Reacher turned the Toyota in and bumped down the track. At the end of it he could see a clapboard farmhouse with a barn behind it and a clean red pickup truck next to it. The truck was turned nose-out and it had a massive chrome radiator grille. A Dodge Ram, Reacher figured. He parked in front of it and got out. The house and the barn were about a hundred years old and the truck was about a month old. It had the big Hemi motor, and the crew cab, and four-wheel drive, and huge tires. It was probably worth more than the house, which was badly maintained and one winter away from serious trouble. The barn was no better. But it had new iron clasps on the doors, with a bicycle U-lock through them.
There was no sound except for a distant rainfall hiss as the irrigation booms turned slowly in the fields. No activity anywhere. No traffic on the road. No dogs barking. The air was still and full of the sharp smell of fertilizer and earth. Reacher walked to the front door and knocked twice with the flat of his hand. No response. He tried again. No response. He walked around to the back of the house and found a woman sitting on a porch glider. She was a lean and leathery person, wearing a faded print dress and holding a pint bottle of something golden in color. She was probably fifty, but she could have passed for seventy, or forty if she took a bath and got a good night’s sleep. She had one foot tucked up underneath her and was using the other to scoot the glider slowly back and forth. She wasn’t wearing shoes.
“What do you want?” she said.
“Jeb,” Reacher said.
“Not here.”
“He’s not at work, either.”
“I know that.”
“So where is he?”
“How would I know?”
“Are you his mother?”
“Yes, I am. You think I’m hiding him here? Go ahead and check.”
Reacher said nothing. The woman stared at him and rocked the glider, back and forth, back and forth. The bottle rested easy in her lap.
“I insist,” she said. “I mean it. Search the damn house.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Why should you?”
“Because if you invite me to search the house it means he’s not in it.”
“Like I said. Jeb’s not here.”
“What about the barn?”
“It’s locked from the outside. There’s only one key and he’s got it.”
Reacher said nothing.
“He went away,” the woman said. “Disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“Only temporarily, I hope.”
“Is that his truck?”
The woman nodded. Took a small, delicate sip from her bottle.
“So he walked?” Reacher said.
“He was picked up. By a friend.”
“When?”
“Late last night.”
“To go where?”
“I have no idea.”
“Take a guess.”
The woman shrugged, rocked, sipped.
“Far away, probably,” she said. “He has friends all over. California, maybe. Or Arizona. Or Texas. Or Mexico.”
“Was this trip planned?” Reacher asked.
The woman wiped the neck of the bottle on the hem of her dress and held it out toward him. He shook his head. Sat down on the porch step. The old wood creaked once under his weight. The glider kept on rocking, back and forth. It was almost silent. Almost, but not quite. There was a small sound from the mechanism that came once at the end of each swing, and a little creak from a porch board as it started its return. Reacher could smell mildew from the cushions, and bourbon from the bottle.
“Cards on the table, whoever the hell you are,” the woman said. “Jeb got home last night limping. With his nose busted. And I’m figuring you for the guy who bust it.”
“Why?”
“Who else would come looking for him? I’m guessing he started something he couldn’t finish.”
Reacher said nothing.
“So he ran,” the woman said. “The pussy.”
“Did he call someone last night? Or did someone call him?”
“How would I know? He makes a thousand calls a day, he takes a thousand calls a day. His cell phone is the biggest thing in his life. Next to his truck.”
“Did you see who picked him up?”
“Some guy in a car. He waited on the road. Wouldn’t come down the track. I didn’t see much. It was dark. White lights on the front, red lights on the back, but all cars have those.”
Reacher nodded. He had seen only a single set of tire marks in the mud, from the big pickup. The car that had waited on the road was probably a sedan, too low-slung to make it down the farm track.
“Did he say how long he would be gone?”
The woman just shook her head.
“Was he scared of something?”
“He was kind of beaten down. Deflated.”
Deflated. Like the redhead in the auto parts store.
“OK,” Reacher said. “Thanks.”
“You going now?”
“Yes,” Reacher said. He walked back the way he had come, listening to the glider moving, listening to the hiss of irrigation water. He backed the Toyota all the way to the road and swung the wheel and headed south.
He put the Toyota next to the Chevy and headed inside the store. Gary was still behind the register. Reacher ignored him and headed straight for the No Admittance door. The redhead was still behind the desk. She was almost through with the invoices. The stack on her right was tall, and the stack on her left had just one sheet of paper in it. She wasn’t doing anything with it. She was leaning back in the chair, unwilling to finish, unwilling to get back out to the public. Or to Gary.
Reacher put the car keys on the desk.
“Thanks for the loan,” he said.
“Did you find him?” she asked.
“He’s gone.”
She said nothing.
“You look tired,” Reacher said.
She said nothing.
“Like you’ve got no energy. No sparkle. No enthusiasm.”
“So?”
“Last night you were full of beans.”
“I’m at work now.”
“You were at work last night, too. You were getting paid.”
“You said you were going to forget all about that.”
“I am. Have a nice life, Sandy.”
She watched him for a minute.
“You too, Jimmy Reese,” she said.
