by Lee Child
The Yukon drove OK, but the brakes were a little spongy. The result of the panic stop, probably, back at the old roadhouse. Five years’ wear and tear, all in one split second. But Reacher didn’t care. He wasn’t braking much. He was hustling hard, concentrating on speeding up, not slowing down. Twenty miles was a long distance, through the empty rural darkness.
He saw nothing the whole way. No lights, no other vehicles. No activity of any kind. He got back to the main two-lane north of the motel and five minutes later he passed the place. It was all closed up and dark. No blue neon. No activity. No cars, except the wrecked Subaru. It was still there, beaded over with dew, low down on slowly softening tires, sad and inert, like roadkill. Reacher charged onward past it, and then he made the right and the left and the right, along the boundaries of the dark empty fields, like twice before, to the plain ranch house with the post-and-rail fence and the flat, featureless yard.
There were lights on in the house. Plenty of them. Like a cruise ship at night on the open ocean. But there was no sign of uproar. There were no cars on the driveway. No pick-up trucks, no SUVs. No large figures in the shadows. No sound, no movement. Nothing. The front door was closed. The windows were intact.
Reacher turned in and parked in the driveway and walked to the door. He stood right in front of the spy hole and rang the bell. There was a whole minute’s delay. Then the spy hole darkened and lightened and locks and chains rattled and the doctor opened up. He looked tired and battered and worried. His wife was standing behind him in the hallway, in the bright light, with the phone to her ear. The phone was the old-fashioned kind, big and black on a table, with a dial and a curly wire. The doctor’s wife was not talking. She was just listening, concentrating hard, her eyes narrowing and widening.
The doctor said, “You came back.”
Reacher said, “Yes, I did.”
“Why?”
“Are you OK? The Cornhuskers are out and about.”
“We know,” the doctor said. “We just heard. We’re on the phone tree right now.”
“They didn’t come here?”
“Not yet.”
“So where are they?”
“We’re not sure.”
Reacher said, “Can I come in?”
“Of course,” the doctor said. “I’m sorry.” He stepped back and Reacher stepped in. The hallway was very warm. The whole house was warm, but it felt smaller than before, like a desperate little fortress. The doctor closed the door and turned two keys and put the chain back on. He asked, “Did you see the police files?”
Reacher said, “Yes.”
“And?”
“They’re inconclusive,” Reacher said. He moved on into the kitchen. He heard the doctor’s wife say, “What?” She sounded puzzled. Maybe a little shocked. He glanced back at her. The doctor glanced back at her. She said nothing more. Just continued to listen, eyes moving, taking mental notes. The doctor followed Reacher into the kitchen.
“Want coffee?” he asked.
I’m not drunk, he meant.
Reacher said, “Sure. Lots of it.”
The doctor set about filling the machine. The kitchen was even warmer than the hallway. Reacher took off his coat and hung it on the back of a chair.
The doctor asked, “What do you mean, ‘inconclusive’?”
Reacher said, “I mean I could make up a story about how the Duncans did it, but there’s really no proof either way.”
“Can you find proof? Is that why you came back?”
Reacher said, “I came back because those two Italian guys who were after me seem to have joined up with a regular United Nations of other guys. Not a peacekeeping force, either. I think they’re all coming here. I want to know why.”
“Pride,” the doctor said. “You messed with the Duncans, and they won’t tolerate that. Their people can’t handle you, so they’ve called in reinforcements.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” Reacher said. “Those Italians were here before me. You know that. You heard what Eleanor Duncan said. So there’s some other reason. They have some kind of a dispute with the Duncans.”
“Then why would they help the Duncans in their own dispute with you?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many of them are coming?” the doctor asked.
From the hallway his wife said, “Five of them.” She had just gotten off the phone. She stepped into the kitchen and said, “And they’re not coming. They’re already here. That was the message on the phone tree. The Italians are back. With three other men. Three cars in total. The Italians in their blue Chevy, plus two guys in a red Ford, and one guy in a black car that everyone swears is Seth Duncan’s Cadillac.”
Chapter 39
Reacher poured himself a cup of coffee and thought for a long moment then said, “I left Seth Duncan’s Cadillac at the Marriott.”
The doctor’s wife asked, “So how did you get back here?”
“I took a Chevy Malibu from one of the bad guys.”
“That thing in the driveway?”
“No, that’s a GMC Yukon I took from a football player.”
“So what happened with the Cadillac?”
“I left a guy stranded. I stole his car, and then I guess he stole mine. Probably not deliberate tit for tat. Probably just coincidental, because there wasn’t really an infinite choice down there. He didn’t want some piece-of-shit pick-up truck, obviously, and he didn’t want anything with big-time security built in. The Cadillac fit the bill. Probably the only thing that did. Or else he was just plain lazy, and didn’t want to look around too long. The Cadillac was right there. We were all in the same hotel.”
“Did you see the guys?”
“I didn’t see the Italians. But I saw the other four.”
“That makes six, not five. Where’s the other one?”
“I’ll tell you something,” Reacher said. “The guy who took the Cadillac put his bag on the back seat, not in the trunk.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s where the sixth guy is. In the trunk. I put him there.”
