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“No lies, no omissions, no obfuscations?”
“I swear.”
“OK, my boss will ask the questions. You ready?”
“Yes.”
Turner asked him, “What’s your last name, Hugo?”
“Blackwell.”
“Hugo Blackwell,” she repeated. “You sent two brothers from Denver to Summertown.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Too late for sorry. You sent two more guys to our motel on El Camino Real, plus three more to the Four Seasons up in San Francisco, plus four more to the Sequoia Suites. And then one last guy to my house outside of D.C.”
“I’m sorry,” Hugo said again.
“I told you, it’s too late for sorry. Unless you mean you’re sorry for yourself, now the chickens are coming home to roost. That would be understandable. Is that what you mean?”
“I guess.”
“You made a lot of bad choices in your life.”
“I guess,” Hugo said again.
“Where did you go to law school?”
“Southwestern.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s in L.A.”
“Is it a high ranking school?”
“Not very.”
“What were your aims and ambitions at the time?”
“To make a living, I guess.”
“Not to fight for justice for the little guy?”
“I figured commercial law was the way to go.”
“So you’re selfish and greedy as well as poorly educated. Do I have that right?”
“I guess.”
“Who is your client?”
Hugo didn’t answer. He just sat in silence, staring ahead through the windshield at the rushing darkness ahead.
Reacher asked Elwood, “How far to the place with the funeral home?”
Elwood checked the figures at the bottom of his screen and said, “About another ten miles. Some of them will be slow, on fire roads. Call it thirty minutes.”
