by Lee Child
And five minutes after that, but sixty miles to the north, the doctor left the motel lounge. He had talked with Vincent a bit, just shooting the shit, but mostly he had drunk three triples of Jim Beam. Nine measures of bourbon, in a little more than an hour. And it was cloudy and going dark, which meant that his glance up and down the road didn’t reveal what it would have if the sun had been brighter. He climbed into the pick-up truck and started the motor and backed out from his place of concealment. He swung the wheel and crossed the lot and turned right on the two-lane.
Chapter 28
The six remaining Cornhuskers had split up and were operating solo. Two were parked north on the two-lane, two were parked south, one was out cruising the tangle of lanes to the southeast, and the sixth was out cruising the tangle of lanes to the southwest.
The doctor ran into the two to the north.
Almost literally. His plan was to dump the truck as soon as he found some neutral no-man’s-land and then walk home cross-country. He was getting his bearings and looking around as he drove, staring left and right, the bourbon making him slow and numb. His gaze came back to the traffic lane and he saw he was about one second away from colliding head-on with another truck parked half on and half off the shoulder. It was just sitting there, facing the wrong way, with its lights off. Eyes to brain to hands, everything buffered by the bourbon fog, a split second of delay, a wrench of the wheel, and suddenly he was heading diagonally for another truck parked on the other shoulder, thirty yards farther on. He stamped on the brake and all four wheels locked up and he skidded and came to a stop more or less sideways.
The second truck pulled out and blocked the road ahead of him.
The first truck pulled out and blocked the road behind him.
In Las Vegas Mahmeini dialed his phone. His main guy answered, eight blocks away, in Safir’s office. Mahmeini said, “Change of plan. You two are going to Nebraska, right now. Use the company plane. The pilot will have the details.”
His guy said, “OK.”
Mahmeini said, “It’s a two-part mission. First, find this stranger everybody is talking about and take him out. Second, get close to the Duncans. Build up some trust. Then take out Safir’s guys, and Rossi’s too, so that from this point onward we’re bypassing two links in the chain. In the future we can deal direct. Much more profit that way. Much more control, too.”
His guy said, “OK.”
The doctor sat still behind the wheel, shaking with shock and fear and adrenaline. The Cornhuskers climbed out of their vehicles. Big guys. Red jackets. They walked toward the doctor’s stalled truck, taking it slow and easy, one from the left, one from the right. They stood for a second, one each side of the pick-up’s cab, still and quiet in the afternoon gloom. Then one opened the passenger door, and one opened the driver’s door. The guy at the passenger door stood ready to block an escape, and the guy at the driver’s door reached inside and hauled the doctor out by the collar of his coat. The doctor went down like a deadweight, straight to the blacktop, and the guy hauled him up again and hit him hard in the gut and then turned him around and hit him twice more, low in the back, right over his kidneys. The doctor fell to his knees and puked bourbon on the road.
The guy who had been waiting at the passenger door walked back to his vehicle and parked it where it had been before. Then he put the doctor’s truck right behind it. He rejoined his buddy and between them they wrestled the doctor up into the cab of the first guy’s truck. Then they drove away, one on the right, one on the left, with the doctor jammed between them on the three-person bench, shaking and shivering, his chin on his chest.
In Las Vegas Safir dialed his phone, and his guy answered, in Rossi’s office, six blocks away. Safir said, “New developments. I’m sending you two to Nebraska. I’ll fax the details to the airport.”
His guy said, “OK.”
Safir said, “Rossi’s guys will meet you at the hotel. Mahmeini is sending guys too. The six of you will work together until the stranger is down. In the meantime, try and get something going with the Duncans. Build a relationship. Then take Rossi’s guys out. That way we’re one step closer to the motherlode. We can double our margin.”
His guy said, “OK.”
“And if you get the chance, take Mahmeini’s guys out too. I think I can get next to his customer. I mean, where else can he get stuff like this? We could maybe quadruple our margin.”
His guy said, “OK, boss.”
The Cornhuskers drove south, five fast miles, and then they slowed and turned in to the Duncans’ shared driveway. The doctor looked up at the change of speed and direction and moaned a strangled inarticulate sigh and closed his eyes and dropped his head again. The guy on his right smacked an elbow in his ribs. He said, “You need to get that voice working better, my friend. Because you’ve got some explaining to do.”
They took it slow all the way up to the houses, formal and ceremonial, mission accomplished, and they parked out front and got out and hauled their prize out after them. They marched him to Jacob Duncan’s door and knocked. A minute later Jacob Duncan opened it up and one of the Cornhuskers put his hand flat on the doctor’s back and shoved him inside, and said, “We found this guy using the truck we lost. He put his own damn plates on it.”
Jacob Duncan looked at the doctor for ten long seconds. He raised his hand and patted him gently on the cheek. Pale skin, damp and clammy, lumps and bruises. Then he bunched the front of the doctor’s shirt in his fist and dragged him farther into the hallway. He turned and pushed him onward, through the dark depths of the house, toward the kitchen in back. Their prisoner, in the system.
