The Essential Jack Reacher 12-Book Bundle

by Lee Child

  “Maybe it wasn’t a good unit.”

  “It was.”

  “So maybe it’s about to ship out.”

  “It just shipped back in. It just spent a year under the sun. The guy I spoke to had squint lines like you wouldn’t believe. His gear was worn from the sand.”

  “We have sand here.”

  “Not like that.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  The waitress came by and Reacher ordered coffee. Vaughan’s cup was still full. Reacher said, “I’m asking why they pulled a good unit out of the Middle East and sent it here.”

  Vaughan said, “I don’t know why. The Pentagon doesn’t explain itself to neighboring police departments.”

  The waitress brought a cup for Reacher and filled it from a Bunn flask. Vaughan asked, “What does a combat MP unit do exactly?”

  Reacher took a sip of coffee and said, “It guards things. Convoys or installations. It maintains security and repels attacks.”

  “Actual fighting?”

  “When necessary.”

  “Did you do that?”

  “Some of the time.”

  Vaughan opened her mouth and then closed it again as her mind supplied the answer to the question she was about to ask.

  “Exactly,” Reacher said. “What’s to defend in Despair?”

  “And you’re saying these MPs made you drive on through?”

  “It was safer. They would have checked your plate if I hadn’t.”

  “Did you get through OK?”

  “Your truck is fine. Although it’s not exactly yours, is it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who is David Robert Vaughan?”

  She looked blank for a second. Then she said, “You looked in the glove box. The registration.”

  “A man with a gun wanted to see it.”

  “Good reason.”

  “So who is David Robert?”

  Vaughan said, “My husband.”

  25

  Reacher said, “I didn’t know you were married.” Vaughan turned her attention to her lukewarm coffee and took a long time to answer.

  “That’s because I didn’t tell you,” she said. “Would you expect me to?”

  “Not really, I suppose.”

  “Don’t I look married?”

  “Not one little bit.”

  “You can tell just by looking?”

  “Usually.”

  “How?”

  “Fourth finger, left hand, for a start.”

  “Lucy Anderson doesn’t wear a ring either.”

  Reacher nodded. “I think I saw her husband today.”

  “In Despair?”

  “Coming out of the rooming house.”

  “That’s way off Main Street.”

  “I was dodging roadblocks.”

  “Terrific.”

  “Not one of my main talents.”

  “So how did they not catch you? They’ve got one road in and one road out.”

  “Long story,” Reacher said.

  “But?”

  “The Despair PD is temporarily understaffed.”

  “You took one of them out?”

  “Both of them. And their cars.”

  “You’re completely unbelievable.”

  “No, I’m a man with a rule. People leave me alone, I leave them alone. If they don’t, I don’t.”

  “They’ll come looking for you here.”

  “No question. But not soon.”

  “How long?”

  “They’ll be hurting for a couple of days. Then they’ll saddle up.”

  Reacher left her alone with her truck keys on the table in front of her and walked down to Third Street and bought socks and underwear and a dollar T-shirt in an old-fashioned outfitters next to a supermarket. He stopped in at a pharmacy and bought shaving gear and then headed up to the hardware store at the western end of First Street. He picked his way past ladders and wheelbarrows and wound through aisles filled with racks of tools and found a rail of canvas work pants and flannel shirts. Traditional American garments, made in China and Cambodia, respectively. He chose dark olive pants and a mud-colored check shirt. Not as cheap as he would have liked, but not outrageous. The clerk folded them up into a brown paper bag and he carried it back to the motel and shaved and took a long shower and dried off and dressed in the new stuff. He crammed his old gray janitor uniform in the trash receptacle.

  Better than doing laundry.

  The new clothes were as stiff as boards, to the point where walking around was difficult. Clearly the Far Eastern garment industry took durability very seriously. He did squats and bicep curls until the starch cracked and then he stepped out and walked down the row to Lucy Anderson’s door. He knocked and waited. A minute later she opened up. She looked just the same. Long legs, short shorts, plain blue sweatshirt. Young, and vulnerable. And wary, and hostile. She said, “I asked you to leave me alone.”

  He said, “I’m pretty sure I saw your husband today.”

  Her face softened, just for a second.

  “Where?” she asked.

  “In Despair. Looks like he’s got a room there.”

  “Was he OK?”

  “He looked fine to me.”

  “What are you going to do about him?”

  “What would you like me to do about him?”

  Her face closed up again. “You should leave him alone.”

  “I am leaving him alone. I told you, I’m not a cop anymore. I’m a vagrant, just like you.”

  “So why would you go back to Despair?”

  “Long story. I had to.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re a cop.”

  “You saw what was in my pockets.”

  “You left your badge in your room.”

  “I didn’t. You want to check? My room is right here.”