He turned around and closed the door on her again and headed out to the daylight. Started walking south, back to town.
There were four people in Helen Rodin’s office when he got there. Helen herself, and three strangers. One of them was a guy in an expensive suit. He was sitting in Helen’s chair, behind her desk. She was standing next to him, head bent, talking. Some kind of an urgent conference. The other two strangers were standing near the window, like they were waiting, like they were next in line. One was a man, one was a woman. The woman had long dark hair and glasses. The man had no hair and glasses. Both were dressed casually. Both had lapel badges with their names printed large. The woman had Mary Mason followed by a bunch of letters that had to be medical. The man had Warren Niebuhr with the same bunch of letters. Doctors, Reacher figured, probably psychiatrists. The name badges made them look like they had been dragged out of a convention hall. But they didn’t seem unhappy about it.
Helen looked up from her discussion.
“Folks, this is Jack Reacher,” she said. “My investigator dropped out and Mr. Reacher agreed to take over his role.”
News to me, Reacher thought. But he said nothing. Then Helen gestured at the guy in her chair, proudly.
“This is Alan Danuta,” she said. “He’s a lawyer specializing in veterans’ issues. From D.C. Probably the best there is.”
“You got here fast,” Reacher said to him.
“I had to,” the guy said back. “Today is the critical day for Mr. Barr.”
“We’re all headed for the hospital,�
� Helen said. “The doctors say he’s ready for us. I was hoping that Alan would consult by phone or e-mail, but he flew right in.”
“Easier for me that way,” Danuta said.
“No, I got lucky,” Helen said. “And then even luckier, because there’s a psychiatric conference in Bloomington all week. Dr. Mason and Dr. Niebuhr drove straight down.”
“I specialize in memory loss,” Dr. Mason said.
“And I specialize in coercion,” Dr. Niebuhr said. “Dependency issues in the criminal mind, and so on.”
“So this is the team,” Helen said.
“What about his sister?” Reacher asked.
“She’s already with him.”
“We need to talk.”
“Privately?”
“Just for a moment.”
She made an excuse-me face to the others and led Reacher into the outer office.
“You get anywhere?” she asked him.
“The bimbo and the four other guys were recruited by a friend of theirs called Jeb Oliver. He paid them a hundred bucks each. I figure he kept another five for his trouble. I went to his house, but he’s gone.”
“Where?”
“Nobody knows. He was picked up by a guy in a car.”
“Who is he?”
“He works at the store with the bimbo. But he’s also a small-time dope dealer.”
“Really?”
Reacher nodded. “There’s a barn behind his house with a fancy lock on it. Maybe a meth lab, maybe a storeroom. He spends a lot of time on his cell phone. He owns a truck that had to cost twice what a store clerk makes in a year. And he lives with his mother.”
“What does that prove?”
“Drug dealers are more likely than anyone else to live with their mothers. I read it in the paper.”
“Why?”
“They’ve usually got small-time priors. They can’t pass the kind of background checks that landlords like to run.”
Helen said nothing.
“They were all hopped up last night,” Reacher said. “All six of them. Speed, probably, judging by the way the bimbo looked today. She was different. Really down, like an amphetamine hangover.”
“They were doped up? Then you were lucky.”
Reacher shook his head. “You want to fight with me, your best choice would be aspirin.”
“Where does this get us?”
“Look at it from Jeb Oliver’s point of view. He was doing something for somebody. Part work, part favor. Worth a thousand bucks. Had to be for someone higher up on one of his various food chains. And it probably wasn’t for the auto parts manager.”
“So you think James Barr was involved with a dope dealer?”
“Not necessarily involved. But maybe coerced by one for some unknown reason.”
“This raises the stakes,” Helen said.
“A little,” Reacher said.
“What should we do?”
“We should go to the hospital. Let Dr. Mason find out if Barr is bullshitting about the amnesia. If he is, then the fastest way through all of this is to slap him around until he tells us the truth.”
“What if he isn’t bullshitting?”
“Then there are other approaches.”
“Like what?”
“Later,” Reacher said. “Let’s hear what the shrinks have to say first.”
Helen Rodin drove out to the hospital in her Saturn with the lawyer Alan Danuta sitting beside her in the front and Reacher sprawling in the back. Mason and Niebuhr followed her in the Taurus they had rented that morning in Bloomington. They parked side by side in a large visitors’ lot, and all five people got out and stood for a moment and then headed together toward the building’s main entrance.
Grigor Linsky watched them walk. He was fifty feet across the lot, in the Cadillac that Jeb Oliver’s mother had seen in the dark the night before. He kept the motor running and dialed his cell phone. The Zec answered on the first ring.
“Yes?” he said.
“The soldier is very good,” Linsky said. “He’s already been out to the boy’s house.”
“And?”
“Nothing. The boy is no longer there.”
“Where is the boy?”
“Distributed.”
“Specifically?”
“His head and his hands are in the river. The rest of him is under eight yards of crushed stone in the new First Street roadbed.”
“What’s happening now?”
“The soldier and the lawyer are at the hospital. With three others. Another lawyer and two doctors, I think. Specialist counsel and expert witnesses, I imagine.”
“Are we relaxed?”
