by Lee Child
“Chest wall trauma,” the doctor said. “Causes fatal cardiac dysrhythmias.”
“Ever seen it?”
“No.”
“Neither had I. But I’m here to tell you, it works real good.”
“What was in his pocket?”
“A knife and a gun and an ID from Vegas.”
“Vegas?” the doctor said. “Do the Duncans have gambling debts? Is that the dispute?”
“Possible,” Reacher said. “No question the Duncans have been living beyond their means for a long time. They’ve been getting some extra income from somewhere.”
“Why say that? They’ve been extorting forty farms for thirty years. And a motel. That’s a lot of money.”
“No, it isn’t,” Reacher said. “Not really. This isn’t the wealthiest area in the world. They could be taking half of what everyone earns, and that wouldn’t buy them a pot to piss in. But Seth lives like a king and they pay ten football players just to be here. They couldn’t do all that on the back of a seasonal enterprise.”
The doctor’s wife said, “We should worry about that later. Right now the Cornhuskers are on the loose, and we don’t know where or why. That’s what’s important tonight. Dorothy Coe might be coming over.”
“Here?” Reacher asked. “Now?”
The doctor said, “That’s what happens sometimes. With the women, mostly. It’s a support thing. Like a sisterhood. Whoever feels the most vulnerable clusters together.”
His wife said, “Which is always Dorothy and me, and sometimes others too, depending on exactly what the panic is.”
“Not a good idea,” Reacher said. “From a tactical point of view, I mean. It gives them one target instead of multiple targets.”
“It’s strength in numbers. It works. Sometimes those boys can act a little inhibited. They don’t necessarily like witnesses around, when they’re sent after women.”
They took cups of coffee and waited in the dining room, which had a view of the road. The road was dark. There was nothing moving on it. It was indistinguishable from the rest of the nighttime terrain. They sat quiet for a spell, on hard upright chairs, with the lights off to preserve their view out the window, and then the doctor said, “Tell us about the files.”
“I saw a photograph,” Reacher said. “Dorothy’s kid was Asian.”
“Vietnamese,” the doctor’s wife said. “Artie Coe did a tour over there. Something about it affected him, I guess. When the boat people thing started, they stepped up and adopted.”
“Did many people from here go to Vietnam?”
“A fair number.”
“Did the Duncans go?”
“I don’t think so. They were in an essential occupation.”
“So was Arthur Coe.”
“Different strokes for different folks.”
“Who was chairman of the local draft board?”
“Their father. Old Man Duncan.”
“So the boys didn’t keep on farming to please him. They kept on to keep their asses out of the war.”
“I suppose.”
“Good to know,” Reacher said. “They’re cowards, too, apart from anything else.”
The doctor said, “Tell us about the investigation.”
“Long story,” Reacher said. “There were eleven boxes of paper.”
“And?”
“The investigation had problems,” Reacher said.
“Like what?”
“One was a conceptual problem, and the others were details. The lead detective was a guy called Carson, and the ground kind of shifted under his feet over a twelve-hour period. It started out as a straightforward missing persons issue, and then it slowly changed to a potential homicide. And Carson didn’t really revisit the early phase in light of the later phase. The first night, he had people checking their own outbuildings. Which was reasonable, frankly, with a missing kid. But later he never really searched those outbuildings independently. Only one of them, basically, for an old couple who hadn’t done it themselves. Everyone else self-certified, really. In effect they said, no sir, the kid ain’t here, and she never was, I promise. At some point Carson should have started over and treated everyone as a potential suspect. But he didn’t. He focused on the Duncans only, based on information received. And the Duncans came out clean.”
“You think it was someone else?”
“Could have been anyone else in the world, just passing through. If not, it could have been any of the local residents. Probably not Dorothy or Arthur Coe themselves, but that still leaves thirty-nine possibilities.”
The doctor’s wife said, “I think it was the Duncans.”
“Three separate agencies disagree with you.”
“They might be wrong.”
Reacher nodded in the dark, his gesture unobserved.
“They might be,” he said. “There might have been another conceptual error. A failure of imagination anyway. It’s clear that the Duncans never left their compound, and it’s clear that the girl never showed up there. There are reliable witnesses to both of those facts. Four boys were building a fence. And the science came up negative, too. But the Duncans could have had an accomplice. A fifth man, essentially. He could have scooped up the kid and taken her somewhere else. Carson never even thought about that. He never checked known associates. And he should have, probably. You wait five years to build a fence, and you happen to be doing it on the exact same day a kid disappears? Could have been a prefabricated alibi. Carson should have wondered, at least. I would have, for sure.”
“Who would the fifth man have been?”
“Anyone,” Reacher said. “A friend, maybe. One of their drivers, perhaps. It’s clear a vehicle was involved, otherwise why was the bike never found?”
“I always wondered about the bike.”
“Did they have a friend? Did you ever see one, when you were babysitting?”
“I saw a few people, I guess.”
“Anyone close? This would have been a very intimate type of relationship. Shared enthusiasms, shared passions, absolute trust. Someone into the same kind of thing they were into.”