  She stared at him in panic and put both hands on the door jambs like he was about to seize her around her waist and drag her away to his quarters. The motel clerk stepped out of the office, forty feet to Reacher’s left. She was a stout woman of about fifty. She saw Reacher and saw the girl and stopped walking and watched. Then she moved again but changed direction and started heading toward them. In Reacher’s experience motel clerks were either nosy about or else completely uninterested in their guests. He figured this one was the nosy kind. He stepped back a pace and gave Lucy Anderson some air and held up his hands, palms out, friendly and reassuring.

  “Relax,” he said. “If I was here to hurt you, you’d already be hurt by now, don’t you think? You and your husband.”

  She didn’t answer. Just turned her head and saw the clerk’s approach and then ducked back to the inside shadows and slammed her door, all in one neat move. Reacher turned away but knew he wasn’t going to make it in time. The clerk was already within calling distance.

  “Excuse me,” she said.

  Reacher stopped. Turned back. Said nothing.

  The woman said, “You should leave that girl alone.”

  “Should I?”

  “If you want to stay here.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “I try to maintain standards.”

  “I’m trying to help her.”

  “She thinks the exact opposite.”

  “You’ve talked?”

  “I hear things.”

  “I’m not a cop.”

  “You look like a cop.”

  “I can’t help that.”

  “You should investigate some real crimes.”

  Reacher said, “I’m not investigating any kind of crimes. I told you, I’m not a cop.”

  The woman didn’t answer.

  Reacher asked, “What real crimes?”

  “Violations.”

  “Where?”

  “At the metal plant in Despair.”

  “What kind of violations?”

  “All kinds.”

  “I don’t care about violations. I’m not an EPA inspector. I’m not any kind of an inspector.”r />
  The woman said, “Then you should ask yourself why that plane flies every night.”

  26

  Reacher got halfway back to his room and saw Vaughan’s old pick-up turn in off the street. It was moving fast. It bounced up over the curb and headed through the lot straight at him. Vaughan was at the wheel in her cop uniform. Incongruous. And urgent. She hadn’t taken time to go fetch her official cruiser. She braked hard and stopped with her radiator grille an inch away from him. She leaned out the window and said, “Get in, now.”

  Reacher asked, “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “None at all.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m not kidding.”

  “Are you arresting me?”

  “I’m prepared to. I’ll use my gun and my cuffs if that’s what it takes. Just get in the car.”

  Reacher studied her face through the windshield glass. She was serious about something. And determined. That was for sure. The evidence was right there in the set of her jaw. So he climbed in. Vaughan waited until he closed his door behind him and asked, “You ever done a ride-along with a cop before? All night? A whole watch?”

  “Why would I? I was a cop.”

  “Well, whatever, you’re doing one tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “We got a courtesy call. From Despair. You’re a wanted man. They’re coming for you. So tonight you stay where I can see you.”

  “They can’t be coming for me. They can’t even have woken up yet.”

  “Their deputies are coming. All four of them.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what deputies do. They deputize.”

  “So I hide in your car? All night?”

  “Damn straight.”

  “You think I need protection?”

  “My town needs protection. I don’t want trouble here.”

  “Those four won’t be any trouble. One of them is already busted up and one was throwing his guts up the last time I saw him.”

  “So you could take them?”

  “With one hand behind my back and my head in a bag.”

  “Exactly. I’m a cop. I have a responsibility. No fighting in my streets. It’s unseemly.” She pulled a tight U-turn in the motel lot and headed back the way she had come. Reacher asked, “When will they get here?”

  “The plant shuts down at six. I imagine they’ll head right over.”

  “How long will they stay?”

  “The plant opens up again at six tomorrow morning.”

  Reacher said, “You don’t want me in your car all night.”

  “I’ll do what it takes. Like I said. This is a decent place. I’m not going to let it get trashed, either literally or metaphorically.”

  Reacher paused and said, “I could leave town.”

  “Permanently?” Vaughan asked.

  “Temporarily.”

  “And go where?”

  “Despair, obviously. I can’t get in trouble there, can I? Their cops are in the hospital and their deputies will be here all night.”

  Vaughan made a right and a left and headed down Second Street toward the diner. She stayed quiet for a moment and then she said, “There’s another one in town today.”

  “Another what?”

  “Another girl. Just like Lucy Anderson. But dark, not blonde. She blew in this afternoon and now she’s sitting around and staring west like she’s waiting for word from Despair.”

  “From a boyfriend or a husband?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Possibly a dead boyfriend or husband, Caucasian, about twenty years old, five-eight and one-forty.”

  “Possibly.”

  “I should go there.”

  Vaughan drove past the diner and kept on driving. She drove two blocks south and came back east on Fourth Street. No real reason. Just motion, for the sake of it. Fourth Street had trees and retail establishments behind the north sidewalk and trees and a long line of neat homes behind the south. Small yards, picket fences, foundation plantings, mailboxes on poles that had settled to every angle except the truly vertical.

  “I should go there,” Reacher said again.

  “Wait until the deputies get here. You don’t want to pass them on the road.”

  “OK.”

  “And don’t let them see you leave.”

  “OK.”

