Jack Reacher 15 - Worth Dying For

by Lee Child

  Jacob Duncan turned back to the Cornhuskers.

  “Good work, boys,” he said. “Now go finish the job. Find Reacher. He’s on foot again, clearly. If the doctor knows where he is, he’s sure to tell us soon, and we’ll let you know. But in the meantime, keep looking.”

  Roberto Cassano was still in Jacob Duncan’s kitchen. Angelo Mancini was still in there with him. They saw the sad-sack doctor stumble in from the hallway, all drunk and raggedy and terrified, with Mancini’s earlier handiwork still clearly visible all over his face. Then Cassano’s phone rang. He checked the screen and saw that it was Rossi calling and he stepped out the back door and walked across the weedy gravel. He hit the button and raised the phone and Rossi said, “Complications.”

  Cassano said, “Such as?”

  “I had to calm things down at this end. It was getting out of control. I had to talk to people, change a few perceptions. Long story short, you’re getting reinforcements. Two of Safir’s guys, and two of Mahmeini’s.”

  “That should shorten the process.”

  “Initially,” Rossi said. “But then it’s going to get very difficult. A buck gets ten they’re coming with instructions to cut us out of the chain. Mahmeini is probably looking to cut Safir out too. So don’t let any of them get close to the Duncans. Not for a minute. Don’t let the Duncans make any new friends. And watch your step as soon as the stranger is down. You’re going to have four guys gunning for you.”

  “What do you want us to do?”

  “I want you to stay alive. And in control.”

  “Rules of engagement?”

  “Put Safir’s guys down for sure. That way we remove the link above us. We can sell direct to Mahmeini, at Safir’s prices.”

  “OK.”

  “And put Mahmeini’s guys down too, if you have to, for self-defense. But make sure to make it look like Safir’s guys or the Duncans did it. I still need Mahmeini himself. There’s no wiggle room there. I have no access to the ultimate buyer without him.”

  “OK.”

  “So leave right now. Pull back to the hotel and lie low. You’ll meet the others there, probably very soon. Make contact and make a plan.”

  “Who’s in charge?”

  “The Iranians will claim they are. But they can stick that where the sun don’t shine. You know the people and the terrain. Keep on top of it and be very careful.”

  “OK, boss,” Cassano said. And two minutes later he and Mancini were back in their rented blue Impala, heading south on the arrow-straight two-lane, sixty miles to go.

  The white van was still on Route 3, still in Canada, still heading east, more than halfway across Alberta, with Saskatchewan up ahead. It had just skipped a right turn on Route 4, which led south to the border, where the modest Canadian blacktop ribbon changed to the fullblown majesty of U.S. Interstate 15, which ran all the way to Las Vegas and then Los Angeles. The change of status in what had once been the same horse trail was emblematic of the two nations’ sense of self, and as well as that it was taken to be a very dangerous road. It was an obvious artery, with two big prizes at the end of it, and so it was assumed to be monitored very carefully. Which was why the white van had passed up the chance of its speed and convenience and was still laboring east on the minor thoroughfare, toward a small town called Medicine Hat, where it intended to finally turn south and lose itself in the wild country around Pakowki Lake, before finding a nameless rutted track that ran deep into the woods, and all the way to America.

  The Duncans made the doctor stand upright at the head of the table. They sat and looked at him and said nothing for a minute, Jacob and Seth on one side, Jasper and Jonas on the other. Finally Jacob asked, “Was it an act of deliberate rebellion?”

  The doctor didn’t answer. His throat was swollen and painful from vomiting, and he didn’t understand the question anyway.

  Jacob asked, “Or was it some imagined sense of entitlement?”

  The doctor didn’t answer.

  “We need to know,” Jacob said. “You must tell us. This is a fascinating subject. It needs to be thoroughly explored.”

  The doctor said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “But perhaps your wife does,” Jacob said. “Should we go pick her up and bring her here and ask her?”

  “Leave my wife out of it.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Please. Please leave her alone.”

  “She could entertain us. She used to, you know. We knew her long before you did. She came here half a dozen times. To this very house. She was happy to. Of course, we were paying her, which might have influenced her attitude. You should ask her, about what she used to do for money.”

  “She babysat.”

  “Is that what she says? I suppose she would, now.”

  “That’s what she did.”

  “Ask her again sometime. Catch her in an unguarded moment. She was a girl of many talents, your wife, once upon a time. She might tell you all about it. You might enjoy it.”

  “What do you want?”

  Jacob Duncan said, “We want to know the psychology behind what you did.”

  “What did I do?”

  “You put your license plates on our truck.”

  The doctor said nothing.

  Jacob Duncan said, “We want to know why. That’s all. It’s not much to ask. Was it just impertinence? Or was it a message? Were you retaliating for our having disabled your own vehicle? Were you claiming a right? Were you making a point? Were you scolding us for having gone too far?”

  “I don’t know,” the doctor said.

  “Or did someone else change the plates?”

  “I don’t know who changed them.”

  “But it wasn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Where did you find the truck?”

  “At the motel. This afternoon. It was next to my car. With my plates on it.”

