by Lee Child
So were these guys really from Philly? Or did King mean a metro area? In which case Philadelphia was too big, but all kinds of other places would slide up the scale and become possibilities. Columbus would fit the bill, maybe, or Las Vegas, or Milwaukee, or San Antonio, or the Norfolk–Virginia Beach–Newport News sprawl.
But not anyplace in Nebraska.
Not even close.
And why wasn’t Karen Delfuenso talking? She had said I’ve got one, about the aspirin, and she had said her name during the mutual introductions, and then she had said nothing more. Reacher himself was quite capable of silence for hours at a time, but even he had been making an effort in terms of polite conversation. Delfuenso looked like the kind of woman who would join in with such social proprieties. But she hadn’t.
Why not?
Not my problem, Reacher thought. His problem was to get himself on a bus to Virginia, and he was closing in on that target at close to eighty miles an hour, more than a hundred feet a second. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.
Julia Sorenson hopped around outside the bunker and peeled her plastic booties off, and then she sealed them in a bag with her gloves. Evidence, possibly, and certainly a biohazard. Then she found her phone and called out full-boat teams of FBI medical examiners and crime scene investigators.
Her case.
She got in the back of the deputy’s car with the eyewitness. No reason to haul the poor guy out into the cold. Goodman got in the front and the deputy twisted around behind the wheel. It was a regular little conference, two and two, separated by the bulletproof shield.
The eyewitness was a man of about fifty, whiskery, not well groomed, dressed in winter farm clothes. He ran through his story with the kind of imprecision Sorenson expected. She was well aware of the limitations of eyewitness testimony. As a Quantico trainee she had been sent to interview a doctor suspected of Medicare fraud. She had waited for her appointment in his crowded waiting room. A guy had burst in to rob the place for drugs, firing a handgun, rushing here, rushing there, rushing out. Afterward, of course, she found out the whole thing was staged. The doctor was an actor, the robber was an actor, the handgun rounds were blanks, and everyone in the waiting room was a law enforcement trainee. There was no consensus on what the robber looked like. Absolutely none at all. Short, tall, fat, thin, black, white, no one really remembered. Since that morning Sorenson had taken eyewitness testimony with a pinch of salt.
She asked, “Did you see the man in the green coat arrive?”
The guy said, “No. I saw him on the sidewalk, that’s all, heading for the old pumping station, right there.”
“Did you see the red car arrive?”
“No. It was already there when I looked.”
“Were the two men in the black suits in it?”
“No, they were on the sidewalk too.”
“Following the other man?”
The guy nodded. “About ten feet back. Maybe twenty.”
“Can you describe them?”
“They were just two guys. In suits.”
“Old? Young?”
“Neither. They were just guys.”
“Short? Tall?”
“Average.”
“Black or white?”
“White.”
“Fat or thin?”
“Average.”
Sorenson asked, “Any distinguishing marks?”
The guy said, “I don’t know what that is.”
“Anything special about their faces? Beards, scars, piercings? Tattoos? Like that.”
“They were just guys.”
“What about the color of their hair? Was it light or dark?”
“Their hair?” the guy said. “I don’t know. It was hair-colored, I guess.”
Sorenson asked, “Did you see a knife when they went in?”
“No,” the guy said.
“Did you see a knife when they came out?”
“No.”
“Did they have blood on them?”
“I guess one of their suit jackets looked wet in a couple of spots. But it was black, not red. Like it could have been water. On a black suit, I mean.”
Sorenson said, “The street lights are yellow.”
The guy glanced out his window, as if to confirm it, and said, “Yes.”
“So blood might have looked black, in the yellow light.”
“I guess.”
Sorenson asked, “Did the red car belong to the two men?”
The guy said, “They got in it, lady.”
“But how did they look when they got in it? Like they were totally familiar with it? Or did they fumble around?”
Goodman looked a question from the front seat. Sorenson said, “The dead guy had nothing in his pockets. Including no car keys. So how did he get there? Maybe the red car was his.”
Goodman said, “Then how did the two men get there? They didn’t walk. It’s cold, and they weren’t wearing coats.”
“Maybe they all came together.”
The eyewitness said, “I don’t know, lady. They got in the car and drove away. That’s all I saw.”
So Goodman let the eyewitness make his way home to bed, and then he drove Sorenson north, to let her take a look at the abandoned red car.
Chapter 9
Reacher’s eyes were closed and his nose wasn’t working, so taste and touch and hearing were taking up the sensory slack. He could taste copper and iron in his mouth, where blood was leaking down the back of his throat. He could feel the rear bench’s mouse-fur upholstery under his right hand fingertips, synthetic and dense and microscopically harsh. His left hand was in his lap, and he could feel the rough cotton of his pants, thick and fibrous and still slick with the manufacturer’s pre-wash treatments. He could hear the loud zing of concrete sections under the tires, and the hum of the motor, and the whine of its drive belts, and the rush of air against the windshield pillars and the door mirrors. He could hear the give and take of seat springs as he and the others floated small quarter-inches with the ride. He could hear Don McQueen breathing slow and controlled as he concentrated, and Karen Delfuenso a little anxious, and Alan King changing to a shorter, sharper rhythm. The guy was thinking about something. He was coming up to a decision. Reacher heard the scrape of cloth against a wrist. The guy was checking his watch.
