‘What grows here?’ he asked, just to keep the doctor awake.
‘Corn, of course,’ the guy said. ‘Corn and more corn. Lots and lots of corn. More corn than a sane man ever wants to see.’
‘You local?’
‘From Idaho originally.’
‘Potatoes.’
‘Better than corn.’
‘So what brought you to Nebraska?’
‘My wife,’ the guy said. ‘Born and raised right here.’
They were quiet for a moment, and then Reacher asked, ‘What’s wrong with me?’
The doctor said, ‘What?’
‘You claimed you knew what’s wrong with me. Physically, at least. So let’s hear it.’
‘What is this, an audition?’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t need one.’
‘Go to hell. I’m functioning.’
‘Prove it.’
‘I know what you did,’ the guy said. ‘I don’t know how.’
‘What did I do?’
‘You strained everything from your flexor digiti minimi brevis to your quadratus lumborum, both sides of your body, just about symmetrically.’
‘Try English, not Latin.’
‘You damaged every muscle, tendon and ligament associated with moving your arms, all the way from your little fingers to the anchor on your twelfth rib. You’ve got pain and discomfort and your fine motor control is screwed up because every system is barking.’
‘Prognosis?’
‘You’ll heal.’
‘When?’
‘A few days. Maybe a week. You could try aspirin.’
Reacher drove on. He cracked his window an inch, to suck out the bourbon fumes. They passed a small cluster of three large homes, set close together a hundred yards off the two-lane road at the end of a long shared driveway. They were all hemmed in together by a post-and-rail fence. They were old places, once fine, still sturdy, now maybe a little neglected. The doctor turned his head and took a long hard look at them, and then he faced front again.
‘How did you do it?’ he asked.
‘Do what?’ Reacher said.
‘How did you hurt your arms?’
‘You’re the doctor,’ Reacher said. ‘You tell me.’
‘I’ve seen the same kind of symptoms twice before. I volunteered in Florida after one of the hurricanes. A few years ago. I’m not such a bad guy.’
‘And?’
‘People who get caught outside in a hundred-mile-an-hour wind either get bowled along the street, or they catch on to a cyclone fence and try to haul themselves to safety. Like dragging their own bodyweight against the resistance of a gale. Unbelievable stress. That’s how the injuries happen. But yours aren’t more than a couple of days old, judging by the way you look. And you said you came in from the north. No hurricanes north of here. And it’s the wrong season for hurricanes, anyway. I bet there wasn’t a hurricane anywhere in the world this week. Not a single one. So I don’t know how you hurt yourself. But I wish you well for a speedy recovery. I really do.’
Reacher said nothing.
The doctor said, ‘Left at the next crossroads.’
* * *
They got to the Duncan house five minutes later. It had exterior lighting, including a pair of spots angled up at a white mailbox, one from each side. The mailbox had Duncan written on it. The house itself looked like a restored farmhouse. It was modest in terms of size but immaculate in terms of condition. There was a front lawn of hibernating grass with an antique horse buggy parked on it. Tall spoked wheels, long empty shafts. There was a long straight driveway leading to an outbuilding big enough to have been a working barn back when work was done around the place. Now it was a garage. It had three sets of doors. One set was standing open, as if someone had left in a hurry.
Reacher stopped the car level with a path that led to the front door.
‘Show time, doctor,’ he said. ‘If she’s still here.’
‘She will be,’ the guy said.
‘So let’s go.’
They got out of the car.
FOUR
THE DOCTOR TOOK A LEATHER BAG FROM THE BACK OF THE CAR. Then he repeated his uphill drunk-guy stumble all the way along the path, this time with more reason, because the gravel surface was difficult. But he made it unassisted to the door, which was a fine piece of old wood with glassy white paint carefully applied to it. Reacher found a brass button and laid a knuckle on it. Inside he heard the sound of an electric bell, and then nothing for a minute, and then the sound of slow feet on floorboards. Then the door opened a crack and a face looked out.
