23 Past Tense

by Lee Child

  So it was in the smoke alarm. He stared at it. He imagined it staring back at him. He imagined smashing it with a hammer. He imagined fragments raining down. He imagined the hammer still in his hand. What would he smash next?

  He got up off the bed again and went back in the bathroom. He closed the door. He set the faucet running in the sink. Patty watched him from her spot on the floor. He bent down low, close to her ear, and he spoke in a whisper. He said, “I was thinking, suppose I had a hammer, what would I do?”

  “Nail up a sheet,” she whispered back.

  “I meant after that,” he said.

  “What after that?”

  “I would come in here. This is the back of the building. All the action is at the front. The bullshit with the blind, and people looking in. Maybe no one is watching the back. The wall is nothing but a skin of tile, then half an inch of wall board, then a six-inch void between the studs, maybe packed with insulation, plus maybe a vapor barrier, and then cedar siding nailed on sixteen-inch centers.”

  “So?”

  “If I had a hammer I would bust my way through. We could walk away.”

  “Through the wall?”

  “A proper demolition crew could do it in a second. That would be routine.”

  “Then it’s a shame you don’t have a hammer.”

  “I figure we could use the suitcase on the tile. Like a battering ram. We could swing it, with the new rope handle. Like one, two, three. I bet the tile would come off all in a sheet. Then I could kick the rest of the way through.”

  “You can’t kick through cedar siding.”

  “Don’t need to,” Shorty said. “All I need is to pop it off the studs from the inside, where it’s nailed on. With sudden outward force. Which should be easy enough. Then it would fall away by itself. All I would need to actually kick my way through would be the wall board. Which should also be easy enough. That stuff ain’t strong.”

  “How wide of a gap would there be?”

  “I think about fourteen inches, effectively. We could step through sideways.”

  “With the suitcase?”

  “Something we got to accept,” Shorty said. “We need to be realistic. The suitcase stays here until we capture a vehicle.”

  Patty said nothing for a moment.

  Then she whispered, “Capture a what?”

  “Some of these guys peering in the window must have driven here. Which means there must be cars in the lot now. Or maybe they all got picked up in a Mercedes SUV. In which case it’s still out there, neatly parked somewhere, all warmed up and ready to go. If we can’t find it, no matter, because there are plenty more in the barn. Which ain’t far away. I bet all the keys are hanging up on a neat little board.”

  “So first we destroy their property and then we steal their car.”

  “You bet your ass we do.”

  “This feels as crazy as the quad-bike thing.”

  “The quad-bike thing wasn’t crazy. It worked perfectly. You know that. We saw it working perfectly, every minute, beginning to end. It was something else that didn’t work perfectly. We didn’t know they had cameras and microphones. We didn’t know they were cheating.”

  “Just theoretically,” Patty said. “How long would it take to kick through a wall?”

  “Not long, if we kept the hole a limited size. If we kept it low down to the ground. If we were prepared to crawl out, hands and knees.”

  “How long in minutes?”

  Shorty closed his eyes. He visualized. Eight kicks, six with the toe, to crack the wall board in strategic locations, and then two mighty blows with the flat of the sole, to punch it all out. Call it eight seconds overall. Plus then time to tear the insulation out, handful after handful, a blur, like a dog digging up a treasure. Call it another eight seconds. Or ten. Call it twelve seconds, to be on the safe side. So far a total of twenty. But then came the siding. Popping it off the studs would not be easy. It was fixed on with big nails shot out of a gun. Heavy blows would be required. The problem was the angle of attack. He would have to direct low karate-style kicks through a narrow opening. Kind of sideways and downward. Not practical. Hard to develop maximum power. Better to lie on his back. A downward stamping motion would translate to maximum outward force. Over and over again. Eight times at least.

  He said, “One minute, maybe.”

  She said, “That’s pretty good.”

