"It was horrible," she said. Wouldn't say any more.
I walked her around to her desk and sat her down. Squeezed her shoulder and stepped over toward Finlay. He was sitting on a desk, looking blank. I nodded him over to the big office in back. I needed to know, and Finlay was the guy who would tell me. He followed me into the office. Sat down in the chair in front of the desk. Where I had sat in handcuffs on Friday. I sat behind the desk. Roles reversed.
I watched him for a while. He was really shaken up. I went cold inside all over again. Hubble must have been left in a hell of a mess to be getting a reaction like that from Finlay. He was a twenty-year man from a big city. He must have seen all there is to see. But now he was really shaken up. I sat there and burned with shame. Sure, Hubble, I'd said, you look safe enough to me.
"So what's the story?" I said.
He lifted his head up with an effort and looked at me.
"Why should you care?" he said. "What was he to you?"
A good question. One I couldn't answer. Finlay didn't know what I knew about Hubble. I'd kept quiet about it. So Finlay didn't see why Hubble was so important to me.
"Just tell me what happened," I said.
"It was pretty bad," he said. Wouldn't go on.
He was worrying me. My brother had been shot in the head. Two big messy exit wounds had removed his face. Then somebody had turned his corpse into a bag of pulp. But Finlay hadn't fallen apart over that. The other guy had been all gnawed up by rats. There wasn't a drop of blood left in him. But Finlay hadn't fallen apart over that, either. Hubble was a local guy, which made it a bit worse, I could see that. But on Friday, Finlay hadn't even known who Hubble was. And now Finlay was acting like he'd seen a ghost. So it must have been some pretty spectacular work.
Which meant that there was some kind of a big deal going down in Margrave. Because there's no point in spectacular work unless it serves a purpose. The threat of it beforehand works on the guy himself. It had certainly worked on Hubble. He had taken a lot of notice of it. That's the point of a threat. But to actually carry out something like that has a different point. A different purpose. Carrying it out is not about the guy himself. It's about backing up the threat against the next guy in line. It says, see what we did to that other guy? That's what we could do to you. So by doing some spectacular work on Hubble, somebody had just revealed there was a high-stakes game going down, with other guys waiting next in line, right there in the locality.
"Tell me what happened, Finlay," I said again.
He leaned forward. Cupped his mouth and nose with his hands and sighed heavily into them.
"OK," he said. "It was pretty horrible. One of the worst I've ever seen. And I've seen a few, let me tell you. I've seen some pretty bad ones, but this was something else. He was naked. They nailed him to the wall. Six or seven big carpentry nails through his hands and up his arms. Through the fleshy parts. They nailed his feet to the floor. Then they sliced his balls off. Just hacked them off. Blood everywhere. Pretty bad, let me tell you. Then they slit his throat. Ear to ear. Bad people, Reacher. These are bad people. As bad as they come."
I was numb. Finlay was waiting for a comment. I couldn't think of anything. I was thinking about Charlie. She would ask if I'd found anything out. Finlay should go up there. He should go up there right now and break the news. It was his job, not mine. I could see why he was reluctant. Difficult news to break. Difficult details to gloss over. But it was his job. I'd go with him. Because it was my fault. No point running away from that.
"Yes," I said to him. "It sounds pretty bad."
He leaned his head back and looked around. Blew another sigh up at the ceiling. A somber man.
"That's not the worst of it," he said. "You should have seen what they did to his wife."
"His wife?" I said. "What the hell do you mean?"
"I mean his wife," he said. "It was like a butcher's shop."
For a moment I couldn't speak. The world was spinning backward.
"But I just saw her," I said. "Twenty minutes ago. She's OK. Nothing happened to her."
"You saw who?" Finlay said.
"Charlie," I said.
"Who the hell is Charlie?" he asked.
"Charlie," I said blankly. "Charlie Hubble. His wife. She's OK. They didn't get her."
"What's Hubble got to do with this?" he said.
I just stared at him.
"Who are we talking about?" I said. "Who got killed?"
Finlay looked at me like I was crazy.
"I thought you knew," he said. "Chief Morrison. The chief of police. Morrison. And his wife."
Chapter Twelve
I WAS WATCHING FINLAY VERY CAREFULLY, TRYING TO DECIDE how far I should trust him. It was going to be a life or death decision. In the end I figured his answer to one simple question would make up my mind for me.
"Are they going to make you chief now?" I asked him.
He shook his head.
"No," he said. "They're not going to make me chief."
"You sure about that?" I said.
"I'm sure," he said.
"Whose decision is it?" I asked him.
"The mayor's," Finlay said. "Town mayor appoints the chief of police. He's coming over. Guy named Teale. Some kind of an old Georgia family. Some ancestor was a railroad baron who owned everything in sight around here."
"Is that the guy you've got statues of?" I said.
Finlay nodded.
"Caspar Teale," he said. "He was the first. They've had Teales here ever since. This mayor must be the great-grandson or something."