Then King turned around, and Reacher opened his eyes.
King said, “I really want to get to Chicago before dawn.”
Suits me, Reacher thought. Plenty of morning departures from Chicago. South through Illinois, east through Kentucky, and then Virginia is right there. He said, “That should be possible. We’re going fast. It’s wintertime. Dawn will be late.”
King said, “Plan was Don drives the first half, and I drive the second half. Now I’m thinking we should split it into thirds. You could drive the middle third.”
“Not Karen?” Reacher said.
No response from Delfuenso.
“Karen doesn’t drive,” King said.
“OK,” Reacher said. “I’m always happy to help.”
“Safer that way.”
“You haven’t seen my driving yet.”
“It’s an empty road, straight and wide.”
“OK,” Reacher said again.
“We’ll switch next time we stop for gas.”
“Which will be when?”
“Soon.”
“Why?” Reacher asked. “You’ve been driving for three hours but the tank is still three-quarters full. At that rate we could get halfway to New York before we need gas. Maybe more.”
King paused a beat. Blinked. Said, “You’re an observant man, Mr. Reacher.”
Reacher said, “I try to be.”
“This is my car,” King said. “I think you can trust me to know its quirks and its foibles. The gas gauge is faulty. There’s a malfunction. All the action is in the first little bit. Then it falls off a cliff.”
Reacher said nothing.
King said, “Believe me, we
’ll have to stop soon.”
The two deputies securing the area behind the cocktail lounge had parked their cruisers at matching angles, pretty far from the red Mazda, as if the car was dangerous in itself. As if it was radioactive, or liable to explode. Goodman nosed his Crown Vic into the implied no-go triangle and stopped twenty feet from the target. Sorenson said, “No witnesses came forward here, I assume?”
“Today isn’t my birthday,” Goodman said. “It’s not all my Christmases rolled into one, either.”
“Is this lounge abandoned too?”
“No, but it closes at midnight. It’s a respectable place.”
“Compared to what?”
“The other lounges up here.”
“What time would the red car have gotten here?”
“Earliest? Not before twenty past midnight. Too late for witnesses.”
“I’m guessing you never worked in a bar, did you?” Sorenson asked.
“No,” Goodman said. “I never did. Why?”
“Just because the customers go home at midnight, it doesn’t mean the staff does too. You can be sure some poor dumb waitress will have been here for a little while afterward. Do you know the owner?”
“Sure.”
“So call him.”
“Her,” Goodman said. “Missy Smith. She’s been here forever. She’s a well-known character. She won’t be pleased if I wake her up.”
Sorenson said, “I won’t be pleased if you don’t.”
So Goodman dialed his cell and stumped around near his own car while Sorenson went to take a look at the Mazda. It had North Carolina plates, and a little barcode strip on the rear window, and it looked neat and clean and fresh inside. She called in the plates and the VIN to her Omaha office, and she saw Sheriff Goodman writing on his palm with a ballpoint pen, with his phone trapped up between his ear and his shoulder. She saw him put his pen away and click off his call, and then he said to her, “Missy Smith left here at midnight exactly, with the last of the customers.”
But there was no triumph in his voice. No told-you-so tone.
“And?” Sorenson asked.
“One of the waitresses stayed behind to clean up. Apparently there’s a rotational system. Every night one of them gets paid until half past midnight.”
“And that’s her number you got on your hand?”
“Yes, it is. Her cell phone.”
“This Mazda is a rental car,” Sorenson said. “Out of state plates, barcode for the return reader, valeted twice a week.”
“Nearest car rental depot would be the Omaha airport. I could call it in.”
“I already did. You should call the waitress.”
So Goodman put his left palm in his headlight beam and dialed his cell with his right-hand thumb.
Chapter 10
Not far into Iowa the Interstate went down to two lanes and got long and lonely. Exits were many miles from each other. Each one was an event in its own right. Each one was preceded by three blue boards, spaced out in sequence hundreds of feet apart, detailing first gas, and then food, and then accommodations, in a style that was half information and half advertisement. Some boards were blank. Some places had food but no gas, or gas but no motel, or an inn but no diner. Reacher knew the grammar. He had traveled most of the Interstate system. Some boards would be deceptive, leading drivers fifteen or twenty miles down dark rural roads to places that would be shut when they got there. Others would be ahead of tight knots of establishments where a driver would be spoiled for choice, Exxon or Texaco or Sunoco, Subway or McDonald’s or Cracker Barrel, Marriott or Red Roof or the Comfort Inn. It was all about lights in the distance. The deceptive exits would be dark, and the promising ones would have a red and yellow glow on the horizon.
They drove on, numb and silent and patient, and eventually Alan King chose a no-name turn not long after Des Moines.
He said, “This one will be fine, Don.”
