Series 1 - Killing Floor Plot
Jack Reacher gets off a Greyhound bus in the town of Margrave, Georgia, because he remembers his brother mentioning that a blues musician named Blind Blake had died there. Much to his surprise, shortly after his arrival, he is arrested in a local diner for murder on the orders of the sheriff, Morrison, who falsely claims he saw Reacher leave the scene.
While in custody,
Reacher meets Finlay, the chief of detectives, and Roscoe, a female officer who
believes him to be innocent. Reacher persuades Finlay to call a number on a
piece of paper found in the dead man's shoe; the number leads them to Paul
Hubble, a retired banker who instantly confesses to the murder. Before Reacher
can be released, he and Hubble are transferred to a state prison in Warburton,
where Reacher manages to thwart an attempt on their lives by the Aryan Brotherhood.
Suspecting that the deputy warden set them up, Reacher joins Finlay's
investigation, while Hubble is presumed dead after vanishing from his house in
the middle of the day.
Reacher learns that the
murdered man is his brother, Joe, who was running an investigation into a counterfeiting ring operated by the Kliner family under
the protection of Morrison, several dirty cops, and the corrupt mayor, Grover
Teale. A second body, belonging to truck driver Sherman Stoller, is found, and
Morrison and his wife are brutally murdered shortly thereafter. Roscoe
theorizes that the Kliners are using Margrave as a distribution hub for their
counterfeit money, but this is eventually disproven when Reacher searches one
of their trucks and finds it empty. He then realizes that the opposite is true:
the Kliners have been hoarding the money in response to a Coast Guard operation
cutting off their supply of bills from Venezuela, and plan to resume distribution once the operation
is shut down as a cost-saving measure.
Sending Hubble's family
into hiding to protect them from Kliner, Reacher kills his son and several
other associates after luring them into an ambush. He then informs Finlay of
the secret behind Kliner's operation, which his brother had been trying to
prove: to obtain the special paper required to make undetectable forgeries, the
criminals had employed Hubble to collect hundreds of thousands of used $1 bills and
send them to ports in Florida through
Stoller and other drivers, whereupon they would be bleached in Venezuela to
remove the ink and then used to make forged $100 bills. However, when they
return to Margrave, they are taken captive by Kliner, Teale, and Finlay's FBI contact
Picard, who reveals that he's been keeping track of their progress, and has
Roscoe and Hubble's family in his custody. Kliner reveals that Hubble isn't
dead, but in hiding, and threatens to kill his hostages unless Reacher finds
him.
En route, Reacher stages a distraction and kills Picard's
escorts, before apparently shooting him dead. He then locates Hubble in a
nearby motel, and brings him back to Margrave. Finding the criminals gone, they
spring Finlay from captivity in the police station and set it on fire, before
locating the hostages at Kliner's warehouse. Reacher kills a dirty cop named
Baker, shoots Teale and Kliner, and sets fire to the rest of their money. A
wounded Picard shows up and beats Reacher down, but Finlay distracts him long
enough for Reacher to kill him. The group then escapes as the warehouse
explodes, and Reacher ends up spending the night with Roscoe. Realizing that
his actions will attract a lot of unwanted attention from the authorities,
Reacher decides to leave Georgia. Roscoe gives him one last gift: a picture of
his brother retrieved from one of Kliner's victims.