“Does he have air?”
“He doesn’t need air. Not anymore.”
“Sweet Jesus. What happened?”
Reacher said, “I think whatever else they’re doing, they’re coming here to get me first. Like a side issue of some kind. Like mission creep. I don’t know why, but that’s the only way I can explain it. The way I see it, they all assembled tonight in the Marriott and the Italians announced the mission and gave the others a description, probably vague and definitely secondhand, because they haven’t actually laid eyes on me yet, and then I bumped into one of the others after that, in the lobby, and he was looking at me, like he was asking himself, is that the guy? Can it be? Can it? I could see him thinking. We got out to the lot and he put his hand in his pocket and I hit him. You ever heard of commotio cordis?”
“Chest wall trauma,” the doctor said. “Causes fatal cardiac dysrhythmias.”
“Ever seen it?”
“No.”
“Neither had I. But I’m here to tell you, it works real good.”
“What was in his pocket?”
“A knife and a gun and an ID from Vegas.”
“Vegas?” the doctor said. “Do the Duncans have gambling debts? Is that the dispute?”
“Possible,” Reacher said. “No question the Duncans have been living beyond their means for a long time. They’ve been getting some extra income from somewhere.”
“Why say that? They’ve been extorting forty farms for thirty years. And a motel. That’s a lot of money.”
“No, it isn’t,” Reacher said. “Not really. This isn’t the wealthiest area in the world. They could be taking half of what everyone earns, and that wouldn’t buy them a pot to piss in. But Seth lives like a king and they pay ten football players just to be here. They couldn’t do all that on the back of a seasonal enterprise.”
The doctor’s wife said, “We should worry about that lat
er. Right now the Cornhuskers are on the loose, and we don’t know where or why. That’s what’s important tonight. Dorothy Coe might be coming over.”
“Here?” Reacher asked. “Now?”
The doctor said, “That’s what happens sometimes. With the women, mostly. It’s a support thing. Like a sisterhood. Whoever feels the most vulnerable clusters together.”
His wife said, “Which is always Dorothy and me, and sometimes others too, depending on exactly what the panic is.”
“Not a good idea,” Reacher said. “From a tactical point of view, I mean. It gives them one target instead of multiple targets.”
“It’s strength in numbers. It works. Sometimes those boys can act a little inhibited. They don’t necessarily like witnesses around, when they’re sent after women.”
They took cups of coffee and waited in the dining room, which had a view of the road. The road was dark. There was nothing moving on it. It was indistinguishable from the rest of the nighttime terrain. They sat quiet for a spell, on hard upright chairs, with the lights off to preserve their view out the window, and then the doctor said, “Tell us about the files.”
“I saw a photograph,” Reacher said. “Dorothy’s kid was Asian.”
“Vietnamese,” the doctor’s wife said. “Artie Coe did a tour over there. Something about it affected him, I guess. When the boat people thing started, they stepped up and adopted.”
“Did many people from here go to Vietnam?”
“A fair number.”
“Did the Duncans go?”
“I don’t think so. They were in an essential occupation.”
“So was Arthur Coe.”
“Different strokes for different folks.”
“Who was chairman of the local draft board?”
“Their father. Old Man Duncan.”
“So the boys didn’t keep on farming to please him. They kept on to keep their asses out of the war.”
“I suppose.”
“Good to know,” Reacher said. “They’re cowards, too, apart from anything else.”
The doctor said, “Tell us about the investigation.”
“Long story,” Reacher said. “There were eleven boxes of paper.”
“And?”
“The investigation had problems,” Reacher said.
“Like what?”
“One was a conceptual problem, and the others were details. The lead detective was a guy called Carson, and the ground kind of shifted under his feet over a twelve-hour period. It started out as a straightforward missing persons issue, and then it slowly changed to a potential homicide. And Carson didn’t really revisit the early phase in light of the later phase. The first night, he had people checking their own outbuildings. Which was reasonable, frankly, with a missing kid. But later he never really searched those outbuildings independently. Only one of them, basically, for an old couple who hadn’t done it themselves. Everyone else self-certified, really. In effect they said, no sir, the kid ain’t here, and she never was, I promise. At some point Carson should have started over and treated everyone as a potential suspect. But he didn’t. He focused on the Duncans only, based on information received. And the Duncans came out clean.”
“You think it was someone else?”
“Could have been anyone else in the world, just passing through. If not, it could have been any of the local residents. Probably not Dorothy or Arthur Coe themselves, but that still leaves thirty-nine possibilities.”
The doctor’s wife said, “I think it was the Duncans.”
“Three separate agencies disagree with you.”
“They might be wrong.”
Reacher nodded in the dark, his gesture unobserved.
“They might be,” he said. “There might have been another conceptual error. A failure of imagination anyway. It’s clear that the Duncans never left their compound, and it’s clear that the girl never showed up there. There are reliable witnesses to both of those facts. Four boys were building a fence. And the science came up negative, too. But the Duncans could have had an accomplice. A fifth man, essentially. He could have scooped up the kid and taken her somewhere else. Carson never even thought about that. He never checked known associates. And he should have, probably. You wait five years to build a fence, and you happen to be doing it on the exact same day a kid disappears? Could have been a prefabricated alibi. Carson should have wondered, at least. I would have, for sure.”
“Who would the fifth man have been?”
“Anyone,” Reacher said. “A friend, maybe. One of their drivers, perhaps. It’s clear a vehicle was involved, otherwise why was the bike never found?”
“I always wondered about the bike.”
“Did they have a friend? Did you ever see one, when you were babysitting?”
“I saw a few people, I guess.”
“Anyone close? This would have been a very intimate type of relationship. Shared enthusiasms, shared passions, absolute trust. Someone into the same kind of thing they were into.”
“A man?”
“Almost certainly. The same kind of creep.”
“I’m not sure. I can’t remember. Where would he have taken her?”
“Anywhere, theoretically. And that was another major mistake. Carson never really looked anywhere else, apart from the Duncans’ compound. It was crazy not to search the transportation depot, for instance. As a matter of fact I don’t think that was a real problem, because it seems like that place is real busy in the early part of the summer, seven days a week. Something to do with alfalfa, whatever that is. No one would take an abducted child to a work site full of witnesses. But there was one other place Carson should have checked for sure. And he didn’t. He ignored it completely. Possibly because of ignorance or confusion.”
“Which was where?”
But Reacher didn’t get time to answer, because right then the window blazed bright and the room filled with moving lights and shadows. They played over the walls, the ceiling, their faces, alternately stark white and deep black.
Headlight beams, strobing through the posts of the fence.
A car, coming in fast from the east.
Chapter 40
It was Dorothy Coe coming in from the east, in her ratty old pick-up truck. Reacher knew it a second after he saw her lights. He could hear her holed muffler banging away like a motorcycle. Like a Harley-Davidson moving away from a stoplight. She came on fast and then she braked hard and stopped dead and stood off just short of the house. She had seen the gold Yukon in the driveway. She had recognized it, presumably. A Cornhusker’s car. She probably knew it well. The doctor’s wife stepped out to the hallway and undid the locks and the chain and opened the front door and waved. Dorothy Coe didn’t move an inch. Twenty-five years of habitual caution. She thought it could be a trick or a decoy. Reacher joined the doctor’s wife on the step. He pointed to the Yukon and then to himself. Big gestures, like semaphore. My truck. Dorothy Coe moved on again and turned in. She shut down and got out and walked to the door. She had a wool hat pulled down over her ears and she was wearing a quilted coat open over a gray dress. She asked, “Did the Cornhuskers come here?”
The doctor’s wife said, “Not yet.”
“What do you think they want?”
“We don’t know.”
They all stepped back inside and the doctor closed up after them, locks and chain, and they went back to the dining room, now four of them. Dorothy Coe took off her coat, because of the heat. They sat in a line and watched the window like a movie screen. Dorothy Coe was next to Reacher. He asked her, “They didn’t go to your place?”
She said, “No. But Mr. Vincent saw one, passing the motel. About twenty minutes ago. He was watching out the window.”
Reacher said, “That was me. I came in that way, in the truck I took. There are only five of them left now.”
“OK. I understand. But that concerns me a little.”
“Why?”
“I would expect at least one of us to have se
en at least one of them, roaming around somewhere. But no one has. Which means they aren’t all spread out. They’re all bunched up. They’re hunting in a pack.”
“Looking for me?”
“Possibly.”
“Then I don’t want to bring them here. Want me to leave?”
“Maybe,” Dorothy said.
“Yes,” the doctor said.
“No,” his wife said.
Impasse. No decision. They all turned back to the window and watched the road. It stayed dark. The cloud was clearing a little. There was faint moonlight in the sky. It was almost one o’clock in the morning.
The motel was closed down for the night, but Vincent was still in the lounge. He was still watching out the window. He had seen the gold Yukon go by. He had recognized it. He had seen it before, many times. It belonged to a young man called John. A very unpleasant person. A bully, even by Duncan standards. Once he had made Vincent get down on his knees and beg not to be beaten. Beg, like a dog, with limp hands held up, pleading and howling, five whole minutes.
Vincent had called in the Yukon sighting, to the phone tree, and then he had gone back to the window and watched some more. Twenty minutes had gone by without incident. Then he saw the five men everyone was talking about. Their strange little convoy pulled into his lot. The blue Chevrolet, the red Ford, Seth Duncan’s black Cadillac. He knew from the phone tree that someone else was using Seth’s car. No one knew how or why. But he saw the guy. A small man slid out of the driver’s seat, rumpled and unshaven, foreign, like people from the Middle East he had seen on the news. Then the two men who had roughed him up climbed out of the Chevrolet. Then two more got out of the Ford, tall, heavy, dark-skinned. Also foreign. They all stood together in the gloom.
Vincent didn’t automatically think the five men were there for him. There could be other reasons. His lot was the only stopping place for miles. Plenty of drivers used it, for all kinds of purposes, passersby checking their maps, taking off their coats, getting things from the trunk, sometimes just stretching their legs. It was private property, no question, properly deeded, but it was used almost like a public facility, like a regular roadside turnout.