  “If the tile comes off all in a sheet.”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  “We would have to bust off every piece separately. Just to get to the wall board in the first place. Then from that point onward it would be a minute. Except probably two, because by then we would be tired, from busting off the tile.”

  “How long altogether?”

  Shorty said, “Just hope it comes off all in a sheet.”

  She said, “Are we really going to do this?”

  “I vote yes.”

  “When?”

  “I say right now. We could run straight for a quad-bike. Might be better than a car. We could ride it through the trees. They wouldn’t be able to follow.”

  “Except on another quad-bike. They have eight more.”

  “We would have a head start.”

  “Do you know how to drive a quad-bike?”

  “How hard can it be?”

  Patty was quiet another long moment.

  “One step at a time,” she said. “First we’ll test the suitcase on the tile. We’ll see if it comes off all in a sheet. If it does, then we can go ahead and make a final decision. If it doesn’t, we can go ahead and forget it anyway.”

  Shorty opened the bathroom door and glanced across the room at the suitcase. It was still where he had put it down, all those hours before. After he had watched Karel drive away in the tow truck.

  He whispered, “They’ll see me get it. Because of the camera.”

  “They don’t know what’s in it,” Patty whispered back. “We’re allowed to take our own stuff in the bathroom, surely. We might need it. We might choose to sleep in here, what with people looking in the window all the time. That would be perfectly natural.”

  Shorty paused. He nodded. He went to get the suitcase. Cool as a cucumber. Perfectly natural. He strolled over, and hefted it up, and strolled back. He put it down, and closed the door. Then he breathed out and flapped his hand to ease the pain in his palm.

  They picked their spot. To the left of the sink. A blank patch of wall. No outlets. Therefore no hidden cables inside to snarl things up. No pipes inside, either. The water came and went all in one place, on the other side of the room. Perfect. Plain sailing.

  They pulled and shoved the suitcase until it was in position. They stood facing each other, with the case between them. They bent down over it, and they grabbed the rope with all four hands. They lifted the case, six inches off the floor, to clear the baseboard at the bottom of the wall. They moved away a step, and they set the suitcase swinging, gently, back and forth, back and forth. It was a big sturdy item. Very old. A plywood shell, covered in heavy leather, with reinforcements on the corners. They perfected their rhythm. They let the weight do the work. On each swing they made one arm short and one arm long, to keep the suitcase exactly level, like a piston, so its blunt end would hit the wall square on.

  “Ready?” Shorty said.

  “Yes.”

  “On three.”

  They swung once, and twice, gathering momentum, and on three they stepped in toward the wall and accelerated the weight as hard as they could.

  The case smacked against the tile.

  The result was not what Shorty expected.

  His instinctive prediction had been that the wall board would flex inward a fraction, which would cause the skim coat to crack off. The tiles were cemented to the skim coat. If the skim coat flaked off, the tiles would come down with it. In sheets. Gravity would see to that.

  Didn’t happen.

  Instead half a dozen tiles shattered into pieces. Some of the broken bit
s rained down on the floor. Others stayed up on the wall. Like random coin-sized fragments, still solidly glued to separate coin-sized daubs of adhesive. A cheap job. The tiler had buttered three or four knobs of cement on the back of a tile, and then pressed it into place. One after another, over and over. All the unbuttered voids behind them had made them shatter on impact. But the wall board itself hadn’t flexed at all.

  They put the suitcase down. Shorty pressed his thumbnail in the space between two surviving fragments. The skim coat was right there, dry and smooth and creamy. It was hard and rigid. He scraped at it. It powdered a little. He pressed harder, with the ball of his thumb, and then with his knuckles, and then harder still, with his fist. The wall board didn’t yield. Not even a tiny fraction. It felt solid.

  “Weird,” he said.

  “Should we try again?” Patty asked.

  “I guess,” he said. “Real hard this time.”

  They backed off as far as the width of the room would allow, and they swung the case once, through a big healthy arc about a yard long, and then again, and on three they staggered sideways and smashed the case into the wall as hard as they could.