“A man?”
“Almost certainly. The same kind of creep.”
“I’m not sure. I can’t remember. Where would he have taken her?”
“Anywhere, theoretically. And that was another major mistake. Carson never really looked anywhere else, apart from the Duncans’ compound. It was crazy not to search the transportation depot, for instance. As a matter of fact I don’t think that was a real problem, because it seems like that place is real busy in the early part of the summer, seven days a week. Something to do with alfalfa, whatever that is. No one would take an abducted child to a work site full of witnesses. But there was one other place Carson should have checked for sure. And he didn’t. He ignored it completely. Possibly because of ignorance or confusion.”
“Which was where?”
But Reacher didn’t get time to answer, because right then the window blazed bright and the room filled with moving lights and shadows. They played over the walls, the ceiling, their faces, alternately stark white and deep black.
Headlight beams, strobing through the posts of the fence.
A car, coming in fast from the east.
Chapter 40
It was Dorothy Coe coming in from the east, in her ratty old pick-up truck. Reacher knew it a second after he saw her lights. He could hear her holed muffler banging away like a motorcycle. Like a Harley-Davidson moving away from a stoplight. She came on fast and then she braked hard and stopped dead and stood off just short of the house. She had seen the gold Yukon in the driveway. She had recognized it, presumably. A Cornhusker’s car. She probably knew it well. The doctor’s wife stepped out to the hallway and undid the locks and the chain and opened the front door and waved. Dorothy Coe didn’t move an inch. Twenty-five years of habitual caution. She thought it could be a trick or a decoy. Reacher joined the doctor’s wife on the step. He pointed to the Yukon and then to himse
lf. Big gestures, like semaphore. My truck. Dorothy Coe moved on again and turned in. She shut down and got out and walked to the door. She had a wool hat pulled down over her ears and she was wearing a quilted coat open over a gray dress. She asked, “Did the Cornhuskers come here?”
The doctor’s wife said, “Not yet.”
“What do you think they want?”
“We don’t know.”
They all stepped back inside and the doctor closed up after them, locks and chain, and they went back to the dining room, now four of them. Dorothy Coe took off her coat, because of the heat. They sat in a line and watched the window like a movie screen. Dorothy Coe was next to Reacher. He asked her, “They didn’t go to your place?”
She said, “No. But Mr. Vincent saw one, passing the motel. About twenty minutes ago. He was watching out the window.”
Reacher said, “That was me. I came in that way, in the truck I took. There are only five of them left now.”
“OK. I understand. But that concerns me a little.”
“Why?”
“I would expect at least one of us to have seen at least one of them, roaming around somewhere. But no one has. Which means they aren’t all spread out. They’re all bunched up. They’re hunting in a pack.”
“Looking for me?”
“Possibly.”
“Then I don’t want to bring them here. Want me to leave?”
“Maybe,” Dorothy said.
“Yes,” the doctor said.
“No,” his wife said.
Impasse. No decision. They all turned back to the window and watched the road. It stayed dark. The cloud was clearing a little. There was faint moonlight in the sky. It was almost one o’clock in the morning.
The motel was closed down for the night, but Vincent was still in the lounge. He was still watching out the window. He had seen the gold Yukon go by. He had recognized it. He had seen it before, many times. It belonged to a young man called John. A very unpleasant person. A bully, even by Duncan standards. Once he had made Vincent get down on his knees and beg not to be beaten. Beg, like a dog, with limp hands held up, pleading and howling, five whole minutes.
Vincent had called in the Yukon sighting, to the phone tree, and then he had gone back to the window and watched some more. Twenty minutes had gone by without incident. Then he saw the five men everyone was talking about. Their strange little convoy pulled into his lot. The blue Chevrolet, the red Ford, Seth Duncan’s black Cadillac. He knew from the phone tree that someone else was using Seth’s car. No one knew how or why. But he saw the guy. A small man slid out of the driver’s seat, rumpled and unshaven, foreign, like people from the Middle East he had seen on the news. Then the two men who had roughed him up climbed out of the Chevrolet. Then two more got out of the Ford, tall, heavy, dark-skinned. Also foreign. They all stood together in the gloom.
Vincent didn’t automatically think the five men were there for him. There could be other reasons. His lot was the only stopping place for miles. Plenty of drivers used it, for all kinds of purposes, passersby checking their maps, taking off their coats, getting things from the trunk, sometimes just stretching their legs. It was private property, no question, properly deeded, but it was used almost like a public facility, like a regular roadside turnout.
He watched. The five men were talking. His windows were ordinary commercial items, chosen by his parents in 1969. They were screened on the inside and opened outward, with little winding handles. Vincent thought about opening the one he was standing behind. Just a crack. It was almost an obligation. He might hear what the five men were saying. He might get valuable information, for the phone tree. Everyone was expected to contribute. That was how the system worked. So he started to turn the handle, slowly, a little at a time. At first it went easily. But then it jammed. The casement was stuck to the insulating strip. Paint and grime and long disuse. He used finger and thumb, and tried to ease some steady pressure into it. He wanted to pop it loose gently. He didn’t want to make a loud plastic sound. The five men were still talking. Or, rather, the man from the Cadillac was talking, and the other four were listening.
