by Lee Child
Fifteen minutes later Detective Brenda Amos stepped into the room. She was writing in her notebook. At her shoulder was a man in a suit. His posture and his manner said he was showing her around. Therefore he was the bed and breakfast’s manager. Or its owner. Reacher half lip-read and half heard him say, “This gentleman is the only guest still on the premises.”
Amos glanced up from her notebook, routinely, and glanced away again. Then she looked back. A classic slow-motion double take, like something out of an old-time television show. She stared. She blinked.
She said to the man in the suit, “I’ll talk to him now.”
“May I bring you coffee?”
“Yes, please,” Reacher called out to him. “A pot for two.”
The guy nodded politely, after a fractional delay. To bring coffee to a police detective was one thing. To a guest was another. Beneath his station. But on the other hand, the customer was always right. He backed out of the room and Amos came all the way in. She sat down at Reacher’s table, in the empty seat across from him.
She said, “As a matter of fact I already had coffee this morning.”
“It doesn’t have to be a once-a-day thing,” he said. “There’s no law that says you ever have to stop.”
“Also as a matter of fact I think Dunkin’ is spiking it with LSD today.”
“How so?”
“Or else as a matter of fact this is the biggest déjà vu in history.”
“OK, how so that?”
“You know what déjà vu literally means?”
“It literally means already seen. It’s French. My mother was French. She liked it when Americans used French phrases. It made her feel part of things.”
“Why are you telling me about your mother?”
“Why are you asking me about LSD?”
“What did we do yesterday?”
“Do?” he said.
“We dug up an old case from seventy-five years ago, in which a youth was found unconscious on the sidewalk of a downtown Laconia street. He was identified as a local twenty-year-old, already known to the police department as a loudmouth and a bully, but untouchable, because he was the son of the local rich guy. Remember?”
“Sure,” Reacher said.
“What happened when I got to work this morning?”
“I have no way of knowing.”
“I was told that a youth had just been found unconscious on the sidewalk of a downtown Laconia street. He had been identified as a local twenty-year-old, already known to the police department as a loudmouth and a bully, but untouchable, because he was the son of the local rich guy.”
“Seriously?”
“And I walk into the hotel across the street and here you are.”
“I guess that seems like a coincidence.”
“You think?”
“Not really. Clearly such crimes happen all the time.”
“Seventy-five years apart is all the time?”
“I’m sure there were many similar incidents in between. All rich bullies get a smack sooner or later. You could have picked any old case at random, and it could have been the same kind of match. And obviously I’m here, because I’m the guy who asked you about the non-random old case in question. So instead of a coincidence, it’s really a mathematical certainty, especially because you know I don’t live here, so where else would I be, except a hotel?”
“Directly across the street from the crime scene.”
“Are you going house to house for witnesses?”
“That’s what we do.”
“Did anyone see anything?”
“Did you?”
“I’m not a birdwatcher,” Reacher said. “More’s the pity. Migration has started. My dad would have been excited.”
“Did you hear anything?”
“What time?”
“The kid was still unconscious at seven. Assuming his assailant was a human being and not an eighteen-wheel truck, call it no earlier than five o’clock.”
“I was asleep at five o’clock,” Reacher said. “Didn’t hear a thing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Something woke me up the night before. But that was three o’clock, and a different hotel.”
“What was it?”
“It woke me up but it didn’t happen again. I couldn’t get a fix on it.”
“The kid also has a broken arm,” Amos said.
“That can happen,” Reacher said.
A waitress came in with two pots of coffee and two fresh cups. Reacher poured, but Amos didn’t. She closed her notebook. He asked her, “How is this investigation viewed inside the department?”
She said, “We have low expectations.”
“Are tears not being shed?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Who was the kid?”
“The kid is a lout and a bully and a predator. The kind who gets the best of everything, including victims and lawyers.”
“Doesn’t sound all that complicated to me.”
“We’re worried about what happens next.”
“You think he’s going to get up a posse?”
“The problem is his father already has a posse.”
“The local rich guy? Who is he?”
“I paraphrased a little. He’s really from Boston. But he lives in Manchester now.”
“And what kind of posse does he have?”
“He makes financial arrangements for clients who can’t risk paper trails. In other words he launders money for the kind of people who need money laundered. I imagine he could borrow pretty much any kind of posse he wants. And we think he will. These guys have a culture. Someone attacked his family. Got to be made an example. This guy can’t look weak. So we know sooner or later his people will show up here in town, asking around. We don’t want trouble here. That’s why it’s complicated.”
Reacher poured another cup of coffee.
Amos watched.
She said, “How did you hurt your hand?”
“I punched the garden wall.”
“That’s an odd way to put it.”
“Can’t really blame the wall.”
“It makes it sound deliberate.”
