by Lee Child
He climbed out and took a leak against the pine’s ancient trunk. Then he ate and drank from his meager supplies, and he pushed his palms against his aching back, and he stretched again to work out the kinks. The sky was brightening. It was his favorite time for a run to the border. Light enough to see, too early for company. Ideal. He had just twenty miles to go, most of them on an unmapped forest track, to a point a little less than four thousand yards north of the line. The transfer zone, he called it. The end of the road for him, but not for his cargo.
He climbed back in the cab and started the engine. He let it warm and settle for a minute while he checked the dials and the gauges. Then he selected first gear, and released the parking brake, and turned the wheel, and moved away slowly, at walking speed, lurching and bouncing down the rough grassy track.
Reacher heard sounds at the end of the hallway. A toilet flushing, a faucet running, a door opening, a door closing. Then the doctor came limping past the dining room, stiff with sleep, mute with morning. He nodded as he passed, and he skirted the football players, and he headed for the kitchen. A minute later Reacher heard the gulp and hiss of the coffee machine. The sun was up enough to show a reflection in the window of the SUV parked beyond the fence. Webs of frost were glinting and glittering in the fields.
The doctor came in with two mugs of coffee. He was dressed in a sweater over pajamas. His hair was uncombed. The damage on his face was lost in general redness. He put one mug in front of Reacher and threaded his way around and sat in a chair on the opposite side of the table.
He said, “Good morning.”
Reacher said nothing.
The doctor asked, “How’s your nose?”
Reacher said, “Terrific.”
The doctor said, “There’s something you never told me.”
Reacher said, “There are many things I never told you.”
“You said twenty-five years ago the detective neglected to search somewhere. You said because of ignorance or confusion.”
Reacher nodded, and took a sip of his coffee.
The doctor asked, “Is that where you’re going this morning?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Will you find anything there after twenty-five years?”
“Probably not.”
“Then why are you going?”
“Because I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“I don’t follow.”
“I hope you never have to. I hope I’m wrong.”
“Where is this place we’re talking about?”
“Mrs. Coe told me that fifty years ago two farms were sold for a development that never happened. The outbuildings from one of them are still there. Way out in a field. A barn, and a smaller shed.”
The doctor nodded. “I know where they are.”
“People plow right up to them.”
“I know,” the doctor said. “I guess they shouldn’t, but why let good land go to waste? The subdivisions were never built, and they’re never going to be. So it’s something for nothing, and God knows these people need it. It’s yield that doesn’t show up on their mortgages.”
“So when Detective Carson came up here twenty-five years ago, what did he see? In the early summer? He saw about a million acres of waist-high corn, and he saw some houses dotted around here and there, and he saw some outbuildings dotted around here and there. He stopped in at every house, and every occupant said they’d searched their outbuildings. So Carson went away again, and that old barn and that old shed fell right between the cracks. Because Carson’s question was, did you search your outbuildings? Everyone said yes, probably quite truthfully. And Carson saw the old barn and the old shed and quite naturally assumed they must belong to someone, and that therefore they had indeed been looked at, as promised. But they didn’t belong to anyone, and they hadn’t been looked at.”
“You think that was the scene of the crime?”
“I think Carson should have asked that question twenty-five years ago.”
“There won’t be anything there. There can’t be. Those buildings are ruins now, and they must have been ruins then. They’ve been sitting there empty for fifty years, in the middle of nowhere, just moldering away.”
“Have they?”
“Of course. You said it yourself, they don’t belong to anyone.”
“Then why have they got wheel ruts all the way to the door?”
“Have they?”
Reacher nodded. “I hid a truck in the smaller shed my first night. No problem getting there. I’ve seen worse roads in New York City.”
“Old ruts? Or new ruts?”
“Hard to tell. Both, probably. Many years’ worth, I would say. Quite deep, quite well established. No weeds. Not much traffic, probably, but some. Some kind of regularity. Enough to keep the ruts in shape, anyway.”
“I don’t understand. Who would use those places now? And for what?”
Reacher said nothing. He was looking out the window. The light was getting stronger. The fields were turning from gray to brown. The parked pick-up beyond the fence was all lit up by low rays.
The doctor asked, “So you think someone scooped the kid up and drove her to that barn?”
“I’m not sure anymore,” Reacher said. “They were harvesting alfalfa at the time, and there will have been plenty of trucks on the road. And I’m guessing this whole place felt a bit happier back then. More energetic. People doing this and that, going here and there. The roads were probably a little busier than they are now. Probably a lot busier. Maybe even too busy to risk scooping a kid up against her will in broad daylight.”
“So what do you think happened to her?”
Reacher didn’t answer. He was still looking out the window. He could see the knots in the fence timbers. He could see clumps of frozen weeds at the base of the posts. The front lawn was dry and brittle with cold.