Quite a face. It was framed by black hair and had pale skin and frightened eyes at the top, and then a red-soaked handkerchief pressed tight at the apex of a triangular red gush that had flooded downward past the mouth and neck to the blouse below. There was a string of blood-soaked pearls. The blouse was silk and it was wet to the waist. The woman took the handkerchief away from her nose. She had split lips and blood-rimed teeth. Her nose was still leaking, a steady stream.
‘You came,’ she said.
The doctor blinked twice and focused hard and turned down his mouth in a frown and nodded. He said, ‘We should take a look at that.’
‘You’ve been drinking,’ the woman said. Then she looked at Reacher and asked, ‘Who are you?’
‘I drove,’ Reacher said.
‘Because he’s drunk?’
‘He’ll be OK. I wouldn’t let him do brain surgery, but he can stop the bleeding.’
The woman thought about it for a moment and then she nodded and put the handkerchief back to her face and opened the door wide.
They used the kitchen. The doctor was drunk as a skunk but the procedure was simple and the guy retained enough muscle memory to get himself through it. Reacher soaked cloths in warm water and passed them across and the doctor cleaned the woman’s face and jammed her nostrils solid with gauze and used butterfly closures on her cut lips. The anaesthetic took the pain away and she settled into a calm and dreamy state. It was hard to say exactly what she looked like. Her nose had been busted before. That was clear. Apart from that she had good skin and fine bone structure and pretty eyes. She was slim and fairly tall, well dressed and solidly prosperous. As was the house itself. It was warm. The floors were wide planks, lustrous with a hundred years of wax. There was a lot of millwork and fine detail and subtle pastel shades. Books on the shelves, paintings on the walls, rugs on the floors. In the living room there was a wedding photograph in a silver frame. It showed a younger and intact version of the woman with a tall reedy man in a grey morning suit. He had dark hair and a long nose and bright eyes and he looked very smug. Not an athlete or a manual worker, not a professor or a poet. Not a farmer, either. A businessman, probably. An executive of some kind. An indoors type of guy, soft, with energy but no vigour.
Reacher headed back to the kitchen and found the doctor washing his hands in the sink and the woman brushing her hair without the help of a mirror. He asked her, ‘You OK now?’
She said, ‘Not too bad,’ slow and nasal and indistinct.
‘Your husband’s not here?’
‘He decided to go out for dinner. With his friends.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘His name is Seth.’
‘And what’s your name?’
‘My name is Eleanor.’
‘You been taking aspirin, Eleanor?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because Seth does this a lot?’
She paused a long, long time, and then she shook her head.
‘I tripped,’ she said. ‘On the edge of the rug.’
‘More than once, all in a few days? The same rug?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d change that rug, if I were you.’
‘I’m sure it won’t happen again.’
They waited ten minutes in the kitchen while she went upstairs to take a shower and change. They heard the water run and stop and heard her call down that she was OK
and on her way to bed. So they left. The front door clicked behind them. The doctor staggered to the car and dumped himself in the passenger seat with his bag between his feet. Reacher started up and reversed down the driveway to the road. He spun the wheel and hit the gas and took off, back the way they had come.
‘Thank God,’ the doctor said.
‘That she was OK?’
‘No, that Seth Duncan wasn’t there.’
‘I saw his picture. He doesn’t look like much to me. I bet his dog’s a poodle.’
‘They don’t have a dog.’
‘Figure of speech. I can see a country doctor being worried about getting in the middle of a domestic dispute where the guy drinks beer and wears a sleeveless T-shirt and has a couple of pit bull terriers in the yard, with broken-down appliances and cars. But apparently Seth Duncan doesn’t.’
The doctor said nothing.
Reacher said, ‘But you’re scared of him anyway. So his power comes from somewhere else. Financial or political, maybe. He has a nice house.’
The doctor said nothing.