He smiled. “Am I coming across as the kind of guy who would deliberately punch a wall?”
“When did it happen?”
“About twenty minutes ago.”
“Were you bending down to look at the flowers?”
“I like flowers as much as the next guy.”
Her phone dinged, and she read a message.
She said, “The kid woke up but doesn’t remember a thing about his attacker.”
“That can happen,” Reacher said again.
“He’s lying. He knows but he’s not telling us. He wants to tell his father instead.”
“Because they have a culture.”
“I hope whoever did it knows what’s coming.”
“I’m sure whoever did it will leave town. Just like seventy-five years ago. Déjà vu all over again.”
“What are your own movements today?”
“I guess technically I’m leaving town.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to Ryantown,” Reacher said. “If I can find it.”
—
He bought a paper map at an old edge-of-town gas station. It showed the same kind of vagueness as Elizabeth Castle’s phone. Certain roads headed in certain directions, as if for a purpose, and certain destinations were shaded gray, as if once developed, but none of them had names anymore, and there was no way of telling one from the other. He wasn’t entirely sure what kind of geographic setting a tin mill would require. Truth was, he wasn’t entirely sure what a tin mill did. Did it make tin out of ore? Or did it make cans and whistles and toys out of tin? Either way he guessed heat was involved. All kinds of fires and furnaces. Maybe a steam engine, to drive belts and tools. Which meant trucking in wood or coal. Plus water would be necessary, to make the steam. He looked at the map again, for
roads, and rivers, and streams, all meeting at a place shaded gray. North and west of Laconia, according to Elizabeth Castle’s historical research.
There were two possibilities. One was eight miles out, and the other was ten. Both had roads coming in off the main drag and stopping right there, for no apparent modern-day reason. Both had water, in what looked like broad tributaries both flowing toward the same larger river. The streams met the roads in tiny triangles, both printed as fine as the mapmaker could get them, both set in dots shaded gray. Little mills and factories, a couple dozen workers in four-flats, maybe a one-room schoolhouse, maybe a church, Amos had said. Either spot would fit the bill. Except the access road in and out of the ten-mile place curved gently north. Away from Laconia. Whereas the road in and out of the eight-mile place curved gently south. Toward Laconia. As if part of it. Not turning its back. Reacher pictured a boy on a bike, rattling eagerly away from home, his binoculars bouncing around his neck. From the ten-mile place he would first waste a couple of miles on the wrong bearing, and then he would have to make an awkward against-the-flow tight right turn. Whereas from the eight-mile place he would be heading the right way from the get-go, accelerating around the curve and then launching straight toward the heart of town. Which boy would say he lived in Laconia?
Which was good. Eight miles not ten would save an hour on the round trip. Plus a quarter of the effort. He folded the map and stuck it in his pocket. He set out walking.
He didn’t get far.
Chapter 15
Mark and Peter and Steven and Robert were together in the back parlor, watching the screens. They all showed Patty and Shorty still on their bed. Different angles, and different zooms. Some were wide shots, and some were close ups.
Their door was still open.
“But no shoes this time,” Steven said. “He’s still got them on.”
“We should have used a self-closing mechanism,” Robert said.
“How could we have known?” Peter said. “Normal people close their doors.”
“Relax,” Mark said. “They’re not going anywhere. Not right now. Bringing that suitcase back broke their hearts. Anyway, now they believe in the mechanic again.”
“We need that door shut pretty soon. We need to start warming them up. Their emotional state is important. Pacing is crucial now.”
“Then think of something.”
Peter turned back to the screens.
—
Reacher got a mile beyond the old edge-of-town gas station, around a long New England curve through woods as deep as a fairytale setting. Then behind him he heard tires on the blacktop. He heard them slow to a walk. He heard them keep pace, ten yards back.
He stopped and turned around.
He saw a dark sedan. Medium in size and crisp in appearance. But poverty spec. There was paint where chrome might have been, and plain hubs, and mouse-fur upholstery. There was a sprung antenna on the trunk lid. An unmarked squad car. In it was Jim Shaw, of the Laconia Police Department. Chief of detectives. The guy from the police station lobby, the day before, with Brenda Amos. The redheaded Irish guy. In action he looked brisk and confident. He was alone at the wheel. He let his window down. Reacher walked closer, but stopped six feet away.
He said, “Can I help you?”
Shaw said, “Brenda told me you were headed this way.”
“You going to offer me a ride?”
“If I do it will be back to town.”
“How so?”
“The house-to-house turned up a woman who lives in the alley. She works in a cocktail bar in Manchester. Which is half owned by the folks the kid’s father works for. We asked a lot of pointed questions and eventually she told us exactly what happened last night. From beginning to end. Soup to nuts. Everything except a physical description of her savior. She claims she was so stressed her mind has gone blank.”
