‘Didn’t anyone ask where the kid came from?’
‘People talked a little, but they didn’t ask. Too polite. Too inhibited. I suppose we all thought Seth was a relative. You know, maybe orphaned or something.’
‘So what happened next? You all stopped your kids from going there to play, and that’s what caused the trouble?’
‘That’s how it started. There was a lot of talk and whispers. The Duncans were all alone in their little compound. They were shunned. They resented it.’
‘So they retaliated?’
‘Not at first.’
‘So when?’
‘After a little girl went missing.’
* * *
Roberto Cassano and Angelo Mancini got back in their rented Impala and fired up the engine. The car had a bolt-on navigation system, a couple of extra dollars a day, but it was useless. The screen came up with nothing more than a few thin red lines, like doodles on a pad. None of the roads had names. Just numbers, or else nothing at all. Most of the map was blank. And it was either inaccurate or incomplete, anyway. The crossroads wasn’t even marked. Just like Vegas, to be honest. Vegas was growing so fast no GPS company could keep up with it. So Cassano and Mancini were used to navigating the old-fashioned way, which was to scribble down turn-by-turn directions freely given by a source who was anxious to be accurate, in order to avoid a worse beating than he was getting along with the initial questions. And the motel guy had been more anxious than most, right after the first two smacks. He was no kind of hero. That was for sure.
‘Left out of the lot,’ Mancini read out loud.
Cassano turned left out of the lot.
Dorothy the housekeeper made a third pot of coffee. She rinsed the percolator and filled it again and set it going. She said, ‘Seth Duncan had a hard time in school. He got bullied. Eight-year-old boys can be very tribal. I guess they felt they had permission to go after him, because of the whispers at home. And none of the girls stuck with him. They wouldn’t go to his house, and they wouldn’t even talk to him. That’s how children are. That’s how it was. All except one girl. Her parents had raised her to be decent and compassionate. She wouldn’t go to his house, but she still talked to him. Then one day that little girl just disappeared.’
Reacher said, ‘And?’
‘It’s a horrible thing, when that happens. You have no idea. There’s a kind of crazy period at first, when everyone is mad and worried but can’t bring themselves to believe the worst. You know, a couple of hours, maybe three or four, you think she’s playing somewhere, maybe out picking flowers, she’s lost track of the time, she’ll be home soon, right as rain. No one had cell phones back then, of course. Some people didn’t even have regular phones. Then you think the girl has gotten lost, and everyone starts driving around, looking for her. Then it goes dark, and then you call the cops.’
Reacher asked, ‘What did the cops do?’
‘Everything they could. They did a fine job. They went house to house, they used flashlights, they used loudhailers to tell everyone to search their barns and outbuildings, they drove around all night, then at first light they got dogs and called in the State Police and the State Police called in the National Guard and they got a helicopter.’
‘Nothing?’
The woman nodded.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Then I told them about the Duncans.’
‘You did?’
‘Someone had to. As soon as I spoke up, others joined in. We were all pointing our fingers. The State Police took us very seriously. I guess they couldn’t afford not to. They took the Duncans to a barracks over near Lincoln and questioned them for days. They searched their houses. They got help from the FBI. All kinds of laboratory people were there.’
‘Did they find anything?’
‘Not a trace.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Every test was negative. They said the child hadn’t been there.’
‘So what happened next?’
‘Nothing. It all fizzled out. The Duncans came home. The little girl was never seen again. The case was never solved. The Duncans were very bitter. They asked me to apologize, for naming names, but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t give it up. My husband, neither. Some folks were on our side, like the doctor’s wife. But most weren’t, really. They saw which way the wind was blowing. The Duncans withdrew into themselves. Then they started punishing us. Like revenge. We didn’t get our crop hauled that year. We lost it all. My husband killed himself. He sat right in that chair where you’re sitting and he put his shotgun under his chin.’
‘I’m sorry.’
The woman said nothing.
Reacher asked, ‘Who was the girl?’
No reply.
‘Yours, right?’