  “And don’t make trouble over there.”

  “I’m not sure there’s anybody left to make trouble with. Unless I meet the judge.”

  27

  For the second time that day Vaughan gave up her pick-up truck and walked home to get her cruiser. Reacher drove the truck to a quiet side street and parked facing north in the shadow of a tree and watched the traffic on First Street directly ahead of him. He had a limited field of view. But there wasn’t much to see, anyway. Whole ten-minute periods passed without visible activity. Not surprising. Residents returning from the Kansas direction would have peeled off into town down earlier streets. And no one in their right mind was returning from Despair, or heading there. The daylight was fading fast. The world was going gray and still. The clock in Reacher’s head was ticking around, relentlessly.

  When it hit six-thirty-two he saw an old crew-cab pick-up truck flash through his field of vision. Moving smartly, from the Despair direction. A driver, and three passengers inside. Big men, close together. They filled the cramped quarters, shoulder to shoulder.

  Reacher recognized the truck.

  He recognized the driver.

  He recognized the passengers.

  The Despair deputies, right on time.

  He paused a beat and started the old Chevy’s engine and moved off the curb. He eased north to First Street and turned left. Checked his mirror. The old crew-cab was already a hundred yards behind him, moving away in the opposite direction, slowing down and getting ready to turn. The road ahead was empty. He passed the hardware store and hit the gas and forced the old truck up to sixty miles an hour. Five minutes later he thumped over the expansion joint and settled in to a noisy cruise west.

  Twelve miles later he coasted past the vacant lot and the shuttered motor court and the gas station and the household goods store and then he turned left into Despair’s downtown maze. First port of call was the police station. He wanted to be sure that no miraculous recoveries had been made, and that no replacement personnel had been provided.

  They hadn’t, and they hadn’t.

  The place was dark inside and quiet outside. No lights, no activity. There were no cars at the curb. No stand-in State Police cruisers, no newly-deputized pick-up trucks, no plain sedans with temporary Police signs stickered on their doors.

  Nothing.

  Just silence.

  Reacher smiled. Open season and lawless, he thought, like a bleak view of the future in a movie. The way he liked it. He U-turned through the empty diagonal parking slots and headed back toward the rooming house. He parked on the curb out front and killed the motor and wound the window down. Heard a single aero engine in the far distance, climbing hard. Seven o’clock in the evening. The Cessna or the Beech or the Piper, taking off again. You should ask yourself why that plane flies every night, the motel clerk had said.

  Maybe I will, Reacher thought. One day.

  He climbed out of the truck. The rooming house was built of dull brick, on a corner lot. Three stories high, narrow windows, flat roof, four stone steps up to a doorway set off center in the façade. There was a wooden board on the wall next to the door, under a swan-neck lamp with a dim bulb. The board had been painted maroon way back in its history, and the words Rooms to Rent had been lettered in white over the maroon by a careful amateur. A plain and to-the-point announcement. Not the kind of place Reacher favored. Such establishments implied residency for longer periods than he was interested in. Generally they rented by the week, and had electric cooking rings in the rooms. Practically the same thing as setting up housekeeping.

  He
went up the stone steps and pushed the front door. It was open. Behind it was a square hallway with a brown linoleum floor and a steep staircase on the right. The walls were painted brown with some kind of a trick effect that matched the swirls in the linoleum. A bare bulb was burning dimly a foot below the ceiling. The air smelled of dust and cabbage. There were four interior doors, all dull green, all closed. Two were in back and two were in front, one at the foot of the staircase and the other directly opposite it across the hallway. Two front rooms, one of which would house the owner or the super. In Reacher’s experience the owner or the super always chose a ground-floor room at the front, to monitor entrances and exits. Entrances and exits were very important to owners and supers. Unauthorized guests and multiple occupancies were to be discouraged, and tenants had been known to try to sneak out quietly just before final payment of long-overdue rent had been promised.

  He opted to start with the door at the foot of the staircase. Better surveillance potential. He knocked and waited. A long moment later the door opened and revealed a thin man in a white shirt and a black tie. The guy was close to seventy years old, and his hair was the same color as his shirt. The shirt wasn’t clean. Neither was the tie, but it had been carefully knotted.

  “Help you?” the old guy said.

  “Is this your place?” Reacher asked.

  The old guy nodded. “And my mother’s before me. In the family for close to fifty years.”

  “I’m looking for a friend of mine,” Reacher said. “From California. I heard he was staying here.”

  No reply from the old man.

  “Young guy,” Reacher said. “Maybe twenty. Very big. Tan, with short hair.”

  “Nobody like that here.”

  “You sure?”

  “Nobody here at all.”

  “He was seen stepping out your door this afternoon.”

  “Maybe he was visiting.”

  “Visiting who, if there’s nobody here at all?”

  “Visiting me,” the old man said.

  “Did he visit you?”

  “I don’t know. I was out. Maybe he knocked on my door and got no reply and left again.”

  “Why would he have been knocking on your door?”