“That can happen, I guess,” Reacher said.
“She’s lying. Why wouldn’t she? She’s protecting someone who did her a favor. But we have other evidence. She was saved real good, believe me. The kid looks like he was run over by a freight train. Therefore we’re not looking for a small guy. We’re looking for a big guy. Probably right-handed. Probably woke up this morning with damage to his knuckles. Got to be something. A hit like that leaves a mark, believe me.”
“I scraped my hand on a wall,” Reacher said.
“Brenda told me.”
“Just one of those things.”
“A smarter man than me might start putting it all together. The woman from the cocktail bar gets home in the middle of the night, at an exactly predictable time, because of no nighttime traffic, and the kid is waiting there for her, so she yells for help, which wakes a guy up, within a certain narrow radius, who then gets out of bed and goes to check, and who ends up dragging the kid away and smacking him around.”
“You told me she already said all that. Soup to nuts. You don’t need to put it together.”
“The interesting part is the narrow radius. How close would the guy need to be, for the sound to travel clearly, and for him to get there as fast as he did? Pretty close, we think. The woman said she didn’t yell real loud. The kid was trying to get his hand over her mouth at the time. It was definitely not a scream. So the guy asleep had to be close by. He was on the scene more or less immediately. Maximum one block, we think.”
“I’m sure there are many variables involved,” Reacher said. “Maybe it’s all down to how well people hear and how fast they get dressed. Maybe there’s a link between the two. You could conduct a series of experiments. You could get the university involved. You could write a paper for a criminology journal.”
Shaw said, “Common sense would indicate a woman’s low-volume cry for help would be heard only through windows over the street. On a one-block radius. The house-to-house lists only six such rooms as occupied last night. A lot of apartments are offices now. Empty during the night. But still, we had six people to look at. And what did we find?”
“I have no way of knowing.”
“Five were ruled out immediately, two for being women and three of the men for age and infirmity and slightness of build. One of the men was over ninety. Two of them were over sixty. None of them could have hit that kid. Not the way it must have happened.”
“I was asleep at five o’clock,” Reacher said.
“Brenda told me. And because once upon a time you were a brother cop, we believe you. And because the kid was a scumbag, we don’t care anyway. Not even enough to point out that five o’clock doesn’t matter anymore. The woman from the cocktail bar got home at three o’clock. She told Brenda the same thing happened the night before. You told Brenda you woke up the night before. At three o’clock. But we don’t care. Except Brenda also told me she told you the scumbag’s father is obliged to react.”
“She did.”
“That’s my point. You should think carefully. OK, maybe the kid really is woozy. Maybe he truly can’t remember his attacker. But you can’t rely on that. If we can figure it out without eyewitness testimony, so can they. They’ll be looking for a big guy with a damaged hand. You can’t beat their forensics by rubbing your knuckles on a wall, not because they don’t have walls, but because they don’t have forensics. They have other methods. They’re going to send whoever it takes to get this job done. We don’t want trouble here.”
“Has the kid called his father yet?”
“First he called his lawyer. No doubt the lawyer called his father. By now they’ve known for thirty minutes. They’re scrambling. Burner phones are burning up in more than one state, at this very moment, believe me. Presumably nothing is decided yet. But it won’t be long. They’ll be arriving soon. Better if they didn’t find you here. Better if you took a look at the old homestead, and then kept on walking. Better if you didn’t come back.”
“Because you don’t want trouble?”
“Would you?”
“No,” Reacher said. “Generally speaking, I think tr
ouble is best avoided. You could almost call it a rule.”
“So we’re on the same page?”
“We’re in the same book. Maybe a difference in emphasis.”
“I’m not kidding,” Shaw said. “I don’t want trouble.”
“Relax,” Reacher said. “I’ll keep on walking. It’s what I do. Assuming I find Ryantown first.”
“Don’t give me terms and conditions. Don’t tell me what you got to do first. I’m serious. I don’t want trouble in my town.”
“Ryantown ain’t yours. If you don’t believe me, check with the kid at the census archive. He’ll set you straight.”
“It’s all Laconia to guys up from Boston. They’ll be here tomorrow, asking around. Anyone seen a big guy with a banged-up hand?”
Reacher said, “Tomorrow?”
“They won’t let this go.”
“But until tomorrow walking on county roads is still pretty much a legal activity.”
“That’s the problem with terms and conditions. You’ll still be walking tomorrow. You could be walking forever. They could have ten guys in town before you finally figure out you’ll never even know if you find Ryantown or not. Those old places are nothing more than holes in the ground now. Who the hell can tell which was which a hundred years ago? So do me a big favor, OK? Find any old hole in the ground, go right ahead and call it Ryantown, and then get the hell out, and keep on getting, preferably in a straight line, preferably east, north, or west.”