‘Yes,’ the woman said. ‘It was my daughter. She was eight years old. She’ll always be eight years old.’
She started to cry, and then her phone started to ring.
SEVENTEEN
THE PHONE WAS A CLUNKY OLD NOKIA. IT WAS ON THE KITCHEN counter. It hopped and buzzed and trilled the old Nokia tune that Reacher had heard a thousand times before, in bars, on buses, on the street. Dorothy snatched it up and answered. She said hello and then she listened, to what sounded like a fast slurred message of some kind, maybe a warning, and then she clicked off and dropped the phone like it was scalding hot.
‘That was Mr Vincent,’ she said. ‘Over at the motel.’
Reacher said, ‘And?’
‘Two men were there. They’re coming here. Right now.’
‘Who?’
‘We don’t know. Men we’ve never seen before.’ She opened the kitchen door and glanced down a hallway towards the front of the house. There was silence for a second and then Reacher heard the distant hiss of tyres on blacktop, the moan of a slowing engine, the sound of brakes, and then the crunch of a wheel on gravel, then another, then two more together, as a car turned in and bumped on to the track.
The woman said, ‘Get out of here. Please. They can’t know you’re here.’
‘We don’t know who they are.’
‘They’re Duncan people. Who else would they be? I can’t let them find you here. It’s more than my life is worth.’
Reacher said, ‘I can’t get out of here. They’re already on the track.’
‘Hide out back. Please. I’m begging you. They can’t find you here. I mean it.’ She stepped out to the hallway, ready to meet them head on at the front door. They were close, and moving fast. The gravel was loud. She said, ‘They might search. If they find you, tell them you snuck in the yard. Over the fields. Please. Tell them I didn’t know. Make them believe you. Tell them you’re nothing to do with me.’ Then she closed the door on him and was gone.
Angelo Mancini folded the sheet of handwritten directions and put it in his pocket. They were on some lumpy, bumpy, piece-of-shit farm track, heading for some broken-down old woebegone piece-of-shit farmhouse that belonged in a museum or a history book. The navigation screen showed nothing at all. Just white space. Roberto Cassano was at the wheel, hitting every pothole. What did he care? They were Hertz’s tyres, not his. Up ahead the front door opened and an old woman appeared on the step, clutching the jamb, like she would fall over if she let go.
Mancini said, ‘That’s a woman with a guilty secret, right there. Count on it.’
‘Looks that way,’ Cassano said.
Reacher checked the view across the yard at the back. Maybe sixty feet to the parked pick-up, maybe sixty more to the line of barns and sheds and coops and sties. He eased the door open. He turned back and checked the door to the front hallway. It was closed, but he could hear the car. It was crunching to a stop. Its doors were opening. He sensed the woman out there, staring at it, fearful and panicking. He shrugged and turned again to leave. His gaze passed over the kitchen table.
Not good.
They might search.
Tell them I didn’t know.
The table held the remains of two breakfasts.
Two oatmeal bowls, two plates all smeared with egg, two plates all full of toast crumbs, two spoons, two knives, two forks, two coffee mugs.
He put his toast plate on his egg plate, and he put his oatmeal bowl on his toast plate, and he put his coffee mug in his oatmeal bowl, and he put his knife and fork and spoon in his pocket. He picked up the teetering stack of china and carried it with him, across the kitchen, out the door. He held the stack one-handed and pulled the door shut after him and set off across the yard. The ground was beaten dirt mixed with crushed stone and matted with winter weeds. It was reasonably quiet underfoot. But the shakes in his arm were rattling the mug in the bowl. He was making a tinkling noise with every step he took. It sounded as loud as a fire alarm. He passed the pick-up truck. Headed onward to a barn. It was an old swaybacked thing made from thin tarred boards. It was in poor condition. It had twin doors. Hinged in the conventional way, not sliders. The hinges were shot and the doors were warped. He hooked a heel behind one of them and forced his butt into the gap and pushed with his hip and scraped his way inside, back first, then his shoulders, then the stack of crockery.
