by Lee Child
Reacher said, “Why is it called Mother’s Rest?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is the message coming from? Purely your uncle, or the other thing?”
“What other thing?”
“Something I heard about.”
“There is no other thing.”
“Good to know,” Reacher said. “Tell your uncle no laws have been broken. Tell him he’s been paid for the room. Tell him I’ll see him later.”
The guy on the right uncrossed his arms.
The guy on the left said, “Are you going to be a problem?”
“I’m already a problem,” Reacher said. “The question is, what are you going to do about it?”
There was a pause, hot and lonely in the middle of nowhere, and then the two guys answered by brushing aside their coats, in tandem, casually, right-handed, both thereby showing black semi-automatic pistols, in pancake holsters, mounted on their belts.
Which was a mistake, and Reacher could have told them why. He could have launched into a long and impatient classroom lecture, about sealing their fates by forcing a decisive battle too early, about short-circuiting a grander strategy by moving the endgame to the beginning. Threats had to be answered, which meant he was going to have to take their guns away, because probing pawns had to be sent back beaten, and because folks in Mother’s Rest needed to know for sure the next time he came to town he would be armed. He wanted to tell them it was their own fault. He wanted to tell them they had brought it on themselves.
But he didn’t tell them anything. Instead he ducked his own hand under his own coat, grabbing at nothing but air, but the two guys didn’t know that, and like the good range-trained shooters they were they went for their guns and dropped into solid shooting stances all at once, which braced their feet a yard apart for stability, so Reacher stepped in and kicked the left-hand guy full in the groin, before the guy’s gun was even halfway out of its holster, which meant the right-hand guy had time to get his all the way out, but to no avail, because the next event in his life was the arrival of Reacher’s elbow, scything backhand against his cheekbone, shattering it and causing a general lights-out everywhere.
Reacher stepped back, and then he checked on the first guy, who was preoccupied, like most guys he had kicked in the groin. The guns were Smith and Wesson Sigma .40s, which were modern part-polymer weapons, and expensive. They were both fully loaded. Both guys had wallets in their hip pockets, with about a hundred dollars between them, which Reacher took as spoils of war. Their driver’s licenses both showed the last name Moynahan, which meant they could indeed be brothers or cousins with an uncle in common. One had been christened John, and the other Steven.
Reacher carried the guns back to the little green Ford. Chang’s window was down. He put one gun in his pocket and passed the other to Chang. She took it, a little reluctantly. He asked, “Did you hear any of what they said?”
Chang said, “All of it.”
“Conclusions?”
“They might have been telling the truth. The motel might have been their only beef. On the other hand, it might not.”
“I vote not,” Reacher said. “The room has been paid for. Why get so uptight?”
“You could have been killed.”
Reacher nodded.
“Many times,” he said. “But all long ago. Not today. Not by these guys.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Or competent.”
“So now what?”
Reacher glanced back. The guy on the right was about to transition from unconscious to concussed. The guy on the left was squirming halfheartedly and pawing at everything between his ribcage and his knees.
Reacher said, “Shoot them if they move.”
He walked ten yards to their truck and climbed in. The glove compartment had registration and insurance in the name of Steven Moynahan. There was nothing else of interest in the cab. He got straightened up behind the wheel and put the truck in gear. He steered for the shoulder and parked straddling the gravel, with the left-hand wheels safely out of the traffic lane, and the right-hand wheels deep in the wheat, and the nose pointing back toward town. He shut it down and pulled the key.
He dragged the guys one by one into the shade ahead of the front bumper, and sat them up against the chrome. Both were awake by that point. He said, “Watch carefully, now,” and when he had their attention he took their key and balanced it on his palm and tossed it underhand into the field. Forty or fifty feet. It would take them an hour to find, even under the best of circumstances, even after they were operational again. Which might be a supplementary hour all by itself.
Then he walked back and got in the Ford, and Chang drove on. From time to time he turned around and checked the view. The parked truck stayed visible for a long time, dwindling to a tiny dull pinprick in the far distance, and then it fell below the northern horizon and was lost to sight.
It took nearly three more hours to get to the highway, and then the distance markers promised another two to Oklahoma City. The drive was uneventful, until a point about ninety minutes out, when all kinds of chiming and beeping started coming from the phone in Chang’s pocket. Voice mails and text messages and e-mails, all patiently stored and now downloading.
Cell service was back.
Chapter 15
Chang drove one-handed and juggled her phone, but Reacher said, “We should pull off the road. Before the tourist lady gets in a wreck for real. We should get a cup of coffee.”
Chang said, “I don’t understand how you drink so much coffee.”
“Law of gravity,” Reacher said. “If you tip it up, it comes right out. You can’t help but drink it.”
“Your heart must be thumping all the time.”
“Better than the alternative.”
