23 Past Tense

by Lee Child

“You were on your way back,” he said. “The text was already sent, from the top of the hill. The photograph must have been taken some moments before that. So why was our mutual friend still here, with his arms behind his back?”

  No answer.

  The guy with the ponytail said, “I was to get a beating. So I would learn my lesson. Just as soon as the text was sent and their money was guaranteed. At that point they didn’t know you were in the woods too.”

  “That shouldn’t really make a difference,” Reacher said. “Should it? Not to men of conviction, surely.”

  He looked at the daddy, and then at the son, full in the eye.

  He said, “Time is wasting, guys. Go ahead and give him his beating.”

  No one moved.

  Reacher looked at the young guy.

  He said, “It’s OK. He won’t hurt you. He’s seventy years old. You could push him over with a feather. He’s nothing to be scared of.”

  The guy moved his head, like a dog sniffing the air.

  “It’s a binary choice now,” Reacher said. “Either you hit him, or you’re scared of him.”

  No response.

  “Or maybe it’s conscience trouble. Maybe that’s it. You don’t want to hit an old guy. You really don’t. But hey, think about the apples. You have a job to do. I get it. In fact I could help you out. You could give me a beating first. That way you would feel you had earned it, when you start in on the old guy. It might make you feel less troubled.”

  No response.

  “Why not?” Reacher said. “You scared of me too? Scared I’m going to hurt you? I have to tell you, it’s a possibility. Full disclosure. You need to make an informed decision. Because now it really is a binary choice. Either you hit me, or you’re scared of me.”

  No answer.

  Reacher stepped in close. The opposite of risky. Better to crowd him. If the kid was dumb enough to throw a punch, it was better to smother it early, before it had speed and development and direction. Which would be easy enough. If the kid was dumb enough. Reacher was thirty pounds heavier and three inches taller and probably five inches longer in the arm. That much was visible.

  The kid was dumb enough.

  His shoulder jerked back in what Reacher took to be the early-warning stages of what was no doubt intended to be a short clubbing right to his face. Which gave him a choice. Either instantaneous reaction, involving a wide outward-sweeping gesture with his left forearm, designed to deflect the incoming short right, while his own short right crashed home. Which would be in any realistic sense the best move to make. It would be fast, hard, and elegantly abrupt. But it wouldn’t be forensic. Reacher felt like he was in front of a jury. Like he was giving evidence. Or being asked to explain it, like an expert witness. He felt in order to be effective he should let the narrative unspool a little longer than an instant. A crime required both intent and action, and he felt he should let both components become plainly visible, all the way to where they were provable beyond a reasonable doubt.

  So he jerked his head sideways and let the short right fizz past his ear, in all its glory, a big punch now, right there for every eye to see, unmistakable, obvious in its intent, and then he waited for the kid to drag his fist back unrequited, and then he waited again, for what felt to him like a very long interval, purely to allow adequate time for jury-room deliberations, and then he hit the kid under the chin with a solid right-hand uppercut. The kid went up weightless in his boots, and then collapsed backward on the grass, with a bristly thump, with all kinds of dust and pollen puffing up in the sunshine. The kid’s limbs went slack and his head lolled to the side.

  Reacher gave the guy with the ponytail a let’s-go nod.

  Then he looked at the kid’s daddy.

  “Parenting tip,” he said. “Don’t leave him lying in the road. He could get run over.”

  “I won’t forget this.”

  “That’s the difference between us,” Reacher said. “I already have.”

  He caught up to the old guy, and they walked the second fifty yards together, back to the ancient Subaru.

  —

  Eventually Patty got up off the bed. She walked to the door, where the light switch was. Three steps. Through the first she was certain the power would still be on. Through the second she was sure it would be off. If they could lock the door and shade the window by remote control, surely they could kill the electricity. Then she changed her mind again. Why would they? Through the third step she was once again convinced it would be on. Because of the meals. Why would they give them meals and then expect them to eat in the dark? Then she remembered the flashlights. What were they for? She remembered Shorty’s comment. In case you have to eat in the dark . Maybe not so dumb.

  She tried the switch.

  It worked. The lights came on. Hot and yellow. She hated electric light in the daytime. She tried the door. Still locked. She tried the buttons for the window blind. Nothing. Shorty sat still in the brassy glare, and watched her. She turned and looked all around the room. At the furniture. At their bags, still where they had dropped them, when the truck didn’t come back. At the walls, and the slim molding where they met the ceiling. At the ceiling itself. It was a snowy expanse of perfectly smooth old-fashioned New England white, containing nothing except a smoke alarm and a bulkhead light, both above the bed.

  Shorty said, “What?”

  Patty looked back at their bags.

  She said, “How well were they hidden?”

  “Where?”

  “In the hedge, Shorty.”

  “Pretty well,” he said. “The big one is heavy. It squashed right down. You saw.”

  “And then Peter got lucky and got his truck started and took it down the track to warm it up. There and back, real quick. Yet he had time to spot our luggage.”