“We should be. They have to try. That’s the system here, as you know. But they won’t succeed.”
“Make sure they don’t,” the Zec said.
The hospital was on the outer edge of the city and therefore relatively spacious. Clearly there had been no real estate restraints. Just county budget restrictions, Reacher figured, that had limited the building to plain concrete and six stories. The concrete was painted white inside and out, and the stories were short of headroom. But other than those factors the place looked like any hospital anywhere. And it smelled like any hospital anywhere. Decay, disinfectant, disease. Reacher didn’t like hospitals very much. He was following the other four down a long bright corridor that led to an elevator. The two shrinks were leading the way. They seemed pretty much at home. Helen Rodin and Alan Danuta were right behind them. They were side by side, talking. The shrinks reached the elevator bank and Niebuhr hit the button. The little column of people closed up behind him. Then Helen Rodin turned back and stopped Reacher before he caught up with the others. Stepped close and spoke quietly.
“Does the name Eileen Hutton mean anything to you?”
“Why?”
“My father faxed a new witness list. He added her name.”
Reacher said nothing.
“She seems to be from the army,” Helen said. “Do you know her?”
“Should I?”
Helen came closer and turned away from the others.
“I need to know what she knows,” she said quietly.
This could complicate things, Reacher thought.
“She was the prosecutor,” he said.
“When? Fourteen years ago?”
“Yes.”
“So how much does she know?”
“I think she’s at the Pentagon now.”
“How much does she know, Reacher?”
He looked away.
“She knows it all,” he said.
“How? You never got anywhere near a courtroom.”
“Even so.”
“How?”
“Because I was sleeping with her.”
She stared at him. “Tell me you’re kidding.”
“I’m not kidding.”
“You told her everything?”
“We were in a relationship. Naturally I told her everything. We were on the same side.”
“Just two lonely people in the desert.”
“We had a good thing going. Three great months. She was a nice person. Still is, probably. We were close.”
“That’s more information than I need, Reacher.”
He said nothing.
“This is way out of control now,” Helen said.
“She can’t use what she’s got. Even less than I can. It’s still classified and she’s still in the army.”
Helen Rodin said nothing.
“Believe it,” Reacher said.
“Then why is she on the damn list?”
“My fault,” Reacher said. “I mentioned the Pentagon to your father. When I couldn’t understand how my name had come up. He must have poked around. I thought he might.”
“It’s over before it starts if she talks.”
“She can’t.”
“Maybe she can. Maybe she’s going to. Who knows what the hell the military is going to do?”
The elevator bell rang and t
he small crowd shuffled closer to the doors.
“You’re going to have to talk to her,” Helen said. “She’ll be coming here for a deposition. You’re going to have to find out what she’s going to say.”
“She’s probably a one-star general by now. I can’t make her tell me anything.”
“Find a way,” Helen said. “Exploit old memories.”
“Maybe I don’t want to. She and I are still on the same side, remember. As far as Specialist E-4 James Barr is concerned.”
Helen Rodin turned away and stepped into the elevator car.
The elevator opened into a sixth-floor lobby that was all blank, painted concrete except for a steel-and-wired-glass door that led into a security airlock. Beyond that, Reacher could see signs to an ICU and two isolation wards, one male, one female, and two general wards, and a neonatal facility. Reacher guessed the whole sixth floor had been funded by the state. It wasn’t a pleasant place. It was a perfect blend of prison and hospital, and neither thing was a fun ingredient.
A guy in a Board of Corrections uniform met the party at a reception desk. Everyone was searched and everyone signed a liability waiver. Then a doctor showed up and led them to a small waiting area. The doctor was a tired man of about thirty, and the waiting area had chairs made of tubular steel and green vinyl. They looked like they had been ripped out of 1950s Chevrolets.
“Barr is awake and reasonably lucid,” the doctor said. “We’re listing him as stable, but that doesn’t mean he’s a well man. So today we’re restricting his visitors to a maximum of two at any one time, and we want them to keep things as brief as possible.”
Reacher saw Helen Rodin smile, and he knew why. The cops would want to come in pairs, and therefore Helen’s presence as defense counsel would make three at a time. Which meant that the medical restrictions were handing her a defense-only day.
“His sister is with him right now,” the doctor said. “She’d prefer it if you would wait until they’ve finished their visit before going in.”
The doctor left them there and Helen said, “I’ll go first, on my own. I need to introduce myself and get his consent for the representation. Then Dr. Mason should see him, I think. Then we’ll decide what to do next based on her conclusions.”
She spoke fast. Reacher realized she was a little nervous. A little tense. All of them were, apart from him. None of them apart from him had ever met James Barr before. Barr had become an unknown destination for each of them, all in separate ways. He was Helen’s client, albeit one that she didn’t really want. He was an object of study for Mason and Niebuhr. Maybe the subject of future academic papers, even fame and reputation. Maybe he was a condition waiting to be named. Barr’s syndrome. Same for Alan Danuta. Maybe to him the whole thing was a Supreme Court precedent waiting to be argued. A textbook chapter. A law school class. Indiana versus Barr. Barr versus the United States. They were all investing in a man they didn’t know.
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