by Lee Child
He parked under a towering pine and shut down for the night.
Roberto Cassano and Angelo Mancini pulled their rented Impala around the back of the Marriott and slotted it next to a black Cadillac that was standing alone in the rear of the lot. They got out and stretched and checked their watches. They figured they had time for a quick dinner before their reinforcements arrived. The diner or the rib shack? They liked neither one. Why would they? They had taste, and the retard local yokels sure as hell didn’t. But they were hungry, and they had to eat somewhere.
They pondered for a second and decided on the diner. They turned away from the hotel lobby and headed for the main drag.
The Duncans let the doctor finish a third glass of Wild Turkey, and then they sent him on his way. They pushed him out the door and told him to walk home. They watched him down the driveway, and then they turned and strolled back and regrouped in Jacob’s kitchen. Jacob put the bottle back in the cupboard, and put the glass in the sink, and returned the chair to the corner of the room. His brother Jasper asked, “So what do you think?”
Jacob said, “About what?”
“Should we call the county and stop them showing Reacher the files?”
“I don’t see how we could do that.”
“We could try.”
“It would draw attention.”
Jonas asked, “Should we call Eldridge Tyler? Strictly as a backup?”
“Then we would owe him something.”
“It would be a wise investment, if Reacher is coming back.”
“I don’t think he’s coming back,” Jacob said. “That’s my first thought, certainly.”
“But?”
“Ultimately I guess it depends on what he finds, and what he doesn’t find.”
Chapter 30
Reacher found a statement from the little girl’s father. It was long and detailed. Cops weren’t dumb. Fathers were automatic suspects when little girls disappeared. Margaret’s father had been Arthur Coe, universally known as Artie. At the time of his daughter’s disappearance he was thirty-seven years old. Relatively ancient for a father of an eight-year-old, back in the 1980s. He was a local man. He was a Vietnam veteran. He had refused an offer from the local Selective Service board to classify his farmwork as an essential occupation. He had served, and he had come back. A brave man. A patriot. He had been fixing machinery in an outbuilding when Margaret had ridden away, and he had still been fixing it four hours later, when his wife came to tell him that the kid was still out. He had dropped everything and started the search. His statement was full of the same kind of feelings Dorothy had described over breakfast, the unreality, the hope against hope, the belief that the kid was just out playing somewhere, surely to God, maybe picking flowers, that she had lost track of time, that she would be home soon, right as rain. Even after twenty-five years the typewritten words still reeked of shock and pain and misery.
Arthur Coe was an innocent man, Reacher thought.
He moved on, to a packet marked by hand Margaret Coe Biography. Just a regular manila envelope, quite thin, as would befit an eight-year-old’s short life story. The gummed flap had never been licked, but it was stuck down anyway, from dampness in the storage facility. Reacher eased it open. There were sheets of paper inside, plus a photograph in a yellowed glassine jacket. Reacher eased it out. And was surprised.
Margaret Coe was Asian.
Vietnamese, possibly, or Thai, or Cambodian, or Chinese, or Japanese, or Korean. Dorothy wasn’t. Arthur probably hadn’t been, either. Not a native Nebraskan farmworker. Therefore Margaret was adopted. She had been a sweet little thing. The photograph was dated on the back, in a woman’s handwriting, with an added note: Nearly eight! Beautiful as ever! It was a color picture, probably amateur, but proficient. Better than a snapshot. It had been thought about and composed, and taken with a decent camera. A good likeness, obviously, to have been given to the police. It showed a little Asian girl, standing still, posing, smiling. She was small and slight and slender. She had trust and merriment in her eyes. She was wearing a plaid skirt and a white blouse.
She was a lovely child.
Reacher heard the stoner’s voice in his mind, from earlier in the day: I hear that poor ghost screaming, man, screaming and wailing and moaning and crying, right here in the dark.
And at that point Reacher took a break.
Sixty miles north Dorothy Coe took a pork chop from her refrigerator. The chop was part of a pig a friend had slaughtered a mile away, part of a loose cooperative designed to get people through tough times. Dorothy trimmed the fat, and put a little pepper on the meat, and a little mustard, and a little brown sugar. She put the chop in an open dish and put the dish in the oven. She set her table, one place, a knife, a fork, and a plate. She took a glass and filled it with water and put it next to the plate. She folded a square of paper towel for a napkin. Dinner, for one.
Reacher was hungry. He had eaten no lunch. He called the desk and asked for room service and the guy who had booked him in told him there was no room service. He apologized for the lack. Then he went ahead and mentioned the two restaurants named on the billboard Reacher had already seen. The guy promised a really excellent meal could be gotten at either one of them. Maybe he was on a retainer from the Chamber of Commerce.
Reacher put his coat on and headed down the hallway to the lobby. Two more guests were checking in. Both men. They looked Middle Eastern. Iranian, possibly. They were small and rumpled and unshaven and not very clean. One of them glanced at Reacher and Reacher nodded politely and headed for the door. It was dark outside, and cold. Reacher figured he would use the diner for breakfast, and therefore the rib shack for dinner. So he turned right on the back street and hustled.