  “Maybe it was his headlights as he turned. Maybe it was more visible from behind. It was on the right. He would have turned counterclockwise. Different view than you got with the flashlight. You checked from the road.”

  “He had time to make a rope handle.”

  Shorty said nothing.

  “Using rope he just happened to have with him,” she said.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “There were other things too,” she said. “We made fun of Karel for saying he might get lucky with a wreck, and then he said it right back to us, practically the first thing out of his mouth. In the back of the junkyard.”

  “Maybe he says it a lot.”

  “Why did they make a rope handle?”

  “I thought they were maybe helping us.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “I suppose. I didn’t understand it.”

  “They were taunting us.”

  “Were they?”

  “We talked about getting a rope to make a handle, so that’s exactly what they did. They got a rope and made a handle. To demonstrate their power. And to show us how they’re secretly laughing up their sleeves at us.”

  “How could they know what we talked about?”

  “They’re listening to us,” Patty said. “There’s a microphone in this room.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “You got another explanation?”

  “Where is it?”

  “Maybe in the light.”

  They both squinted at it, hot and yellow.

  Shorty said, “Mostly we talked outside. In the chairs.”

  “Then there must be a microphone out there too. That’s how Peter found our luggage. They heard us talking about where to put it. They heard the whole plan. Back and forth with the damn quad-bike. Which is why Mark said we must be tired. Which was a weird remark otherwise. But he knew what we had been doing. Because we told him ahead of time.”

  “What else did we say?”

  “Lots of things. You said maybe Canadian cars are different, and the next thing we hear is, hey, Canadian cars are different. They were listening all along.”

  “What else?”

  “Doesn�
�t matter what else. What else we said is not what matters. What matters is what we say next.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Nothing,” Patty said. “We can’t even plan what to do. Because they’ll hear us.”

  Chapter 19

  Reacher and the guy with the ponytail climbed the fence and walked to the Subaru. The guy said, “You were pretty rough back there.”

  “Not really,” Reacher said. “I hit him once. There is no smaller number. It was the irreducible minimum. It was almost kindhearted. I assume he has a dental plan.”

  “His father meant what he said. He won’t forget. That family has a reputation to keep up. They’ll have to do something.”

  Reacher stared at him.

  Déjà vu all over again.

  The guy said, “They think they’re top dogs around here. They’ll worry that word will get out. They won’t want people laughing at them behind their backs. So they’ll have to come looking for you.”

  “Who?” Reacher said. “The granddad?”

  “They offer a lot of seasonal work. They get a lot of loyalty in exchange.”

  “How much more do you know about Ryantown?”

  The guy paused a beat.

  He said, “There’s an old man you should talk to. I was debating whether to mention him at all. Because honestly I think you should get going instead.”

  “Pursued by a large and hostile crowd of fruit pickers?”

  “These are not pleasant people.”

  “How bad can they be?”

  “You should get going.”

  “Where is the old man I should talk to?”

  “You couldn’t see him before tomorrow. It would have to be arranged.”

  “How old is he?”

  “I guess more than ninety now.”

  “From Ryantown originally?”

  “His cousins were. He spent time there.”

  “Does he remember people?”

  “He claims to. I interviewed him about the tin. I asked him about kids who got sick. He came up with a list of names. But they were just regular childhood ailments. Nothing conclusive.”

  “That was eight years ago. Maybe his memory got worse.”

  “Possible.”

  “Why tomorrow?”

  “He’s in a home. Deep in the countryside. Visiting hours are limited.”

  “I would need a motel tonight.”

  “You should go to Laconia. It would be safer. More people around. You would be harder to find.”

  “Maybe I prefer the rural ambience.”

  “There’s a place twenty miles north of here. It’s supposed to be good. But maybe not for you. It’s deep in the woods. No bus. Too far to walk. You would be much better off in Laconia.”

  Reacher said nothing.

  The guy said, “Better still if you moved on altogether. I could drive you somewhere, if you like. As a way of saying thank you for rescuing me back there.”

  “That was my fault anyway,” Reacher said. “I persuaded you to come. I got you in trouble.”

  “I would still drive you somewhere.”

  “Drive me to Laconia,” Reacher said. “Then make the arrangements with the old guy.”

  —

  Reacher got out on a downtown corner, and the guy with the ponytail drove away. Reacher looked left and right and got his bearings. He smiled. He was halfway between where two separate twenty-year-olds had been discovered unconscious on the sidewalk, seventy-five years apart. He checked the passersby. There were a few folks who could have been up from Boston. But none of them looked wrong. Couples, mostly. Some gray hair. Shoppers, probably, looking for end-of-season bargains on whatever it was Laconia had to offer. Nothing suspicious. Not yet. Tomorrow, Shaw had said. The chief of detectives. He should know.

  Reacher took a side street, where he had seen an inn, no better or worse than all the others. It was another narrow three-floor building, painted an artful faded color. He paid for a room, and went up to take a look at it. The window faced out back. Which he was happy about. It decreased the effective radius. He might get a quiet night. A raccoon or a coyote, maybe, looking for trash in the alley. Or a neighbor’s dog. But nothing worse.