Mahmeini’s man was saying, “I let my partner out a mile back. He’s going to work behind the lines. He’s more use to me that way. Pincer movements are always best.”
Roberto Cassano said, “Is he going to coordinate with the rest of us?”
“Of course he is. What else would he do? We’re a team, aren’t we?”
“You should have kept him around. We need to make a plan first.”
“For this? We don’t need to make a plan. It’s just flushing a guy out. How hard can it be? You said it yourself, the locals will help.”
“They’re all asleep.”
“We’ll wake them up. With a bit of luck we’ll get it done before morning.”
“And then what?”
“Then we’ll spend the day leaning on the Duncans. We all need that delivery, and since we all had to drag ourselves up here, we might as well all spend our time on what’s important.”
“So where do we start?”
“You tell me. You’ve spent time here.”
“The doctor,” Cassano said. “He’s the weakest link.”
Mahmeini’s man said, “So where’s the doctor?”
“South and west of here.”
“OK, go talk to him. I’ll go somewhere else.”
“Why?”
“Because if you know he’s the weakest link, then so does Reacher. Dollars to doughnuts, he ain’t there. So you go waste your time, and I’ll go do some work.”
Vincent gave up on cracking the window. He could tell there was no way it would open without a ripping sound, and drawing attention right then would not be a good idea. And the impromptu conference in his lot was breaking up anyway. The small rumpled man slid back into Seth Duncan’s Cadillac and the big black car crunched through a wide arc over the gravel. Its headlight beams swept across Vincent’s window. He ducked just in time. Then the Cadillac turned left on the two-lane and took off south.
The other four men stayed right where they were. They watched until the Cadillac’s taillights were lost to sight, and then they turned back and started talking again, face-to-face in pairs, each one of them with his right hand in his right-hand coat pocket, for some strange reason, all four of them symmetrical, like a formal tableau.
Roberto Cassano watched the Cadillac go and said, “He doesn’t have a partner. There’s nobody working behind the lines. What lines, anyway? It’s all bullshit.”
Safir’s main man said, “Of course he has a partner. We all saw him, right there in your room.”
“He’s gone. He ran out. He took whatever car they rented. That guy is on his own now. He stole that Cadillac from the lot. We saw it there earlier.”
No reply.
Cassano said, “Unless one of you had a hand in it. Or both of you.”
“What are you saying?”
“We’re all grown-ups here,” Cassano said. “We know how the world works. So let’s not pretend we don’t. Mahmeini told his guys to take the rest of us out, and Safir told you guys to take the rest of us out, and Rossi sure as hell told us to take the rest of you out. I’m being honest here. Mahmeini and Safir and Rossi are all the same. They all want the whole pie. We all know that.”
Safir’s guy said, “We didn’t do anything. We figured you did. We were talking about it all the way up here. It was obvious that Cadillac isn’t a rental.”
“We didn’t do anything to the guy. We were going to wait for later.”
“Us too.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Swear?”
“You swear first.”
Cassano said, “On my mother’s grave.”
Safir’s guy said, “On mine too. So what happened?”
“He ran out. Must have. Maybe chicken. Or short on discipline. Maybe Mahmeini isn’t what we think he is. Which raises possibilities.”
Nobody spoke.
Cassano said, “We have a vote here, don’t you think? The four of us? We could take out Mahmeini’s other boy, and leave each other alone. That way Rossi and Safir end up with fifty percent more pie each. They could live with that. And we sure as hell could.”
“Like a truce?”
“Truces are temporary. Call it an alliance. That’s permanent.”
Nobody spoke. Safir’s guys glanced at each other. Not a difficult decision. A two-front war, or a one-front war? History was positively littered with examples of smart people choosing the latter over the former.
Vincent was still watching out the window. He saw quiet conversation, low tones, some major tension there, then some easing, the body language relaxing, some speculative looks, some tentative smiles. Then all four men took their hands out of their pockets and shook, four separate ways, wrists crossing, some pats on the back, some slaps on the shoulder. Four new friends, all suddenly getting along just great.
There was a little more talk after that, all of it fast and breezy, like simple obvious steps were being planned and confirmed, and then there were more pats on the back and slaps on the shoulder, all shuffling mobile Catch you later kind of stuff, and then the two big dark-skinned men climbed back into their red Ford. They closed their doors and got set to go and then the Italian who had done all the talking suddenly remembered something and turned back and tapped on the driver’s glass.
The window came down.
The Italian had a gun in his hand.
The Italian leaned in and there were two bright flashes, one hard after the other, like orange camera strobes right there inside the car, behind the glass, all six windows lighting up, and two loud explosions, then a pause, then two more, two more bright flashes, two more loud explosions, evenly spaced, carefully placed.