The doctor walked fast to beat the cold and made it home inside an hour. His wife was waiting for him. She was worried. He had some explaining to do. He started talking and got through the whole story before she spoke a word. At the end he went quiet and she said, “So it’s a gamble, isn’t it? Is that what you’re saying? Like a horse race. Will Reacher come back before Seth gets home and finds out that you just sat there and watched his car get stolen?”
The doctor said, “Will Reacher come back at all?”
“I think he will.”
“Why would he?”
“Because the Duncans took that kid. Who else do you think did it?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t here. I was in Idaho. I was a kid myself. So were you.”
“Believe me.”
“I do. But I wish you would tell me exactly why I should.”
She said nothing.
The doctor said, “Maybe Seth won’t go home. Maybe he’ll spend the night at his father’s place.”
“That’s possible. People say he often does. But we shouldn’t assume.” She started moving around the house, checking the window locks, checking the door locks, front and back. She said, “We should wedge the doors with furniture.”
“Then they’ll come in the window.”
“Tornado glass. It’s pretty strong.”
“Those guys weigh three hundred pounds. You saw what they did to my car.”
“We have to do something.”
“They’ll burn us out. Or they’ll just stand on the step and tell us to open up. Then what are we going to do? Disobey them?”
“We could hold out a day or two. We have food and water.”
“Might be longer than a day or two. Might be forever. Even if you’re right, there’s no guarantee Reacher will find the proof. There probably isn’t any proof. How can there be? The FBI would have found it at the time.”
“We have to hope.”
Reacher ordered baby back ribs with coleslaw and a cup of coffee. The place was dim and dirty and the walls were covered with old signs and advertisements. Probably all fake. Probably all ordered in bulk from a restaurant supplier, probably all painted in a Taiwanese factory and then scuffed and scratched and battered by the next guy along on the production lin
e. But the ribs turned out to be good. The rub was subtle and the meat was tender. The coleslaw was crisp. The coffee was hot. And the check was tiny. Tip money, anyplace east of the Mississippi or south of Sacramento.
Reacher paid and left and walked back to the hotel. Two guys were in the lot, hauling bags out of the trunk of a red Ford Taurus. More guests. The Marriott was experiencing a regular wintertime bonanza. The Taurus was new and plain. Probably a rental. The guys were big. Arabs of some kind. Syrians, maybe, or Lebanese. Reacher was familiar with that part of the world. The two guys looked at him as he passed and he nodded politely and walked on. A minute later he was back in his room, with faded and brittle paper in his hands.
That night the Duncans ate lamb, in Jonas Duncan’s kitchen. Jonas fancied himself a hell of a cook. And in truth he wasn’t too bad. His roast usually came in on the right side of OK, and he served it with potatoes and vegetables and a lot of gravy, which helped. And a lot of liquor, which helped even more. All four Duncans ate and drank together, two facing two across the table, and then they cleaned up together, and then Jasper looked at his brother Jacob and said, “We still have six boys capable of walking and talking. We need to decide how to deploy them tonight.”
Jacob said, “Reacher won’t come back tonight.”
“Can we guarantee that?”
“We can’t really guarantee anything at all, except that the sun will rise in the east and set in the west.”
“Therefore it’s better to err on the side of caution.”
“OK,” Jacob said. “Put one to the south and tell the other five to get some rest.”
Jasper got on the phone and issued the instructions. Then he hung up and the room went quiet and Seth Duncan looked at his father and said, “Drive me home?”
His father said, “No, stay a little longer, son. We have things to talk about. Our shipment could be here this time tomorrow. Which means we have preparations to make.”
Cassano and Mancini got back from the diner and went straight to Cassano’s room. Cassano called the desk and asked if any pairs of guests had just checked in. He was told yes, two pairs had just arrived, separately, one after the other. Cassano asked to be connected with their rooms. He spoke first to Mahmeini’s men, and then to Safir’s, and he set up an immediate rendezvous in his own room. He figured he could establish some dominance by keeping the others off balance, by denying them any kind of thinking time, and by bringing them to his own turf, not that he would want anyone to think that a shitty flophouse room in Nebraska was his kind of place. But he knew psychology, and he knew no one gets the upper hand without working on the details.
The Iranians arrived first. Mahmeini’s men. Only one of them spoke, which Cassano thought was OK, given that he spoke for Rossi, and Mancini didn’t. No names were exchanged. Again, OK. It was that kind of business. The Iranians were not physically impressive. They were small and ragged and rumpled, and they seemed quiet and furtive and secretive. And strange. Cassano opened the minibar door and told them to help themselves. Whatever they wanted. But neither man took a thing.
The Lebanese arrived five minutes later. Safir’s men. Arabs, for sure, but they were big, and they looked plenty tough. Again, only one of them spoke, and he gave no names. Cassano indicated that they should sit on the bed, but they didn’t. They leaned on the wall instead. They were trying for menace, Cassano figured. And nearly succeeding. A little psychology of their own. Cassano let the room go quiet and he looked at them all for a minute, one after the other, four men he had only just met, and who would soon be trying to kill him.