  “Why didn’t you change them back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “To drive with phony plates is a criminal offense, isn’t it? A misdemeanor at best. Should medical practitioners indulge in criminal behavior?”

  “I guess not.”

  “But you did.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to us. We’re not a court of law. Or a state medical board. But you should rehearse an excuse. You might lose your job. Then what would your wife do for money? She might have to return to her old ways. A comeback tour, of sorts. Not that we would have her back. I mean, who would? A raddled old bitch like that?”

  The doctor said nothing.

  “And you treated my daughter-in-law,” Jacob Duncan said. “After being told not to.”

  “I’m a doctor. I had to.”

  “The Hippocratic oath?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Which says, ‘First, do no harm.’ ”

  “I didn’t do any harm.”

  “Look at my son’s face.”

  The doctor looked.

  “You did that,” Jacob said.

  “I didn’t.”

  “You caused it to be done. Which is the same thing. You did harm.”

  “That wasn’t me.”

  “So who was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do. The word is out. Surely you’ve heard it? We know you people talk about us all the time. On the phone tree. Did you think it was a secret?”

  “It was Reacher.”

  “Finally,” Jacob said. “We get to the point. You were his co-conspirator.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “You asked him to drive you to my son’s house.”

  “I didn’t. He made me go.”

  “Whatever,” Jacob said. “There’s no use crying over spilt milk. But we have a question for you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Where is Reacher now?”

  Chapter 29

  Reacher was in his ground floor room at the Courtyard Marriott, knee-deep i
n old police reports. He had used the flat-bladed screwdriver from his pocket to slit the tape on all eleven cartons, and he had sampled the first page out of every box to establish the correct date order. He had shuffled the cartons into a line, and then he had started a quick-and-dirty overview of the records, right from the very beginning.

  As expected, the notes were comprehensive. It had been a high-profile case with many sensitivities, and there had been three other agencies on the job—the State Police, the National Guard, and the FBI. The county PD had taken pains to be very professional. Multi-agency cases were essentially competitions, and the county PD hadn’t wanted to lose. The department had recorded every move and covered every base and covered every ass. In some ways the files were slices of history. They had been nowhere near a computer. They were old-fashioned, human, and basic. They were typewritten, probably on old IBM electric machines. They had misaligned lines and corrections made with white fluid. The paper itself was foxed and brown, thin and brittle, and musty. There were no reams of cell phone records, because no one had had cell phones back then, not even the cops. No DNA samples had been taken. There were no GPS coordinates.

  The files were exactly like the files Reacher himself had created, way back at the start of his army career.

  Dorothy had called the cops from a neighbor’s house, at eight in the evening on an early summer Sunday. Not 911, but the local switchboard number. There was a transcript of the call, by the look of it probably not from a recording. Probably reconstructed from the desk sergeant’s memory. Dorothy’s last name was Coe. Her only child, Margaret, had last been seen more than six hours previously. She was a good girl. No problems. No troubles. No reasons. She had been wearing a green dress and had ridden away on a pink bicycle.

  The desk sergeant had called the captain and the captain had called a detective who had just gotten off the day shift. The detective was called Miles Carson. Carson had sent squad cars north and the hunt had begun. The weather had been good and there had been an hour of twilight and then darkness had fallen. Carson himself had arrived on scene within forty minutes. The next twelve hours had unfolded pretty much the way Dorothy had described over breakfast, the house-to-house canvass, the flashlight searches, the loud-hailer appeals to check every barn and outbuilding, the all-night motor patrols, the arrival of the dogs at first light, the State Police contribution, the National Guard’s loan of a helicopter.

  Miles Carson was a thorough man, but he had gotten no result.

  In principle Reacher might have criticized a couple of things. No reason to wait until dawn to call in the dogs, for instance. Dogs can work in the dark. But it was a moot point anyway, because as soon as Margaret had gotten on her bicycle, her scent had disappeared, suspended in the air, whisked away by the breeze, insulated by rubber tires. The dogs tracked her to her own driveway, and that was all. The loud-hailer appeals for folks to search their own property were curiously circular too, because what was a guilty party going to do? Turn himself in? Although, in Carson’s defense, foul play was not yet suspected. The first Carson had heard about local suspicions had come at nine the next morning, when Dorothy Coe had broken down and spilled the beans about the Duncans. That interview had lasted an hour and filled nine pages of notes. Then Carson had gotten right on it.

  But from the start, the Duncans had looked innocent.

  They even had an alibi. Five years earlier they had sold the family farm, retaining only a T-shaped acre that encompassed their driveway and their three houses, and in the country way of things they had never gotten around to marking off their new boundaries. Their neighbors’ last plowed furrows were their property line. But eventually they decided to put up a post-and-rail fence. It was a big production, much heavier and sturdier than was standard. They hired four local teenagers to come do the work. The four boys had been there all day on that Sunday, dawn to dusk, measuring, sawing, digging deep holes for the posts. The three Duncans and the eight-year-old Seth had been right there with them, all day, dawn to dusk, supervising, directing, checking up, helping out. The four boys confirmed that the Duncans had never left the property, and no one had stopped by, least of all a little girl in a green dress on a pink bicycle.