  Same result. A couple more orphan fragments fell off the wall. Nothing more. It was like hitting concrete. They felt the shock in their wrists.

  They dragged the case out the way. Shorty tapped on the wall, experimentally, here and there, in different places, like knocking on a door. The sound it made was strange. Not exactly solid, not exactly hollow. Somewhere in between. He stepped back and kicked out hard. And again, harder. The whole wall seemed to bounce and tremble as a single unit.

  “Weird,” he said again.

  He picked up a jagged shard of tile and used it to scrape at the skim coat. He made a long furrow, and deepened it, working back and forth, stabbing and scraping. Then he made another furrow, and another, in a wide triangle, missing some of the still-stuck fragments, including others inside the lines. Then he stepped back and kicked out again, hard, aiming carefully. The scored-around triangle of skim coat flaked off and fell to the floor. Under it was revealed the papery surface of brand new wall board. He attacked it with the shard of tile, furiously, hacking and gouging, spraying dust and curls of torn paper all around. Then he stepped back again, and kicked, and kicked, and kicked, in a frenzy of frustration. He kicked the wall board to fragments and powder. He pulverized it. He reduced it to nothing.

  But he didn’t kick his way through it. He couldn’t. It was backed by some kind of thick steel mesh. Which came into view, section by section, as the wall board in front of it was destroyed. It loomed up through the cloud of dust and particles, white and ghostly and tightly woven. It was a net, with steel filaments as thick as his finger, running up and down and side to side. The holes they made were grudging and square. About big enough to put his thumb in, but nothing better.

  He used the shard of tile to cut more wall board away. He found a place where a bright green ground wire was soldered to the back of the mesh. Like an electrical connection. A very neat job. A random yard away he found another. Same thing. A ground wire, soldered to the back of the mesh.

  Then he found a place where the mesh was welded to a prison bar.

  There was no doubt about it. He knew from the size, and the shape, and the spacing. Like on every cop show ever made. There were floor-to-ceiling prison bars built inside the wall. The mesh was spot welded to it, here and there, like a curtain. Like a sheet nailed over a window. He knew why it was there. Because of the ground wires. Because of a long-ago memory of a build-your-own electronics kit he had gotten at Christmas. When he was a kid. From his uncle. Same uncle who gave him the Civic, as a matter of fact. The mesh wasn’t there for reinforcement. It was there because it made the room a Faraday cage. Room ten was an electronic black hole. Any radio signal trying to get in would splinter every which way through the mesh, and then drain away to ground, through the many carefully soldered wires. Like the signal never existed at all. Same thing for a signal trying to get out. Didn’t matter what kind of signal it was. Cell phone, satellite phone, pager, walkie-talkie, police radio, whatever, it wasn’t going to happen. The laws of physics. Couldn’t be ignored.

  A signal couldn’t get out because of the mesh.

  A person couldn’t get out because of the bars.

  Patty took a look over his shoulder and said, “What is all that stuff?”

  Shorty tried hard to think of something cheerful to say, but he couldn’t, so he didn’t answer the question.

  Chapter 30

  Burke and Reacher drove back to the turn, where they headed south toward Laconia. Not all the way. Just a few miles. Far enough to get bars on Burke’s old phone. They pulled off on the shoulder of a wide left-hand curve. Ahead of them were fields and trees, and presumably the town itself on the other side of them, in the far distance, through the haze. Reacher took out Amos’s business card, and dialed her number. It rang twice and dumped to voice mail. She was away from her desk. He clicked off and tried again, this time with her cell number. It rang five times, and then it was answered.

  Her voice said, “Interesting.”

  He said, “What is?”

  “You’re calling on the Reverend Burke’s phone. You’re still with him. You’re still in the vicinity.”

  “How did you know this is the Reverend Burke’s phone?”