Jacob Duncan turned back to the Cornhuskers.
“Good work, boys,” he said. “Now go finish the job. Find Reacher. He’s on foot again, clearly. If the doctor knows where he is, he’s sure to tell us soon, and we’ll let you know. But in the meantime, keep looking.”
Roberto Cassano was still in Jacob Duncan’s kitchen. Angelo Mancini was still in there with him. They saw the sad-sack doctor stumble in from the hallway, all drunk and raggedy and terrified, with Mancini’s earlier handiwork still clearly visible all over his face. Then Cassano’s phone rang. He checked the screen and saw that it was Rossi calling and he stepped out the back door and walked across the weedy gravel. He hit the button and raised the phone and Rossi said, “Complications.”
Cassano said, “Such as?”
“I had to calm things down at this end. It was getting out of control. I had to talk to people, change a few perceptions. Long story short, you’re getting reinforcements. Two of Safir’s guys, and two of Mahmeini’s.”
“That should shorten the process.”
“Initially,” Rossi said. “But then it’s going to get very difficult. A buck gets ten they’re coming with instructions to cut us out of the chain. Mahmeini is probably looking to cut Safir out too. So don’t let any of them get close to the Duncans. Not for a minute. Don’t let the Duncans make any new friends. And watch your step as soon as the stranger is down. You’re going to have four guys gunning for you.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“I want you to stay alive. And in control.”
“Rules of engagement?”
“Put Safir’s guys down for sure. That way we remove the link above us. We can sell direct to Mahmeini, at Safir’s prices.”
“OK.”
“And put Mahmeini’s guys down too, if you have to, for self-defense. But make sure to make it look like Safir’s guys or the Duncans did it. I still need Mahmeini himself. There’s no wiggle room there. I have no access to the ultimate buyer without him.”
“OK.”
“So leave right now. Pull back to the hotel and lie low. You’ll meet the others there, probably very soon. Make contact and make a plan.”
“Who’s in charge?”
“The Iranians will claim they are. But they can stick that where the sun don’t shine. You know the people and the terrain. Keep on top of it and
be very careful.”
“OK, boss,” Cassano said. And two minutes later he and Mancini were back in their rented blue Impala, heading south on the arrow-straight two-lane, sixty miles to go.
The white van was still on Route 3, still in Canada, still heading east, more than halfway across Alberta, with Saskatchewan up ahead. It had just skipped a right turn on Route 4, which led south to the border, where the modest Canadian blacktop ribbon changed to the fullblown majesty of U.S. Interstate 15, which ran all the way to Las Vegas and then Los Angeles. The change of status in what had once been the same horse trail was emblematic of the two nations’ sense of self, and as well as that it was taken to be a very dangerous road. It was an obvious artery, with two big prizes at the end of it, and so it was assumed to be monitored very carefully. Which was why the white van had passed up the chance of its speed and convenience and was still laboring east on the minor thoroughfare, toward a small town called Medicine Hat, where it intended to finally turn south and lose itself in the wild country around Pakowki Lake, before finding a nameless rutted track that ran deep into the woods, and all the way to America.
The Duncans made the doctor stand upright at the head of the table. They sat and looked at him and said nothing for a minute, Jacob and Seth on one side, Jasper and Jonas on the other. Finally Jacob asked, “Was it an act of deliberate rebellion?”
The doctor didn’t answer. His throat was swollen and painful from vomiting, and he didn’t understand the question anyway.
Jacob asked, “Or was it some imagined sense of entitlement?”
The doctor didn’t answer.
“We need to know,” Jacob said. “You must tell us. This is a fascinating subject. It needs to be thoroughly explored.”
The doctor said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“But perhaps your wife does,” Jacob said. “Should we go pick her up and bring her here and ask her?”
“Leave my wife out of it.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Please. Please leave her alone.”
“She could entertain us. She used to, you know. We knew her long before you did. She came here half a dozen times. To this very house. She was happy to. Of course, we were paying her, which might have influenced her attitude. You should ask her, about what she used to do for money.”
“She babysat.”
“Is that what she says? I suppose she would, now.”
“That’s what she did.”
“Ask her again sometime. Catch her in an unguarded moment. She was a girl of many talents, your wife, once upon a time. She might tell you all about it. You might enjoy it.”
“What do you want?”
Jacob Duncan said, “We want to know the psychology behind what you did.”
“What did I do?”
“You put your license plates on our truck.”
The doctor said nothing.
Jacob Duncan said, “We want to know why. That’s all. It’s not much to ask. Was it just impertinence? Or was it a message? Were you retaliating for our having disabled your own vehicle? Were you claiming a right? Were you making a point? Were you scolding us for having gone too far?”
“I don’t know,” the doctor said.
“Or did someone else change the plates?”
“I don’t know who changed them.”
“But it wasn’t you?”
“No.”
“Where did you find the truck?”
“At the motel. This afternoon. It was next to my car. With my plates on it.”
“Why didn’t you change them back?”
“I don’t know.”
“To drive with phony plates is a criminal offense, isn’t it? A misdemeanor at best. Should medical practitioners indulge in criminal behavior?”