It was dark inside. No light in there, except blinding sparkles from chinks between the boards. They threw thin lines and spots of illumination across the floor. The floor was earth, soaked in old oil, matted with flakes of rust. The air smelled of creosote. He put the stack of china down. All around him was old machinery, uniformly brown and scaly with decay. He didn’t know what any of it was. There were tines and blades and wheels and metal all bent and welded into fantastical shapes. Farm stuff. Not his area of expertise. Not even close.
He stepped back to the leaning doors and peered through a crack and looked and listened, and drew up rules of engagement in his head. He couldn’t touch these guys, not unless he was prepared to go all the way and make them disappear for ever, and their car, and then force Vincent at the motel to hold his tongue, also for ever. Anything less than that, and it would all come back to Dorothy sooner or later. So prudence dictated he should stay quiet and out of sight, which he was prepared to do, maybe, just possibly, depending on what he heard from the house. One scream might be nerves or fright. Two screams, and he was going in there, come what may.
He heard nothing.
And he saw nothing, for ten long minutes. Then a guy stepped out the back door, into the yard, and another came out behind him. They walked ten paces and stopped and stood there side by side like they owned the place. They gazed left, gazed ahead, gazed right. City boys. They had shined shoes and wool pants and wool overcoats. They were both on the short side of six feet, both heavy in the chest and shoulders, both dark. Both regular little tough guys, like something out of a television show.
They tracked left a little, towards the pick-up truck. They checked the load bed. They opened a door and checked the cab. They moved on, towards the line of barns and sheds and coops and sties.
Directly towards Reacher.
They came pretty close.
Reacher rolled his shoulders and snapped his elbows and flapped his wrists and tried to work some feeling into his arms. He made a fist with his right hand, and then his left.
The two guys walked on, closer still.
They looked left. They looked right. They sniffed the air.
They stopped.
Shiny shoes, wool coats. City boys. They didn’t want to be wading through pigshit and chicken feathers and turning over piles of old crap. They looked at each other and then the one on the right turned back to the house and called out, ‘Hey, old lady, get your fat ass out here right now.’
Forty yards away, Dorothy stepped out the door. She paused a beat and then walked towards the two guys, slow and hesitant. The two guys walked back towards her, just as slow. They all met near the pick-up truck. The guy on the left stood still. The guy on the right caught Dorothy by the upper arm with one hand and used the other to take a pistol out from under his coat. A shoulder holster. The gun was some kind of a nickel-plated semi-automatic. Or stainless steel. Reacher was too far away to make out the brand. Maybe a Colt. Or maybe a copy. The guy raised it across his body and laid its muzzle against Dorothy’s temple. He held the gun flat, like a punk in a movie. His thumb and three fingers were wrapped tight around the grip. The fourth finger was on the trigger. Dorothy flinched away. The guy hauled on her arm and pulled her back.
He called out, ‘Reacher? Is that your name? You there? You hiding somewhere? You listening to me? I’m going to count to three. Then you come on out. If you don’t, I’m going to shoot the old cow. I’ve got a gun to her head. Tell him, grandma.’
Dorothy said, ‘There’s no one here.’
The yard went quiet. Three people, all alone in a thousand acres.
Reacher stood still, right where he was, on his own in the dark.
He saw Dorothy close her eyes.
The guy with the gun said, ‘One.’
Reacher stood still.
The guy said, ‘Two.’
Reacher stood still.
The guy said, ‘Three.’
EIGHTEEN
REACHER STOOD STILL AND WATCHED THROUGH THE CRACK. There was a long second’s pause. Then the guy who had been counting dropped his hand and stuffed the gun back under his coat. He let go of the woman’s arm. She staggered away a step. The two guys looked left, looked right, looked at each other. They shrugged. A test, passed. A precaution, properly explored. They turned and headed away around the side of the house and disappeared from sight. A minute later Reacher heard doors slam and an engine start and the crunch and whine of a car backing down the track. He heard it make the blacktop, he heard it change gear, he heard it drive away.