Reacher said, “You’re not much of a gardener.”
“No talent,” the doctor said. “No time.”
“Does anyone garden?”
“Not really. People are too tired. And working farmers hardly ever garden. They grow stuff to sell, not to look at.”
“OK.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I’m asking myself, if I was a little girl with a bicycle, and I loved flowers, where would I go to see some? No point coming to a house like this, for instance. Or any house, probably. Or anywhere at all, really, because every last inch of ground is plowed for cash crops. I can think of just three possibilities. I saw two big rocks in the fields, with brambles around them. Nice wildflowers in the early summer, probably. There may be more just like them, but it doesn’t matter anyway, because in the early summer they would be completely inaccessible, because you’d have to wade a mile through growing corn just to get to them. But there was one other place I saw the same kind of brambles.”
“Where was that?”
“Around the base of that old barn. Windblown seeds, I guess. People plow close, but they leave some space.”
“You think she rode there on her own?”
“I think it’s possible. Maybe she knew the one place she was sure to see flowers. And maybe someone knew she knew.”
Chapter 51
The Duncans had moved on to Jonas’s kitchen, because the taped window in Jasper’s was leaking cold air, and the burning fabric in the stove was making smoke and smells. They had stopped drinking bourbon and had started drinking coffee. The sun was up and the day was already forty minutes old. Jacob Duncan checked the clock on the wall and said, “The sun is up in Canada too. Dawn was about ten minutes ago. I bet the shipment is already rolling. I know that boy. He likes an early start. He’s a good man. He doesn’t waste time. The transfer will be happening soon.”
The road that led south from Medicine Hat petered out after Pakowki Lake. The blacktop surface finished with a ragged edge, and then there was a quarter-mile of exposed roadbed, just crushed stone bound with tar, and then that finished too, in a forest c
learing with no apparent exit. But the white van lined up between two pines and drove over stunted underbrush and found itself on a rutted track, once wide, now neglected, a firebreak running due south, designed with flames and westerly winds in mind. The van rolled slowly, tipping left and right, its wheels moving up and down independently, like walking. Ahead of it was nothing but trees, and then the Montana town of Hogg Parish. But the van would stop halfway there, a little more than two miles short of the border, at the northern limit of the safe zone, exactly symmetrical with its opposite number in America, which was no doubt already in place and waiting, all fresh and energetic and ready for the last leg of the journey.
The doctor went back to the kitchen and returned with more coffee. He said, “It could have been an accident. Maybe she went inside the barn.”
Reacher said, “With her bicycle?”
“It’s possible. We don’t know enough about her. Some kids would dump a bike on the track, and others would wheel it inside. It’s a matter of personality. Then she might have injured herself on something in there. Or gotten stuck. The door is jammed now. Maybe it was balky then. She could have gotten trapped. No one would have heard her shouting.”
“And then what?”
“An eight-year-old without food or water, she wouldn’t have lasted long.”
“Not a pleasant thought,” Reacher said.
“But preferable to some of the alternatives.”
“Maybe.”
“Or she might have gotten hit by a truck. Or a car. On the way over there. You said it yourself, the roads could have been busy. Maybe the driver panicked and hid the body. And the bike with it.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. In that barn, or miles away. In another county. Another state, even. Maybe that’s why nothing was ever found.”
“Maybe,” Reacher said again.
The doctor went quiet.
Reacher said, “Now there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“There’s time.”
“How much?”
“Probably half an hour.”
“Before what?”
“The other three Cornhuskers will come here for breakfast. Their buddies are here, so this is their temporary base. They’ll make my wife cook for them. They enjoy feudal stuff like that.”
“I figured,” Reacher said. “I’ll be ready.”
“One of them is the guy who broke your nose.”
“I know.”
The doctor said nothing.
Reacher said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“What?”
“Is your garage like your garden or like your television set?”
“More like my television set.”
“That’s good. So turn around and watch the road. I’ll be back in ten.” Reacher picked up the Remington and found his way through the kitchen to the mud room lobby. He found the door that led to the garage. It was a big space, empty because the Subaru was still at the motel, and neat and clean, with a swept floor and no visible chaos. There were shelving racks all along one wall, loaded with the stuff that hadn’t been in the basement. There was a workbench along a second wall, well organized, again neat and clean, with a vise, and a full-width peg-board above, loaded with tools logically arrayed.
Reacher unloaded the Remington, five remaining shells from the magazine and one from the breech. He turned the gun upside down and clamped it in the vise. He found an electric jigsaw and fitted a woodcutting blade. He plugged it in and fired it up and put the dancing blade on the walnut and sawed off the shoulder stock, first with a straight cut across the narrowest point, and then again along a curving line that mirrored the front contour of the pistol grip. Two more passes put a rough chamfer on each raw edge, and then he found a rasp and cleaned the whole thing up, with twists of walnut falling away like grated chocolate, and then he finished the job with a foam pad covered with coarse abrasive. He blew off the dust and rubbed his palm along the result, and he figured it was satisfactory.