“I guess not.”
“But you did.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to us. We’re not a court of law. Or a state medical board. But you should rehearse an excuse. You might lose your job. Then what would your wife do for money? She might have to return to her old ways. A comeback tour, of sorts. Not that we would have her back. I mean, who would? A raddled old bitch like that?”
The doctor said nothing.
“And you treated my daughter-in-law,” Jacob Duncan said. “After being told not to.”
“I’m a doctor. I had to.”
“The Hippocratic oath?”
“Exactly.”
“Which says, ‘First, do no harm.’ ”
“I didn’t do any harm.”
“Look at my son’s face.”
The doctor looked.
“You did that,” Jacob said.
“I didn’t.”
“You caused it to be done. Which is the same thing. You did harm.”
“That wasn’t me.”
“So who was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do. The word is out. Surely you’ve heard it? We know you people talk about us all the time. On the phone tree. Did you think it was a secret?”
“It was Reacher.”
“Finally,” Jacob said. “We get to the point. You were his co-conspirator.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You asked him to drive you to my son’s house.”
“I didn’t. He made me go.”
“Whatever,” Jacob said. “There’s no use crying over spilt milk. But we have a question for you.”
“What is it?”
“Where is Reacher now?”
Chapter 29
Reacher was in his ground floor room at the Courtyard Marriott, knee-deep in old police reports. He had used the flat-bladed screwdriver from his pocket to slit the tape on all eleven cartons, and he had sampled the first page out of every box to establish the correct date order. He had shuffled the cartons into a line, and then he had started a quick-and-dirty overview of the records, right from the very beginning.
As expected, the notes were comprehensive. It had been a high-profile case with many sensitivities, and there had been three other agencies on the job—the State Police, the National Guard, and the FBI. The county PD had taken pains to be very professional. Multi-agency cases were essentially competitions, and the county PD hadn’t wanted to lose. The department had recorded every move and covered every base and covered every ass. In some ways the files were slices of history. They had been nowhere near a computer. They were old-fashioned, human, and basic. They were typewritten, probably on old IBM electric machines. They had misaligned lines and corrections made with white fluid. The paper itself was foxed and brown, thin and brittle, and musty. There were no reams of cell phone records, because no one had had cell phones back then, not even the cops. No DNA samples had been taken. There were no GPS coordinates.
The files were exactly like the files Reacher himself had created, way back at the start of his army career.
Dorothy had called the cops from a neighbor’s house, at eight in the evening on an early summer Sunday. Not 911, but the local switchboard number. There was a transcript of the call, by the look of it probably not from a recording. Probably reconstructed from the desk sergeant’s memory. Dorothy’s last name was Coe. Her only child, Margaret, had last been seen more than six hours previously. She was a good girl. No problems. No troubles. No reasons. She had been wearing a green dress and had ridden away on a pink bicycle.
The desk sergeant had called the captain and the captain had called a detective who had just gotten off the day shift. The detective was called Miles Carson. Carson had sent squad cars north and the hunt had begun. The weather had been good and there had been an hour of twilight and then darkness had fallen. Carson himself had arrived on scene within forty minutes. The next twelve hours had unfolded pretty much the way Dorothy had described over breakfast, the house-to-house canvass, the flashlight searches, the loud-hailer appeals to check every barn and outbuilding, the all-night motor patrols, the arrival of the dogs at first light, the State Police contribu
tion, the National Guard’s loan of a helicopter.
Miles Carson was a thorough man, but he had gotten no result.
In principle Reacher might have criticized a couple of things. No reason to wait until dawn to call in the dogs, for instance. Dogs can work in the dark. But it was a moot point anyway, because as soon as Margaret had gotten on her bicycle, her scent had disappeared, suspended in the air, whisked away by the breeze, insulated by rubber tires. The dogs tracked her to her own driveway, and that was all. The loud-hailer appeals for folks to search their own property were curiously circular too, because what was a guilty party going to do? Turn himself in? Although, in Carson’s defense, foul play was not yet suspected. The first Carson had heard about local suspicions had come at nine the next morning, when Dorothy Coe had broken down and spilled the beans about the Duncans. That interview had lasted an hour and filled nine pages of notes. Then Carson had gotten right on it.
But from the start, the Duncans had looked innocent.
They even had an alibi. Five years earlier they had sold the family farm, retaining only a T-shaped acre that encompassed their driveway and their three houses, and in the country way of things they had never gotten around to marking off their new boundaries. Their neighbors’ last plowed furrows were their property line. But eventually they decided to put up a post-and-rail fence. It was a big production, much heavier and sturdier than was standard. They hired four local teenagers to come do the work. The four boys had been there all day on that Sunday, dawn to dusk, measuring, sawing, digging deep holes for the posts. The three Duncans and the eight-year-old Seth had been right there with them, all day, dawn to dusk, supervising, directing, checking up, helping out. The four boys confirmed that the Duncans had never left the property, and no one had stopped by, least of all a little girl in a green dress on a pink bicycle.