‘Reacher’ Episode 4 Recap: “In a Tree”

When Reacher smoked the two South American guys gunning for him at the end of Reacher Episode 3, it was with the assumption that he’d use the trunk of their sedan as a dead henchman storage facility. But that plan hits a snag as Reacher Episode 4 (“In a Tree”) begins, because the trunk is already occupied by corrupt prison guard Spivey, his eyes a blank beneath the bullet hole in his forehead. Reacher, undeterred, stuffs them in anyway, and to make them fit, he snaps a few limbs backward like so many garlic breadsticks. “Any luck finding Spivey?” Finlay asks over the phone. “Dead end.”

Alongside the ever-increasing body count, Reacher, Finlay, and Roscoe are finally making some progress. They’ve recovered Reacher’s brother Joe’s rental vehicle on a rural route outside of Margave, where it was burned to a crisp with accelerant and hidden in a thicket. They’ve also discovered that Hubble, the supposed currency manager at an Atlanta bank, hasn’t worked there for a year and was lying to his wife about it. And Molly Beth, Joe’s colleague at Secret Service, has collated his files on the Margrave counterfeiting case and is set to fly into Hartsfield to hand-deliver them personally. It’s a handful of loose ends that all lead one place, and the connections back to Kliner and his shady corporate portfolio only increase when Reacher and Roscoe investigate Jobling, the dead driver for Kliner Industries. He paid off his parents’ mortgage, and lived with his wife in a sunny and spacious modern home. Not like she’s happy, though. “You know any other trucker drivers with a place like this? I warned him over and over that it was gonna catch up to him.” And those empty air conditioner boxes in Jobling’s garage? A great cover, if you’re actually hauling loads of funny money between Margrave and the Florida coast.

When Reacher enlisted Roscoe to help him dispose of the henchmen and their vehicle, she challenged him on the obvious exit wounds in their chests. Did he shoot them in the back? The answer is yes. “This isn’t the movies,” a resolute Reacher says. “I had a chance to kill them, and I did.” For Reacher, deadly force is a skill, and occasionally a necessity. But you also get the sense he enjoys it. He tells Roscoe a story from his time in the first Gulf War. Some men were abusing boys in a local village; he told them to report to the authorities, or else. They chose the latter. “So, you have a problem with me killing people who hurt children?” Reacher asks Roscoe. “‘Cause I want to know what kind of person I’m working with.”

Protector or aggressor. As another flashback reveals, these two sides of Reacher’s rigid moral code were established in his youth, when he served as both alongside his brother. And since she aligns herself at least somewhere on the same axis, it’s on a point in between protection and aggression that Roscoe finds time to join Reacher in their hotel room shower. This is the second time they’ve shared a room, and the suggestion of before has given way to mutual attraction. But hey, they’re not gonna let any hanky-panky distract them from the matter at hand. Who killed Joe, and who’s running the counterfeit show? They operate a brief sleight-of-hand in order to deposit the dead henchman storage facility in long-term parking at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport (“It’s like Tetris,” Roscoe says when she sees Reacher’s handiwork with the folded-up corpses), and rendezvous with Finlay’s FBI pal Picard, who gives them the location of the motel where Joe had been staying. And while they recover some crucial evidence there, another set of Kliner’s hired goons are there waiting for them. A brief shootout later, and two more South American henchmen have bought the farm.

Kliner. With every new clue – or new death – his influence over all of this is steadily revealed. But there’s nothing direct, and he’s still untouchable. Mayor Teale, indulging in his capacity as self-appointed chief of police, runs even more interference on Finlay. He threatens the detective’s job and career if Kliner is provoked any further. “And that rule is as hard as the tip of my walking stick.” Ew, gross. Finlay takes Teale’s slimeball antics in stride, and connects with Reacher and Roscoe on the information they recovered from Joe’s belongings. There are cryptic references to Hubble and Kliner, and to Jobling’s garage, where Reacher and Roscoe have already been. But there are also phone numbers, one leading to the Environmental Protection Agency office in Memphis and two more connecting to economics professors at Princeton and Columbia. Reacher hopes Molly Beth’s arrival with his brother’s files will help tie these strings together. She does arrive, and flushes with joy at the sight of Reacher – he looks just like his fallen brother. But two minutes later Molly Beth is dead, bleeding out in Reacher’s arms with the files in the wind. Kliner’s minions got to her first.

REACHER FEATURES:

• When Roscoe and Finlay want to check out the VIN plate on what’s left of Joe’s rental, it’s obscured by soot and burnt steel. Reacher then employs a lifehack from his Army days. “When you run out of gun oil, acetic acid from ketchup and salt for abrasion make a great metal cleaner.” We can assume Reacher never runs out of ketchup.
• When Roscoe checks into their Atlanta hotel under the name “Eudora Welty,” Reacher notes the literary reference (“I like short stories, they get right to the point”) and ups the ante with a Margaret “Gone With the Wind” Mitchell name drop. And that leads to an extended meditation on fake names used for cover. Where Roscoe prefers Southern authors, Reacher likes forgotten vice presidents and second basemen for the New York Yankees. It doesn’t stop there. Joe’s preferred source for pseudonyms? Yankees backup catchers. He booked his motel room in Margrave under the name of Ron Hassey, who appeared in 156 games for the Yankees between 1985 and 1986, batting .297 with 19 home runs and 71 RBI.
• Soundtracking Reacher and Roscoe’s steamy shower hookup is a relative deep cut of Chicago electric blues. The King Curtis-penned song “Let Me Down Easy” is performed by blues guitarist Steve Freund & vocalist Gloria Hardiman and taken from their 1983 album Set Me Free, which Delmark reissued in 2014.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges