by Lee Child
‘You’re going to pay for a night’s stay just to take a shower?’
‘No, I’m going to pay for an hour.’
‘They’re all chains here. They’re not hot-sheet places that rent by the hour.’
‘But they’re all run by human beings. And it’s still morning. So the maids are still around. The clerk will take twenty bucks. He’ll give a maid ten to do a room over again, and he’ll put ten in his own pocket. That’s how it usually works.’
‘You’ve done this before.’
‘I’d be pretty far gone if I hadn’t.’
‘Expensive, though. With the clothes and all.’
‘How much do you pay for your mortgage every month? And the insurance and the oil and the maintenance and the repairs and the yard work and the taxes?’
Sorenson smiled.
‘You make a good point,’ she said again.
Reacher finished first and headed for the men’s room. There was a pay phone on the wall outside. He ignored it. There was no window. No fire exit. He used the john and washed his hands and when he got back he found two men crowding Sorenson from behind. She was still in her chair and they were one each side of her, meaty thighs close to her shoulders but not quite touching them, giving her no room at all to swivel and get out. They were talking about her to each other, over her head, coarse and boorish, wondering out loud why the pretty little lady wasn’t inviting them to sit down with her. They were truckers, probably. Possibly they mistook her for a business traveller far from home. A woman executive. The black pantsuit, the blue shirt. A fish out of water. They seemed to like her hair.
Reacher stopped ten feet away and watched. He wondered which she would pull first, her ID or her Glock. He guessed ID, but would have preferred the Glock. But she pulled neither. She just sat there, taking it. She was a very patient person. Or perhaps there would be paperwork involved. Reacher didn’t know the ins and outs of Bureau protocol.
Then one of the guys seemed to sense Reacher’s presence and he went quiet and his head turned and his eyes locked on. His pal followed suit. They were large men, both of them bulky with the kind of flesh that wasn’t quite muscle and wasn’t quite flab. They had small dull eyes and unshaven faces, and bad teeth and stringy hair. They were what a doctor friend of Reacher’s used to write up as PPP. A diagnosis, a message, a secret insider medical code, one professional to another, for ease of reference.
It meant piss-poor protoplasm.
Decision time, boys, Reacher thought. Either break eye contact and walk away, or don’t.
They didn’t. They kept on staring. Not just fascination with the nose. A challenge. Some kind of a brainless hormonal imperative. Reacher felt his own kick in. Involuntary, but inevitable. Adrenalin, seasoned with an extra component, something dark and warm and primitive, something ancient and prehistoric and predatory, something that took out all the jitters and left all the power and all the calm confidence and all the absolute certainty of victory. Not like bringing a gun to a knife fight. Like bringing a plutonium bomb.
The two guys stared. Reacher stared back. Then the guy on the left said, ‘What are you looking at?’
Which was a challenge all by itself, with a predictable dynamic. For some unknown reason most people backed down at that point. Most people squirmed, and got defensive, and got apologetic. Not Reacher. His instinct was to double down, not back down.
He said, ‘I’m looking at a piece of shit.’
No response.
Reacher said, ‘But a piece of shit with a choice. Option one, get back in your truck and get breakfast fifty miles down the road. Option two, get in an ambulance and get breakfast through a plastic tube.’
No response.
‘It’s a limited time offer,’ Reacher said. ‘So be quick, or I’ll choose for you. And to be absolutely honest, right now I’m leaning towards the ambulance and the feeding tube.’
Their mouths moved and their eyes flicked from side to side. They stayed where they were. Just for a couple of seconds, just enough to save face. Then they picked option one, like Reacher knew they would. They turned and shuffled away, slowly enough to look unconcerned and a little defiant, but they kept on going. They made steady progress. They pushed out the door and disappeared into the lot. They didn’t look back. Reacher breathed out and sat down again.
Sorenson said, ‘I don’t need you to look after me.’