A mile later they saw a sign and took an exit that led to a standard linear array of pit-stop facilities, including a gas station, and bathrooms, and an old-fashioned plain stone building in a federal style somewhat disfigured by bright neon signs for modern chain store coffee and food. They parked and got out and stretched. It was the middle of the afternoon, and still warm. They used the bathrooms and met in the coffee shop. Reacher got his usual medium cup of hot black, and Chang got iced, with milk. They found a corner table, and Chang put her phone down. It was a thin touch-screen thing about the size of a paperback book. She swiped and dabbed and scrolled, first through the phone options, and then the text messages, and then the e-mail.
She said, “Nothing from Keever.”
“Try calling him again.”
“We both know he won’t answer.”
“Stranger things have happened. Once I had three police departments and the National Guard looking for a guy, and all of a sudden he showed up, fresh back from a vacation out of state.”
“We know Keever isn’t on vacation.”
“Try him anyway.”
Which she did, after a long reluctant pause, first on his home number, and then on his cell number.
There was no reply on either.
Reacher said, “Try the Los Angeles number again. From the piece of paper with the two hundred deaths.”
Chang nodded, keen to move on. She dialed, and held the phone to her ear.
This time the call was answered.
She said, a little surprised, “Good afternoon, sir. May I know who I’m speaking with?”
Which question must have been answered in the obvious manner, the same way Reacher had, with a previous inquiry: Who’s asking?
She said, “My name is Michelle Chang. I’m a private inquiry agent, based in Seattle. Previously I was with the FBI. Now I work with a man named Keever. I think he might have called you. Your number was found in his motel room.”
Reacher had no idea what was asked next, all the way out there in Los Angeles, but he pretty soon realized it must have been an inquiry as to how to spell Keever, because Chang said, “K-e-e-v-e-r.”
A long pause, and then a reply, almost ce
rtainly negative, because Chang said, “Can you be certain of that?”
And then there was a long conversation, mostly one-sided, definitely biased toward the LA guy doing all the talking, which Reacher couldn’t hear, and Chang’s facial expressions could have launched a thousand competing scenarios, so he got no real guidance from her. He had a sense the guy worked hard on one thing after another, episodically. And in great detail. Maybe he was an actor. Or a movie person. The context was unclear. In the end Reacher gave up trying to construct a plausible narrative, and just waited.
Eventually Chang said goodbye and clicked off the call, and took a breath, and a sip of iced coffee, and said, “His name is Westwood. He’s a journalist with the LA Times. Their science editor, in fact. Not that it’s a giant department, he says. Generally he writes in-depth features for their Sunday magazine. He says Keever never called him. His habit is to make a brief contemporaneous note of all incoming calls, straight into a secure database, because that’s the kind of thing journalists have to do these days, he says, in case their newspapers get sued. Or in case they want to sue their newspapers. But Keever isn’t in his database. Therefore he didn’t call.”
“This guy Westwood definitely isn’t the client, right?”
Chang shook her head. “He would have said so. I told him I was Keever’s partner.”
“When we found it you said the number would be either the client, or a source of independent corroboration, or a source of further information. So if it isn’t the client, it’s one of the other two. Maybe Keever planned to call him next. After calling you. Or maybe that was your role. Liaison, with Westwood. About whatever.”
“We have to face the likelihood that number was nothing to do with Keever. That note could have been in that room for months.”
“What is Westwood working on now?”
“A long piece about the origin of wheat. About how early wheat was cross-bred and became modern wheat. Sounds like a puff piece to me. As in, we already genetically modified it, so let’s go right ahead and do it some more.”
“Is that significant? As in, we’ve just seen a lot of wheat.”
“Enough to last a lifetime. But I’m voting with the defense attorneys. That note could have been in that room for a year. Or two. Any one of fifty guests could have dropped it. Or a hundred.”
Reacher said, “How private would Westwood’s number be?”
“Depends how recently he changed it. If it’s old, it’s out there. That’s how it is these days. Particularly for journalists. It’s on the internet somewhere, if you look hard enough. Which a lot of journalists like, in our experience. It gives them a network.”
Reacher drained his coffee, and said nothing.
Chang said, “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking the defense attorneys would win their case. But a couple of jury members wouldn’t sleep easy. Because there’s an alternative story to be told, and just as convincing, they’re going to think, at four o’clock in the morning. It starts with your own first impression, some squirrelly guy with cash or handwritten checks, on a lunatic quest, because the wheat is going to kill two hundred people. Or something. And to prove it, talk to this journalist, who knows too. And crucially, here’s his number. Which proves something to us, about the guy. He digs up the number from the internet. He’s that kind of a guy. That note feels connected to me. The whole thing feels consistent. It’s some weird lone-guy obsession that carries no possible threat, until suddenly it does.”
Chang said, “We should get back on the road.”
Chapter 16
The little green Ford had GPS in the dash and it found Keever’s house with no problem at all, in a faded suburban development north of Oklahoma City proper. It was a one-story ranch on a dead-end street. There was a young tree in the front yard, doing badly from lack of water. There was a driveway on the right side of the lot, ahead of a single-car garage. The roof was brown asphalt tile, and the siding was yellow vinyl. Not an architectural masterpiece, but the late sun made it pleasant, in its own way. It looked like a home. Reacher could imagine a big guy going in the door, kicking off his shoes, dumping himself down in a worn armchair, maybe turning on the ball game.