  Then he went out again, because it was still full daylight. He was hungry. He had skipped lunch. He should have been eating it about the time he was gazing at the fragment of old kitchen tile. All that remained. Not a large room. Probably not well equipped. Therefore a simple menu for lunch. Peanut butter, maybe, or grilled cheese. Or something out of a can. A tin can.

  He found a coffee shop a block away which offered all-day breakfast, which in his experience usually implied all-day everything. He went inside. There were five booths. Four were occupied. The first three by what looked like out-of-town shoppers refreshing themselves after an exhausting spree, and the fourth by a familiar face.

  Detective Brenda Amos.

  She was deep in a salad. No doubt a long-awaited meal much delayed by ongoing chaos. Reacher had been a cop. He knew what it was like. Running here, running there, phones ringing, eat when you can, sleep when you can.

  She looked up.

  At first she looked surprised, just for a second, and then she looked dismayed. He shrugged and sat down on the bench across from her.

  He said, “Shaw told me I’m legal until tomorrow.”

  She said, “He told me you agreed to move on.”

  “If I found Ryantown.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Apparently there’s a guy I should talk to. A very old man. Same age my father would be. An exact contemporary.”

  “Are you going to talk to him today?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “This is exactly what we were afraid of. You’re going to be here forever.”

  “Look on the bright side. Maybe no one is coming. The kid was an asshole. Maybe they think he deserved it. Tough love, or whatever they call it now.”

  “No chance whatsoever.”

  “The very old man I should talk to had cousins in Ryantown. He used to visit on a regular basis. Maybe they all got up a game in the street. All the neighborhood kids. Stickball, or whatever. Maybe they played catch across the stream.”

  “With all due respect, major, do you really care about that stuff?”

  “I guess a little bit,” Reacher said. “Enough to stick around one more night, anyway.”

  “We don’t want trouble here.”

  “Always best avoided.”

  “They have the rest of the day to plan. They’ll mobilize before midnight. They’ll be here by morning. The distances are not great. They’ll have your description with them. Therefore Shaw is going to dial it up to eleven before first light. He’s going to treat this place like a war zone. Where does this very old man live?”

  “In a home somewhere out of town. A guy I met is going to pick me up.”

  “What guy?”

  “Eight years ago he thought the water was contaminated.”

  “Was it?”

  “Apparently not. It’s a sore point.”

  “Where is he going to pick you up?”

  “Where he let me out.”

  “At an agreed-upon time?”

  “Nine-thirty on the dot. Something about visiting hours.”

  Amos paused a beat.

  “OK,” she said. “You’re authorized to do that. But you’ll do it my way. You don’t leave your room at any point, no one ever sees you, and at nine-thirty in the morning exactly you run straight to the car with your head down. And you drive away. And you don’t come back. That’s the deal I’m offering. Or we run you out now.”

  “I already paid for my room,” Reacher said. “Running me out now would be an injustice.”

  “I’m serious,” she said. “This is not the O.K. Corral. This is collateral damage just waiting to happen. If they miss you, they’ll hit two other people instead. Watch my lips. We are not going to allow drive-by shootings in our town. No way. This is Laconia, not Los Angeles. And with r
espect, major, you should support our position. You should know better than to put innocent bystanders at risk.”

  “Relax,” Reacher said. “I support your position. I support it big time. I’ll do everything your way. I promise. Starting tomorrow. Today I’m still legal.”

  “Start when it gets dark tonight,” Amos said. “Play it safe. For my sake.”

  She took out a business card and handed it to him.

  She said, “Call me if you need me.”

  Chapter 20

  Patty took off her shoes, because she was Canadian, and stepped up on the bed, and stood upright on the bouncy surface. She shuffled sideways and tilted her face up toward the light.

  She said, loudly, “Please raise the window blind. As a personal favor to me. I want to see daylight. What possible harm could it do? No one ever comes here.”

  Then she climbed down, and sat on the edge of the mattress to put her shoes back on. Shorty watched the window, like he was watching a ball game on a television screen. The same kind of close attention.

  The blind stayed down.

  He shrugged.

  “Good try,” he mouthed, silently.

  “They’re discussing it,” she mouthed back.

  They waited again.

  And then the blind rolled up. The motor whirred and a blue bar of bright afternoon light came spilling in, narrow at first, but widening all the time, until it filled the room with sunshine.

  Patty glanced up at the ceiling.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  She walked to the door, to kill the hot yellow bulb. Three steps. The first felt good, because she liked the daylight. The second felt better, because she had made them do something for her. She had established a line of communication. She had made them understand she was a person. But then the third step felt worse again, because she realized she had given them leverage. She had told them what she feared to lose.

  She put her elbows on the sill and her forehead on the glass and stared out at the view. It was unchanged. The Honda, the lot, the grass, the wall of trees. Nothing else.

  —

  In the back parlor over at the house Mark finished a phone call and put the receiver down. He checked the screens. Patty was happy. He turned to face the others.