Reacher said, ‘I know. And I wasn’t. They were talking to me by that point. I was looking after myself.’
‘What would you have done if they hadn’t left?’
‘Moot point. Guys like that always leave.’
‘You sound disappointed.’
‘I’m perpetually disappointed. It’s a disappointing world. As in, why were you just sitting there and taking it?’
‘Paperwork,’ she said. ‘Arresting people is such a pain in the ass.’
She took out her phone and lit it up. She checked it for bars and battery. She shut it down again.
‘Expecting a call?’ Reacher asked.
‘You know I am,’ she said. ‘I’m waiting to be taken off this case.’
‘Maybe that isn’t going to happen.’
‘It should have happened two hours ago.’
‘So what’s your best guess?’
But she didn’t get a chance to answer that question, because right then, right on cue, her phone started ringing.
FORTY-TWO
THE PHONE HOPPED and buzzed. The ring tone was thin and reedy. A plain electronic sound. Sorenson answered the call and listened. Reacher could see in her face it was not the call she was expecting. She wasn’t being taken off the board. Not yet. She was being given information about the case instead. Not bad news, necessarily, judging by her expression, but not good news either. Interesting news, probably. Perplexing news, possibly.
She clicked off and looked across the wet laminate table and said, ‘Our medical examiners finally got around to moving the dead guy out of the old pumping station.’
Reacher said, ‘And?’
‘A hitherto unnoticed condition became readily apparent.’
‘Which is?’
‘Just before they stabbed him to death, they broke his arm.’
Sorenson told Reacher her Bureau MEs had hoisted the dead guy on to a wheeled gurney for the short trip out to the meat wagon. No body bag, which was normal for that kind of situation, where a corpse was lying in a lake of drying blood. No point getting the bag sticky both inside and out. They had planned to zip the guy up in the truck.
But on the way to the truck the gurney had hit a bump and the dead guy’s right arm had flopped off the side, with the elbow turned the wrong way out. They had used a portable X-ray machine right there on the sidewalk, and determined that the joint was shattered. It was inconceivable the injury could have happened at any prior time, because the pain would have been unbearable. No one could walk around with a shattered elbow. Not even for a minute. Certainly no one could drive all the way from Denver. And the injury wasn’t post mortem either. There was a little bleeding visible through the skin. And some very slight swelling. But not much. Blood pressure had continued after the break, but not for long.
‘Defensive injury,’ Reacher said. ‘In a way. At one remove, as it were. He pulled a weapon. A gun, or possibly a knife of his own. In self-defence. They disarmed him with a degree of violence. I assume he was right-handed.’
‘Most people are,’ Sorenson said. ‘And then they cut him, and stabbed him, and then he bled out moments later.’
‘Did the eyewitness hear a scream?’
‘He didn’t say so.’
‘Busted elbows hurt bad. He must have heard something. A yelp, at least. Pretty loud, probably.’
‘Well, we can’t ask him now.’
‘No weapons found at the scene? His or theirs?’
Sorenson shook her head. ‘They probably tossed them all down the open pipe.’
‘You still think he was just a trade att
aché? Far from home with a knife or a gun in his pocket?’
Sorenson shook her head again.
‘Something I haven’t told you,’ she said. ‘The CIA has been sniffing around all night long. They called within minutes. Even before Bureau counterterrorism got there. Well before the State Department guy got there.’
‘What did they want?’
‘Updates and information.’
‘There you go,’ Reacher said. ‘The dead guy was one of their own.’
‘So why am I still on the case? This thing should have gone nuclear by now.’ She checked her phone again. It had bars and battery, but it was stubbornly silent.
They hit the outlet mall next. Cheap stuff, in a cheap and dismal building. About a third of the units sold men’s clothing. Reacher recognized some of the brands. He wasn’t impressed by the discount pricing. In his opinion the steep reductions merely brought the values close to where they should have been all along.
As always his choices were limited by the availability or otherwise of the right big-and-tall sizes. But he managed to find generic blue jeans at one store, and a three-layer upper body ensemble at another: T-shirt, dress shirt, and cotton sweater, all shades of blue. Plus blue socks and white underwear at a third store, and a short blue warm-up jacket at a fourth. He figured he would keep the boots he already had. Just a few days more. They were OK.
‘You like blue?’ Sorenson asked him.
‘I like everything to match,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Someone told me I should.’
Total damage was seventy-seven dollars in cash, which was well within target. Three days’ wear, minimum, maybe four maximum, somewhere between about twenty and twenty-five bucks a day. Cheaper than living somewhere, and easier than washing and ironing and folding and packing. That was for damn sure.
Sorenson asked, ‘Where do you get your money?’
Reacher said, ‘Here and there.’
‘Where and where?’
‘Savings, some of it.’
‘And the rest?’
‘I work sometimes.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Casual labour. Whatever needs doing.’
‘How often?’
‘Now and then.’
‘Which can’t pay much.’
‘I get the rest from alternative sources.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Spoils of war, usually.’
‘What war?’
Reacher said, ‘I steal from bad guys.’
‘And you’re admitting this to me?’
‘I’m following your example. Federal agencies seize property all the time, right? You find coke in some guy’s glove box, it’s goodbye BMW. Same with houses and boats.’
‘That’s different. That stuff reduces our expenditures. It spares the taxpayer.’
‘Likewise,’ Reacher said. ‘I’d be on food stamps otherwise.’
He chose the Red Roof Inn for his shower. A franchise operation, with the owner on duty at the desk, and like all such guys happy to put a little extracurricular cash in his back pocket. As expected he settled for a pair of tens, one for him and one for whichever maid was first up for favours. Reacher carried his gas station purchases into the room in one bag, and his new outfit in four others. Sorenson came in with him and checked around. She didn’t say anything, but he saw she wasn’t happy with the bathroom window. It wasn’t big, but it was big enough. It was a ground floor room, with a paved alley out back.
‘Stay here, if you want,’ Reacher said. ‘I’ll leave the shower curtain open. To keep your mind at rest.’
She smiled, but she didn’t reply. Not directly. Instead she said, ‘How long will this take?’
‘Twenty-two minutes for the shower,’ he said. ‘Then three to get dry, and three to get dressed. Plus five for unforeseen eventualities. Call it thirty-three minutes total.’
‘That’s very exact.’
‘Precision is a virtue.’
She left and he started peeling off his old clothes. They were in pretty bad shape. He had been wearing them for days, since Bolton, South Dakota. In places they were crusted with mud, and in other places they were spotted with blood, some of it his own, and some of it not. He balled the wrecked garments up tight and stuffed them all in the bathroom trash. Then he cleaned his teeth very thoroughly and set the shower running.
He washed his hair and soaped himself up from head to foot and scrubbed and rinsed. Eight minutes. Then he got out of the shower and used a washcloth and a sink of hot water and the mirror above it to attend to his face. He soaked off the hardened smears of blood and sponged the open lacerations carefully. He rubbed a slick of soap on his upper lip and sniffed as hard as he could until he started sneezing uncontrollably. Clots of blood came out, as big as garden peas.
Then he got back in the shower and washed himself from head to foot all over again. He towelled off and dressed and combed his hair with his fingers. He put his old passport and his ATM card in one pocket and his toothbrush in another. He put the short fat guy’s motel key in his jacket. He ate aspirins and drank water from the tap. Then he found his antiseptic cream and his Band-Aids and he opened the window to let the steam out and clear the mirror.
Julia Sorenson was in the back alley, watching the window.
She was on the phone. She wasn’t enjoying the call. She was arguing, but politely. With her boss, Reacher guessed. Hence the restraint. He couldn’t hear what was being said on either end of the conversation, but he figured the guy was finally taking her off the board, and she was pitching to stay on. She seemed to be making all kinds of good points. Her free hand was chopping the air, pushing objections aside, moving persuasive reasons front and centre. She was using the physical gestures to put animation in her voice. The telephone was a poor means of communication, in Reacher’s opinion. It had no room for body language and nuance.