  “I saw his license plate this morning. I checked with county. Now I know all about him. He’s a troublemaker.”

  “He’s been very nice to me.”

  “How can I help you?”

  “Something made me think about guys getting drafted in from Boston. Seems to be a regular habit around here. I was wondering how you were doing with that.”

  “Why?”

  “Did anyone show up yet?”

  Amos didn’t answer.

  Reacher said, “What?”

  “Chief Shaw is talking to the Boston PD again. They’re calling in some favors. The word on the street is five guys are working out of town today. There’s no sign of them at home. Their absence is conspicuous. It’s a reasonable assumption they’ve been sent our way. In which case we know all about the first four. They were the guy in the Chrysler and the three in the library. It’s the fifth guy we need to worry about. He left Boston much later than the others. We assume in response to a panic call from here. We assume he’s their cleanup hitter. The ultimate sanction.”

  “Has he arrived?”

  “I don’t know. We watch what we can, but we’re sure to miss something.”

  “When did he leave Boston?”

  “Long enough ago to be here by now.”

  “With my description,” Reacher said.

  “That doesn’t matter anymore,” Amos said. “Does it?”

  Then she paused.

  Then she said, “Don’t you dare tell me you’re coming back to town. Because you ain’t, major. You’re staying away.”

  “Relax, soldier,” Reacher said. “Stand easy. I’m staying away. I’m not coming back to town.”

  “Then don’t worry about your description.”

  “I was wondering exactly what it said. I was thinking back to exactly what the kid can have seen. The lighting was kind of patchy. It was an alley. There was a lamp over the door, but it was shaded. Like a cone. But even so, let’s assume he got a pretty good look at me. Although it was the middle of the night and most of the time he was mad as hell and spoiling for a fight, and then he was unconscious, basically. Therefore his grasp of detail is not likely to have been impressive. So what would a kid in his position say afterward? I’m sure it hurt to talk. By that point his teeth were in poor condition. I’m sure he had facial bruising. Maybe his jaw was busted. So what few words would he choose to mumble? Just the basics, surely. A big guy, with messy fair hair. I think that’s what he must have said.”

  “OK.”

  “Except at one point I spoke to the cocktail waitress. She asked if I was a cop. I said I was once upon a time, in the army.
The kid might have remembered. It’s the kind of thing people add to descriptions. To flesh them out. To suggest the type of person, not just their appearance. Which would have been important to the kid. He needed to save face. He wanted to be able to say sure, he lost the fight, but only because he went up against a trained Special Forces killer. Like an excuse. Almost like a badge of honor. So actually I think he must have said, a big guy, messy fair hair, used to be in the army. That’s what the guys in the library saw. A simple three-point check list. Size, hair, army. That’s what they’ve got. Not very nuanced or exact.”

  Amos said, “Why does any of this matter?”

  “I think the description fits Carter Carrington too.”

  Amos said nothing.

  “I think it’s close enough to be awkward,” Reacher said. “Certainly he’s bigger than the average guy. He’s imposing, physically. His hair is all over the place. Across a room, he has a certain look. I thought he was army. Turned out he wasn’t, but I would have sworn. I was placing bets on where he did his ROTC.”

  “You think we should warn him?”

  “I think you should put a car outside his house.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Maybe a job for Officer Davenport. He seems to be a capable young man. I would hate for something to happen. Because of me. I don’t want Carrington on my conscience. He seems like a nice guy. He just got a new girlfriend.”

  “Protecting him would be a huge diversion of resources.”

  “He’s an innocent bystander. He’s also the guy who goes to bat for you.”

  “I think he would refuse on principle. Precisely because of that. He’ll say he can’t accept special treatment. The optics would be terrible. The threat is against someone else, after all, who might or might not have a slight physical resemblance. He would look corrupt, and vain, and a coward. He won’t do it.”

  “Then tell him to get out of town.”

  “I can’t just tell him. Doesn’t work that way.”