He said, “It’s a fairly simple job. Sixty miles north of here there’s a corner of the county with forty farms. There’s a guy running around causing trouble. Truth is, it’s not really very important, but our mutual supplier is taking it personally. Business is on hold until the guy goes down.”
Mahmeini’s man said, “We know all that. Next?”
“OK,” Cassano said. “Next is we all move up there and work together and take care of the problem.”
“Starting when?”
“Let’s say tomorrow morning, first light.”
“Have you seen the guy?”
“Not yet.”
“Got a name?”
“Reacher.”
“What kind of name is that?”
“It’s an American name. What’s yours?”
“My name doesn’t matter. Got a description?”
“Big guy, blue eyes, white, six-five, two-fifty, brown coat.”
Mahmeini’s man said, “That’s worthless. This is America. This is farm country. It’s full of settlers and peasants. They all look like that. I mean, we just saw a guy exactly like that.”
Safir’s guy said, “He’s right. We saw one too. We’re going to need a much better description.”
Cassano said, “We don’t have one. But it will be easier when we get up there. Reacher stands out, apparently. And the local population is prepared to help us. They’ve been told to phone in with sightings. And there’s no cover up there.”
Mahmeini’s man said, “So where is he hiding out?”
“We don’t know. There’s a motel, but he’s not in it. Maybe he’s sleeping rough.”
“In this weather? Is that likely?”
“There are sheds and barns. I’m sure we’ll find him.”
“And then what?”
“We put him down.”
“Risky.”
“I know. He’s tough. So far he’s taken out four of the local people.”
Mahmeini’s man said, “I don’t care how tough he thinks he is. And I don’t care how many local people he’s taken out either. Because I’m sure they’re all idiots up there. I mean it’s risky because this isn’t the Wild West anymore. Do we have a safe exit strategy?”
Cassano said, “They tell me he’s a kind of hobo. So nobody is going to miss him. There’s not going to be an investigation. There aren’t even any cops up there.”
“That helps.”
“And it’s farm country. Like you said. There must be backhoes all over the place. We’ll bury him. Alive, preferably, the way our supplier is talking.”
Chapter 31
The physical search of the area was described four separate ways, in four separate files, the first from the county PD, the second from the State Police, the third from the National Guard’s helicopter unit, and the fourth from the FBI. The helicopter report was thin and useless. Margaret Coe had been wearing a green dress, which didn’t help in corn country in early summer. And the pilot had stayed above a thousand feet, to stop his downdraft damaging the young plants. Priorities had to be observed in a farm state, even when a kid was missing. Nothing significant had been seen from the air. No freshly turned earth, no flash of pink or chrome from the bike, no flattened stalks in any of the fields. Nothing at all, in fact, except an ocean of corn.
A waste of time and aviation fuel.
Both the county PD and the State Police had covered the forty farms at ground level. First had come the loud-hailer appeals in the dark, and the next day every house had been visited and every occupant had been asked to verify that they hadn’t seen the kid and that they had searched their outbuildings thoroughly. There was near-universal cooperation. Only one old couple confessed they hadn’t checked properly, so the cops searched their place for themselves. Nothing was found. The motel had been visited, every cabin checked, the Dumpster emptied, the lot searched for evidence. Nothing was found.
The Duncan compound showed up in three files. Everyone except the helicopter unit had been there. First the county PD had gone in, then the county PD and the State Police together, then the State Police on its own, and then finally the FBI, which had been a lot of visits and a lot of people for such a small place. The searches had been intense, because the smallness of the place had struck people as somehow sinister in itself. Reacher could sense it between the lines, quite clearly, even a quarter-century later. Rural cops. They had been confused an
d disconcerted. It was almost like the Duncans hated the land. They had stripped away every inch of it they could. They had kept a single track driveway, plus token shoulders, plus a grudging five or ten yards beyond the foundations of their three houses. That was all. That was the whole extent of the place.
But the smallness had made it easy to search. The reports were meticulous. The piles of heavy lumber for the half-built fence had been taken apart and examined. Gravel had been raked up, and lines of men had walked slow and bent over, staring at the ground, and the dogs had covered literally every square inch ten times each.
Nothing was found.
The search moved indoors. As intense as it had been outside, it was twice as thorough inside. Absolutely painstaking. Reacher had searched a lot of places, a lot of times, and he knew how hard it was. But four times in quick succession not a single corner had been cut, and not a single effort had been spared. Stuff had been taken apart, and voids in walls had been opened up, and floors had been lifted. Reacher knew why. Nothing was stated on paper, and nothing was admitted, but again, he could read it right there between the lines. They were looking for a kid, certainly, but by that point they were also looking for parts of a kid.
Nothing was found.
The FBI contribution was a full-on forensics sweep, 1980s-style. It was documented and described at meticulous length on sheets of Bureau paper that had been photocopied and collated and stapled and passed on as a courtesy. Hairs and fibers had been collected, every flat surface had been fingerprinted, all kinds of magic lights and devices and gadgets had been deployed. A corpse-sniffing dog had been flown in from Denver and then sent back again after producing a null result. Technicians with a dozen different specialist expertises had been in and out for twelve solid hours.