Chang parked in the driveway. They got out together and walked to the door. There was a bell button and a brass knocker, and they tried both, but they got no response from either. The door was locked. The handle wouldn’t turn at all. The view in the windows showed a dark interior.
Reacher asked, “Does he have family?”
“Divorced,” Chang said. “Like so many.”
“And not the type of guy who leaves a key under a flower pot.”
“And I’m sure he has a burglar alarm.”
“We drove a long way.”
“I know,” Chang said. “Let’s look around the back. With weather like this, maybe he left a window open. A crack, at least.”
The street was quiet. Just seven similar houses, three on a side, plus one at the dead end. No moving vehicles, no pedestrians. No eyes, no interest. Not really a Neighborhood Watch kind of place. It had a transient feel, but in slow motion, as if all seven houses were occupied by divorced guys taking a year or two to get back on their feet.
Keever’s back yard was fenced to head height with boards gone gray from the weather. There was a patch of lawn, nicely kept, and a patio with a wicker chair. The back wall of the house had the same yellow siding. There were four windows and a door. All the windows were shut. The door was solid at the bottom, and had nine little windows at the top. Like a farmhouse thing. It led to a narrow mud room ahead of a kitchen.
The land was flat, the houses were low, and the fence was high. They were not overlooked.
Chang said, “I’m trying to figure out the average police response time in a neighborhood like this. If he has a burglar alarm, I mean.”
Reacher said, “Somewhere between twenty minutes and never, probably.”
“So we could give ourselves ten minutes. Couldn’t we? In and out, fast and focused. I mean, it’s not really a crime, even. He and I work together. He wouldn’t press charges. Especially not under these circumstances.”
“We don’t know what we’re looking for.”
“Loose papers, legal pads, notebooks, scratch pads, anywhere he could have scribbled a note. Grab it all and we’ll go through it when we’re out of here.”
“OK,” Reacher said. “We’ll have to break a window.”
“Which one?”
“I like the door. The little Georgian pane nearest the knob. That way we can walk in.”
“Go for it,” Chang said.
The pane was the bottom left of the nine, a little low for Reacher’s elbow, but feasible, if he squatted and jabbed. Then it would be a case of knocking out the surviving shards of glass, and threading his arm in up to the shoulder, and then bending his elbow and bringing his hand back toward the inside knob. He jiggled the outside knob, to test the weight of the mechanism, to figure out how much grip he would need.
The door was open.
It swung neatly inward, over a welcome mat in the mud room. There was an alarm contact on the jamb. A little white pellet, with a painted-over wire. Reacher listened, for a warning signal. Thirty seconds of beeping, usually, to let the homeowner get to the panel and disarm the system.
There was no sound.
No beeping.
Chang said, “This can’t be right.”
Reacher put his hand in his pocket and closed it around the Smith and Wesson. Self-cocking, and no manual safety. Good to go. Point and shoot. He stepped through the mud room to the kitchen. Which was empty. Nothing out of place. No signs of violence. He moved on to a hallway. The front door was dead ahead. The sun had dropped lower. The house was full of golden light.
And still air, and silence.
Behind him he felt Chang move left, so he moved right, into a corridor with four doors, which were a master suite, and a hall bath, and a guest bedroom with beds in it, and a g
uest bedroom with an office in it, all of them empty, with nothing out of place, and no signs of violence.
He met Chang in the hallway, near the front door. She shook her head. She said, “It’s like he stepped out to pick up a pizza. He didn’t even lock the door.”
The alarm panel was on the wall. It was a recent installation. It was showing the time of day and a steady green light.
It was disarmed.
Reacher said, “Let’s get what we came for.”
He led the way back to the smallest bedroom, which was all kitted out with matching units, shelves above, cabinets below, and chests of drawers, and a desk, all in blond maple veneer, and a computer and a telephone and a fax machine and a printer. Investments, Reacher supposed, for a new career. We have offices everywhere. The Scandinavian look was calming. The room was tidy. There was no clutter.
There was no paper.
No legal pads, no notebooks, no scratch pads, no memo blocks, no loose leaves.
Reacher stood still.
He said, “This guy was a cop and a federal agent. He spent hours on the phone. On hold, and waiting, and talking. Did anyone ever do that without a pen and a pad of paper? For notes and doodling and passing the time? That’s an unbreakable habit, surely.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this is bullshit.” He ducked away, to the cabinets below the shelves. He opened one after the other. The first held spare toner cartridges for the printer. The second held spare toner cartridges for the fax machine.
The third held spare legal pads.
And right next to them were spare spiral-bound notebooks, still shrink-wrapped in packs of five, and right behind them were spare memo blocks, solid cubes of crisp virgin paper, three and a half inches on a side.
“I’m sorry,” Reacher said.
“For what?”
“This doesn’t look too good anymore. This is a guy who uses a lot of paper. So much so he buys it in the economy size. I bet that desk was covered with paper. We could have pieced this whole thing together. But someone got here ahead of us. On the same mission. So now it’s all gone.”