human aspect, you know? There’s a story that when he bought his first house he had no money and credit was hard to come by so he used a painting he brought with him from Germany to back the purchase. These are the little quirks that are so easily lost. I want to know all of them. I want my son to know. And his son, if he ever has one.’

‘That sounds like a wholesome family project,’ Reacher said. ‘But it’s not the kind of thing anyone should get killed over. Are you sure there’s not more to it? Buried treasure? The location of the Lost Ark?’

Klostermann’s face was blank. ‘Someone was killed over my project? Who?’

‘Toni Garza.’

‘No. That’s crazy. Why would her death have anything to do with my project? Toni was a hard worker. She was driven. She wasn’t working for me exclusively. She had a dozen projects on the go. Some she got paid for, like mine. Others she was doing off her own bat. She was digging into all sorts of unsavoury things. She dreamed of becoming an investigative reporter for one of the big papers, although that was always unrealistic. There are so few of those left now.’