Reacher asked, ‘Was it him?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know that for sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he’s done it before?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many times?’
‘A lot. Sometimes it’s her ribs.’
‘Has she told the cops?’
‘We don’t have cops. We depend on the county. They’re usually sixty miles away.’
‘She could call.’
‘She’s not going to press charges. They never do. If they let it go the first time, that’s it.’
‘Where does a guy like Duncan go to eat dinner with his friends?’
The doctor didn’t answer, and Reacher didn’t ask again.
The doctor said, ‘Are we heading back to the lounge?’
‘No, I’m taking you home.’
‘Thanks. That’s good of you. But it’s a long walk back to the motel.’
‘Your problem, not mine,’ Reacher said. ‘I’m keeping the car. You can hike over and pick it up in the morning.’
Five miles south of the motel the doctor stared all over again at the three old houses standing alone at the end of their driveway, and then he faced front and directed Reacher left and right and left along the boundaries of dark empty fields to a new ranch house set on a couple of flat acres bounded by a post-and-rail fence.
‘Got your key?’ Reacher asked him.
‘On the ring.’
‘Got another key?’
‘My wife will let me in.’
‘You hope,’ Reacher said. ‘Goodnight.’
He watched the doctor stumble through the first twenty feet of his driveway and then he K-turned and threaded back to the main north-south two-lane. If in doubt turn left, was his motto, so he headed north a mile and then he pulled over and thought. Where would a guy like Seth Duncan go for dinner with his friends?
FIVE
A STEAKHOUSE, WAS REACHER’S CONCLUSION. A RURAL AREA, FARM country, a bunch of prosperous types playing good-old-boy, rolling their sleeves, loosening their ties, ordering a pitcher of domestic beer, getting sirloins cooked rare, smirking about the coastal pussies who worried about cholesterol. Nebraska counties were presumably huge and thinly populated, which could put thirty or more miles between restaurants. But the night was dark and steakhouses always had lit signs. Part of the culture. Either the word Steakhouse in antique script along the spine of the roof, all outlined in neon, or an upmarket name-board all blasted with spotlights.
Reacher killed his headlights and climbed out of the Subaru and grabbed one of the roof rails and stepped up on the hood and then crouched and eased himself up on the roof. He stood tall, his eye line eleven feet above the grade in a flat part of the world. He turned a full 360 and peered into the darkness. Saw the ghostly blue glow of the motel far off to the north, and then a distant pink halo maybe ten miles south and west. Maybe just a gas station, but it was the only other light to be seen. So Reacher drove south and then west. He stopped twice more to fix his bearings. The glow in the air grew brighter as he homed in on it. Red neon, made slightly pink by the night mist. Could be anything. A liquor store, another motel, Exxon.
It was a steakhouse. He came up on it end-on. It was a long low place with candles in the windows and siding like a barn and a swaybacked roof like an old mare in a field. It was standing alone in an acre of beaten dirt. It had a bright sign along its ridgeline, a bird’s nest of glass tubing and metal supports spelling out the word Steakhouse in antique script and red light. It was ringed with parked cars, all of them nose-in like sucking pigs or jets at a terminal. There were sedans and pick-up trucks and SUVs, some of them new, some of them old, most of them domestic.
Reacher parked the doctor’s Subaru on its own near the road. He climbed out and stood for a moment in the cold, rolling his shoulders, trying to get his upper body comfortable. He had never taken aspirin and wasn’t about to start. He had been banged up in the hospital a couple of times, with IV morphine drips in his arms, and he remembered that experience quite fondly. But outside of the ICU he was going to rely on time and willpower. No other option.
He walked to the steakhouse door. Inside it was a small square lobby with another door. Inside that was an unattended maître d’ lectern with a reading light and a reservations book. To the right was a small dining room with two couples finishing up their meals. To the left, the exact same thing. Ahead, a short corridor with a larger room at the end of it. Low ceilings, unfinished wood on the walls, brass accents. A warm, intimate place.