  Even so, Carson had hauled the Duncans in for questioning. By that point a hint of foul play was definitely in the air, so the State Police had to be involved, because of jurisdiction issues, so the Duncans were taken to a State barracks over near Lincoln. Seth went with them and was questioned by female officers, but had nothing to say. The three adults were grilled for days. Nebraska, in the 1980s. Rules and procedures were pretty loose where child kidnapping was suspected. But the Duncans admitted nothing. They allowed their property to be searched, voluntarily. Carson’s people did the job thoroughly, which wasn’t hard because there wasn’t much property. Just the T-shaped acre of land, bounded by the unfinished post-and-rail fence, and the three houses themselves. Carson’s people found nothing. Carson called the FBI, who sent a team equipped with the latest 1980s technology. The FBI found nothing. The Duncans were released, driven home, and the case went cold.

  Reacher crawled across the room, back to the first carton, hands and knees, overview completed, ready to start in on the fine details.

  The doctor didn’t answer. He just stood there, bruised, sore, shaking, sweating. Jacob Duncan repeated the question: “Where is Reacher now?”

  The doctor said, “I would like to sit down.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “A little.”

  “At the motel?”

  “No,” the doctor said. “I figured Mr. Vincent wouldn’t serve me.”

  “So where were you drinking?”

  “At home.”

  “And then you walked to the motel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I needed something from my car. Some medical equipment.”

  “So you were already drunk when you stole our truck?”

  “Yes. I wouldn’t have done it if I was sober.”

  “Where is Reacher now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would you like a drink?”

  The doctor said, “A drink?”

  “You’re familiar with the concept, I think.”

  “Yes, I would like a drink.”

  Jacob Duncan got up and stepped across his kitchen to a cabinet on the wall. He opened it up and took out a bottle of Wild Turkey, almost full. From another cabinet he took a glass. He carried both back to the table and set them down. He took stuff off a chair in the corner, a pair of boots, old mail, a ball of string, and he carried the chair across the room and placed it behind the doctor.

  He said, “Sit down, please. And help yourself.”

  The doctor sat down and shuffled the chair closer to the table and uncorked the bottle. He poured himself a generous measure and drank it all in one go. He poured a second glass.

  Jacob Duncan asked, “Where is Reacher now?”

  The doctor said, “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do. And it’s time to make your choice. You can sit here with us and drink my fine bourbon and pass the time of day in pleasant conversation. Or we could do it another way. We could have Seth break your nose, for instance. I’m pretty certain he would like to. Or we could have your wife join us, and we could subject her to petty humiliations. My guess is she wouldn’t put up much of a fight, having known us all these years. No marks, no overt damage. But the shared experience might have an effect on your marriage, in the years to come, you having shown yourself unable to defend her. Because she’ll see it as unwilling, not unable. You should think about it.”

  “Reacher’s gone,” the doctor said.

  “Gone?”

  “He left this afternoon.”

  “How?”

  “He got a ride.”

  “Impossible,” Jacob said. “We blocked the road, north and south.”

  “Not in time.”

  “Did you see him go?”


  “He was at the motel. I think he changed the plates, because he was going to use your truck. But someone else came along and he hitched a ride, which was better.”

  “Who came along?”

  “Not one of us. Just someone driving through.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “I’m not good with cars. I think it was white.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  The doctor drank most of his second glass. Gulp, swallow, gulp, swallow. He said, “He’s going to Virginia.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” the doctor said. He filled his glass again. “But that’s all he’s ever talked about, right from the first moment he got here. He’s on his way to Virginia, and always was.”

  “What’s in Virginia?”

  “He didn’t say. A woman, perhaps. That’s the impression I got.”

  “From what?”

  “Just a feeling.”

  Jacob Duncan said, “You’re nervous.”

  The doctor said, “Of course I am.”

  “Why? You’re just sharing a drink with your neighbors.”

  The doctor said nothing.

  Jacob Duncan said, “You think he’s coming back?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Is he coming back?”

  The doctor said nothing.

  “Tell us.”

  The doctor said, “He was a military cop. He knows how to do things.”

  “What things?”

  “He said he’s going to visit with the county police. Tomorrow morning, I suppose. He said he’s going to look at the file from twenty-five years ago. If it’s OK, he’s going to Virginia. If it’s not, he’s coming back here.”

  “Why would he?”

  “To get you, that’s why.”

  Up in Canada, the white van had made the right turn just shy of the town called Medicine Hat, and was heading south on the lonely road that led down toward Pakowki Lake. It was already full dark up there. No lights at all, and no moon or stars either, because of the clouds. The road was bad. It was pitted with potholes. It twisted and it wandered, and it rose and it fell. It was hard going, and not entirely safe. It was dangerous, even, because at that stage a broken axle or a busted half-shaft would ruin everything. So the driver turned left, on a rough grassy track he had used before, and bumped and bounced two hundred yards to a picnic spot provided for summer visitors. In winter it was always deserted. The driver had seen bears there, and coyotes, and red foxes, and moose, and twice he thought he had seen elk, although they might have been shadows, and once he thought he had seen a wolf, but it might have been just another coyote. But he had never seen people. Not in winter. Not even once.