There was a single brand on each of the blue boards ahead of the exit, all different. Reacher recognized none of them specifically, but all of them generically. He knew the grammar. There would be a no-name gas station, and a microwave oven and an urn of stewed coffee in a dismal hut across the street, and a faded mom-and-pop motel a mile down the road. He could see the gas station lights a mile away, blue and white in the nighttime mist. A big place, probably, set up for trucks as well as cars.
Don McQueen slowed well ahead of the turn, like a jumbo jet on approach. He checked his mirror and used his signal, even though he must have known there was no one closer than a mile behind him. The asphalt on the ramp was coarse and loud. The ramp led to a two-lane county road, and then the gas station was a hundred feet away to the right, to the south, on the far shoulder, to the east. It was a big place in terms of area, but sketchy in terms of facilities. Six pumps and an air hose and an interior vacuum for regular-sized vehicles, and a separate area with truck pumps and puddles of spilled diesel. No canopy. A small pay hut, and a bathroom block standing alone and distant on the edge of the lot. No food.
But sure enough, directly across the street from the gas station was a long low ramshackle barn-shaped building, with Food And Drink All Day All Night hand-painted in white on the slope of its roof, in shaky letters close to six feet high. Beyond the barn was a smaller version of the blue accommodation sign, with a discreet arrow pointing onward into the darkness toward the motel. There was knee-high night mist above the roadway, with the glitter of ice crystals in it.
McQueen drove the hundred feet on the two-lane and turned in at the gas station and eased to a stop, facing the way he had come, with the flank of the car next to a pump. He shut the motor down and dropped his hands off the wheel and sat still in the sudden silence.
Alan King said, “Mr. Reacher, you go get us all coffee, and we’ll fill the car.”
Reacher said, “No, I’ll get the gas. Seems only fair.”
King smiled. “Gas, ass, or grass, right? The price of hitchhiking?”
“I’m willing to pay my way.”
“And I’d let you,” King said. “But I don’t buy the gas. Not for a trip like this. This is company business, so we spend company money. I couldn’t let you subsidize the corporation I work for.”
“Then at least let me pump it. You shouldn’t have to do all the work.”
“You’re about to drive three hundred miles. That’s work enough.”
“It’s cold out there.”
King said, “I think you want to see how much gas goes in the car. Am I right? You don’t believe my gauge is busted?”
Reacher said nothing.
King said, “I believe it would be minimally courteous to trust a simple factual statement made by the guy who has offered to get you a considerable part of the way to your destination.”
Reacher said nothing.
“Coffee,” King said. “Two with cream and one spoonful of sugar, plus whatever Karen wants.”
Delfuenso didn’t speak. There was a beat of silence, and King said, “Nothing for Karen, then.”
Reacher climbed out of the car and headed across the two-lane.
Sheriff Goodman’s call went straight to voice mail. He said, “The waitress’s phone is switched off.”
“Of course it is,” Sorenson said. “She’s fast asleep. She’s tired after a long evening’s work. Does she have a landline?”
“The cell was the only number Missy Smith gave me.”
“So call the Smith woman back and get an address. We’ll have to go bang on her door.”
“I can’t call Missy Smith again.”
“I think you can.” But right then Sorenson’s own cell started ringing. A plain electronic sound. No tune. No download. She answered, and listened, and said, “OK,” and clicked off again.
“The Mazda was rented at the Denver airport,” she said. “By a lone individual. My people say his DL and his credit card were phony.”
“Why Denver?” Goodman asked. “If you wanted to come here, wouldn’t you fly int
o Omaha and rent a car there?”
“Denver is much bigger and much more anonymous. Their rental traffic must be twenty times Omaha’s.”
Her phone rang again. The same plain electronic sound. She answered and this time Goodman saw her back go straight. She was talking to a superior. Universal body language. She said, “Say that again, please?” Then she listened a little, and then she said, “Yes, sir.”
And then she clicked off the call.
She said, “Now this thing just got weird.”
Goodman asked, “How?”
“My guys over at your pumping station already transmitted the dead guy’s fingerprints. And they already came back. And along the way they lit up some computer at the State Department.”
“The State Department? They aren’t your people. That’s foreign affairs. You belong to the Justice Department.”
“I don’t belong to anyone.”
“But why the State Department?”
“We don’t know yet. The dead guy could be one of theirs. Or known to them.”
“Like a diplomat?”
“Or someone else’s diplomat.”
“In Nebraska?”
“They’re not chained to their desks.”
“He didn’t look foreign.”
“He didn’t look like anything. He was covered in blood.”
“So what do we do?”
“Maximum effort,” Sorenson said. “That’s what they’re asking for. Where are the two guys now?”
“Now? They could be in a million different places.”
“So it’s time to gamble. Before I get taken off this thing. Or supervised. One or the other is sure to happen first thing in the morning. That’s what maximum effort means. So suppose the two guys are still on the road?”
“But which road? There are a million roads.”
“Suppose they stayed on the Interstate?”
“Would they?”
“They’re probably not local. They’re probably running home right now, which could be a big distance.”
“In which direction?”
“Either one.”