Reacher stepped past the lectern and checked the larger room. Directly inside the arch was a table for two. It had one guy at it, eating, wearing a red Cornhuskers football jacket. The University of Nebraska. In the main body of the room was a table for eight. It was occupied by seven men, coats and ties, three facing three plus the guy from the wedding photograph at the head. He was a little older than the picture, a little bonier, even more smug, but it was the same guy. No question. He was unmistakable. The table held the wreckage of a big meal. Plates, glasses, serrated knives with worn wooden handles.
Reacher stepped into the room. As he moved the guy alone at the table for two stood up smoothly and sidestepped into Reacher’s path. He raised his hand like a traffic cop. Then he placed that hand on Reacher’s chest. He was a big man. Nearly as tall as Reacher himself, a whole lot younger, maybe a little heavier, in good shape, with some level of mute intelligence in his eyes. Strength and brains. A dangerous mixture. Reacher preferred the old days, when muscle was dumb. He blamed education. The end of social promotion. There was a genetic price to be paid for making athletes attend class.
Nobody looked over from the big table.
Reacher said, ‘What’s your name, fat boy?’
The guy said, ‘My name?’
‘It’s not a difficult question.’
‘Brett.’
Reacher said, ‘So here’s the thing, Brett. Either you take your hand off my chest, or I’ll take it off your wrist.’
The guy dropped his hand. But he didn’t move out of the way.
‘What?’ Reacher asked.
The guy asked, ‘Are you here to see Mr Duncan?’
‘What do you care?’
‘I work for Mr Duncan.’
‘Really?’ Reacher said. ‘What do you do for him?’
‘I schedule his appointments.’
‘And?’
‘You don’t have one.’
‘When can I get one?’
‘How does never work for you?’
‘Not real well, Brett.’
‘Sir, you need to leave.’
‘What are you, security? A bodyguard? What the hell is he?’
‘He’s a private citizen. I’m one of his assistants, that’s all. And now we need to get you back to your car.’
‘You want to walk me out to the lot?’
‘Sir, I’m
just doing my job.’
The seven men at the big table were all hunched forward on their elbows, conspiratorial, six of them listening to a story Duncan was telling, laughing on cue, having a hell of a time. Elsewhere in the building there were kitchen noises and the sharp sounds of silverware on plates and the thump of glasses going down on wooden tabletops.
Reacher said, ‘Are you sure about this?’
The young man said, ‘I’d appreciate it.’
Reacher shrugged.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’ He turned and threaded his way back around the lectern and through the first door and through the second and out to the cold night air. The big guy followed him all the way. Reacher squeezed between two trucks and headed across open ground towards the Subaru. The big guy followed him all the way. Reacher stopped ten feet short of the car and turned around. The big guy stopped too, face to face. He waited, standing easy, relaxed, patient, competent.
Reacher said, ‘Can I give you some advice?’
‘About what?’
‘You’re smart, but you’re not a genius. You just swapped a good tactical situation for a much worse one. Inside, there were crowded quarters and witnesses and telephones and possible interventions, but out here there’s nothing at all. You just gave away a big advantage. Out here I could take my sweet time kicking your ass and there’s no one to help you.’
‘Nobody’s ass needs to get kicked tonight.’
‘I agree. But whatever, I still need to give Mr Duncan a message.’
‘What message?’
‘He hits his wife. I need to explain to him why that’s a bad idea.’
‘I’m sure you’re mistaken.’
‘I’ve seen the evidence. Now I need to see Duncan.’
‘Sir, get real. You won’t be seeing anything. Only one of us is going back in there tonight, and it won’t be you.’
‘You enjoy working for a guy like that?’
‘I have no complaints.’
‘You might, later. Someone told me the nearest ambulance is sixty miles away. You could be lying out here for an hour.’
‘Sir, you need to get in your car and move right along.’
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