The world went quiet again.
Reacher stayed right where he was, on his own in the dark. He wasn’t dumb. Easiest thing in the world for one of the guys to be hiding behind the corner of the house, while his buddy drove away like a big loud decoy. Reacher knew all the tricks. He had used most of them. He had invented some of them himself.
Dorothy stood in the yard with one hand on the side of her truck, steadying herself. Reacher watched her. He guessed she was about thirty seconds away from gathering her wits and taking a breath and shouting that the guys were gone and he could come out now. Then he saw twenty-five years of habitual caution get the better of her. She pushed off the truck and walked the same path the two guys had taken. She was gone a whole minute. Then she came back, around the other side of the house. A full circle. Flat land all around. Wintertime. No place to hide.
She called, ‘They’re gone.’
He picked up the stack of plates and shouldered his way out between the barn’s warped doors. He blinked in the light and shivered in the cold. He walked on and met her near the pick-up truck. She took the plates from him. He said, ‘You OK?’
She said, ‘I was a little worried there for a minute.’
‘The safety catch was on. The guy never moved his thumb. I was watching. It was a bluff.’
‘Suppose it hadn’t been a bluff? Would you have come out?’
‘Probably,’ Reacher said.
‘You did good with these plates. I suddenly remembered them, and thought I was a goner for sure. Those guys looked like they wouldn’t miss much.’
‘What else did they look like?’
‘Rough,’ she said. ‘Menacing. They said they were here representing the Duncans. Representing them, not working for them. That’s something new. The Duncans never used outsiders before.’
‘Where will they go next?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think they know, either. Nowhere to hide is pretty much the same as nowhere to look, isn’t it?’
‘The doctor’s, maybe?’
‘They might. The Duncans know you had contact.’
‘Maybe I should head over there.’
‘And maybe I should get back to the motel. I think they hurt Mr Vincent. He didn’t sound too good on the phone.’
‘There’s an old barn and an old she
d south of the motel. Off the road, to the west. Made of wood. All alone in a field. Whose are they?’
‘They’re nobody’s. They were on one of the farms that got sold for the development that never happened. Fifty years ago.’
‘I have a truck in there. I took it from the football players last night. Give me a ride?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not driving you past the Duncan place again.’
‘They don’t have X-ray vision.’
‘They do. They have a hundred pairs of eyes.’
‘So you want me to walk past their place?’
‘You don’t have to. Head west across the fields until you see a cell tower. One of my neighbours leases half an acre to the phone company. That’s how he pays his haulage. Turn north there and skirt the Duncan place on the blind side and then you’ll see the barns.’
‘How far is it?’
‘It’s a morning’s walk.’
‘I’ll burn up all that breakfast.’
‘That’s what breakfast is for. Make sure you turn north, OK? South takes you near Seth Duncan’s house, and you really don’t want to go there. You know the difference between north and south?’
‘I walk south, I get warmer. North, I get colder. I should be able to figure it out.’
‘I’m serious.’
‘What was your daughter’s name?’
‘Margaret,’ the woman said. ‘Her name was Margaret.’
So Reacher walked around the back of the barns and the sheds and the coops and the sties and struck out across the fields. The sun was nothing more than a bright patch of luminescence in the high grey sky, but it was enough to navigate by. After ten o’clock in the morning in Nebraska in the wintertime, and it was solidly east of south, behind his left shoulder. He kept it there for forty minutes, and then he saw a cell phone tower looming insubstantial in the mist. It was tall and skeletal, with a microwave receptor the shape of a bass drum, and cell antennas the shape of fungo bats. It had a tangle of dead brown weeds at its base, and it was surrounded by a token barbed wire fence. In the far distance beyond it was a farmhouse similar to Dorothy’s. The neighbour’s, presumably. The ground underfoot was hard and lumpy, all softball-sized clods and clarts of frozen earth, the wreckage from the last year’s harvest. They rolled away either left or right or crushed under his heels as he walked.
Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16] Page 566