He swapped the jigsaw blade for a metal cutter, a fine blued thing with tiny teeth, and he laid it against the barrel an inch in front of the forestock. The saw screeched and screamed and howled and the last foot of the barrel fell off and rang like a bell against the floor. He found a metal file and cleaned the burrs of steel off the new muzzle, inside and out. He released the vise and lifted the gun out and pumped it twice, crunch-crunch, crunch-crunch, and then he reloaded it, five in the magazine and one in the breech. A sawn-off with a pistol grip, not much longer than his forearm.
He found the coat closet on his way back through the house and retrieved his winter parka. The Glock and the switchblade were still in the pockets, along with the two screwdrivers and the wrench. He used the switchblade to slit the lining inside the left-hand pocket, so the sawn-off would go all the way in. He put the coat on. Then he unlocked the front door, and went back to the dining room to wait.
The Cornhuskers came in separately, one by one, the first of them right on time, exactly thirty minutes after the doctor had spoken, in a black pick-up truck he left on the road. He jogged up the driveway and pushed in through the door like he owned the place, and Reacher laid him out with a vicious blow to the back of the head, from behind, with the wrench. The guy dropped to his knees and toppled forward on his face. Reacher invested a little time and effort in dragging him onward across the shiny wood, and then he taped him up, quick and dirty, not a permanent job, but enough for the moment. The crunch of the wrench and the thump of the guy falling and Reacher’s grunting and groaning woke the doctor’s wife and Dorothy Coe. They came out of their rooms wearing bathrobes. The doctor’s wife looked at the new guy on the floor and said, “I guess they’re coming in for breakfast.”
Reacher said, “But today they’re not getting any.”
Dorothy Coe asked, “What about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow is a new day. How well do you know Eleanor Duncan?”
“She’s not to blame for anything.”
“She’ll be hauling your harvest this year. She’s going to be in charge.”
Dorothy Coe said nothing.
The doctor’s wife said, “You want us to stay out of the way?”
“Might be safer,” Reacher said. “You don’t want one of these guys falling on you.”
“Another one coming,” the doctor called from the dining room, soft and urgent.
The second guy went down exactly the same as the first, and in the same place. There was no room left to drag him forward. Reacher folded his legs at the knees so the door would close, and then he taped him up right there.
The last to arrive was the guy who had broken Reacher’s nose.
And he didn’t come alone.
Chapter 52
A white SUV parked on the road beyond the fence, and the guy who had broken Reacher’s nose climbed out of the driver’s seat. Then the passenger door opened and the kid called John got out. The kid Reacher had left at the depot. Go to bed, Reacher had said. But the kid hadn’t gone to bed. He had hung out until he heard that things were safe, and then he had come out to claim his share of the fun.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
The hallway was almost too crowded to move. It was full of football players, four of them lying around like carcasses, like beached whales, limbs taped, heads flopping. Reacher picked his way around them and watched out a window. The two late arrivals were making their way past Dorothy Coe’s pick-up, past John’s own Yukon, hustling through the damp and the cold, heading for the door, full of high spirits.
Reacher opened the door and stepped out to meet them head-on. He drew his sawn-off across his body, a long high exaggerated movement like a pirate drawing an ancient flintlock pistol, and he held it right-handed, elbow bent and comfortable, and he aimed it at the guy who had hit him. But he looked at John.
“You let me down,” he said.
Both guys came to a dead stop and stared at him a little more urgently than he thought was warranted, until he remem
bered the duct tape on his face. Like war paint. He smiled and felt it pucker. He looked back at the guy who had hit him and said, “It was nothing that couldn’t be fixed. But I’m not certain you’ll be able to say the same.”
Neither guy spoke. Reacher kept his eyes on the guy who had hit him and said, “Take out your car keys and toss them to me.”
The guy said, “What?”
“I’m bored with John’s Yukon. I’m going to use your truck the rest of the day.”
“You think?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
No response.
Reacher said, “It’s make-your-mind-up-time, boys. Either do what I tell you, or get shot.”
The guy dipped into his pocket and came out with a bunch of keys. He held them up briefly, to prove what they were, and then he tossed them underhand to Reacher, who made no attempt to catch them. They bounced off his coat and landed on the gravel. Reacher wanted his left hand free and his attention all in one place. He looked at the guy again and asked, “So how does your nose feel right now?”
The guy said, “It feels OK.”
“It looks like it has been busted before.”
The guy said, “Two times.”
Reacher said, “Well, they say three is a lucky number. They say the third time’s the charm.”
Nobody spoke.
Reacher said, “John, lie facedown on the ground.”