He looked back in the mirror and used toilet paper to dry his cuts. Then he squeezed thin worms of cream into them from the tube of antiseptic. He wiped the excess and dried the intact areas of skin. He put a Band-Aid over the biggest cut. Another over the second biggest. He dumped the trash on top of his old clothes and closed the bathroom window and headed for the bedroom. He took a look in the mirror next to the closet. The new clothes were pretty good. His hair looked OK. His face was a mess. No oil painting, that was for sure. But then, it never had been, and it was certainly a lot better than an hour ago. A whole lot better. Almost halfway human.
He stepped out to the lot. Sorenson’s cruiser was right outside the door. She was leaning on the front fender. Reacher guessed she had left the alley when he closed the bathroom window. At that point she had hustled around to the front, double quick. Not to greet him. To make sure he didn’t run.
She said, ‘You clean up pretty well.’
Something in her face. Something in her voice. Not hurt. Not anger. Not necessarily even disappointment. More like confusion.
Reacher said, ‘What?’
‘I got a call.’
‘I saw.’
‘My SAC.’
‘I guessed. Did he take you off the case?’
She shook her head no, then changed it to a yes. She said, ‘I mean, I’m off the case, yes. But not because he took me off, no.’
‘Then why?’
‘Because there is no case. Not any more.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that as of twenty minutes ago there is no active investigation. Which is logical, really, because as far as the Federal Bureau of Investigation is concerned nothing happened in Nebraska last night. Absolutely nothing at all.’
FORTY-THREE
SORENSON SAID, ‘THEY took it the other way. They didn’t take it nuclear. They made it a black hole instead. They’re erasing it from history. A CIA demand, presumably. Or State. Something squirrelly. Some kind of national security bullshit.’ Then her phone rang again before Reacher could reply. She checked the incom
ing number and asked, ‘Where is the 405 area code?’
‘Southwestern Oklahoma,’ Reacher said. ‘Lawton, probably. It’s the army.’
She answered and listened for a spell and thanked whoever she was talking to. She clicked off and said, ‘Mother Sill confirms she had a Peter James King on active duty in 1991. He was a fister. Which I’m sure isn’t what I think it is.’
‘Fire support team,’ Reacher said. ‘Not just a dagby after all. I sold him short. Probably a forward observer. Smart guys, most of them. The 13F MOS. Which means he manoeuvred with the lowly infantry or the humble armoured divisions, rather than the kings of battle themselves. Did they confirm a brother named Alan?’
‘No. Didn’t deny one, either. But they’ll need paperwork.’
‘What happened to Peter?’
‘He quit as a gunnery sergeant in 1997.’
‘Same year as me. Where is he now?’
‘Mother Sill doesn’t know for sure. Last she heard he was working with a security company in Denver, Colorado. Which happens to be exactly where the dead guy flew into.’
‘Coincidence,’ Reacher said. ‘Alan King said they don’t talk.’
‘Did you believe him?’
‘He told the truth about Peter’s name and service, apparently. Why wouldn’t he be telling the truth about not talking to him too?’
‘How many people live in Denver?’
‘About six hundred thousand,’ Reacher said. ‘Between two and a half and three million in the metro area, depending on how you measure it. Too small and too big to match King’s million and a half.’
‘How do you know stuff like that? Area codes and populations?’
‘I like information. I like facts. Denver was named after James W. Denver, who was governor of the Kansas Territory at the time. It was a kiss-ass move by a land speculator called Larimer. He hoped the governor would move a county seat there and make him rich. What he didn’t know was that the governor had already resigned. Mails were slow in those days. And then the new place became part of Colorado anyway, not Kansas. Area code is 303.’
‘Get in the car,’ Sorenson said.
