A Wanted Man: (Jack Reacher 17)

by Lee Child

  Then after the final right-hand turn Reacher saw a row of four small ranch houses all alone in the emptiness. There was a cop car parked in the middle of the road. Sorenson said, ‘He’s here after all. That’s Sheriff Goodman’s car. And that’s Karen Delfuenso’s house, second from the right.’

  She parked on the kerb twenty feet back, and they got out.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  THEY FOUND GOODMAN where he had fallen, on his back, hard up against the front wheel of his car. His eyes were full of rainwater. New drops splashed into the tiny pools and overflowed down his cheeks like tears. His mouth was open and water was pooling in his throat. His clothes were soaked. He looked like a drowned man. His skin was already ice cold. He had no pulse. He looked slack and collapsed and empty, like only dead people can. All the invisible thousand muscular tensions of the living were gone.

  He’s an old man and he’s been awake for a long time.

  Not any more, Reacher thought.

  ‘How old was he?’ he asked.

  ‘Late sixties,’ Sorenson said. ‘Maybe early seventies. Too young to die, anyway. He was a nice man. A good man, like his name. Was it a heart attack?’

  ‘Probably,’ Reacher said. ‘Stress, exhaustion, and worry. That kind of thing. Not good for a person. Cops should get paid more.’

  ‘No argument from me on that point.’

  ‘Did he tell us what we need to know?’

  ‘I don’t think he knew what we need to know.’

  ‘I guess we should call it in.’

  So they got back in Sorenson’s car, and she dialled the department’s switchboard number on her cell. The woman behind the counter answered, and Sorenson broke the news. The woman cried. Sorenson clicked off and they waited, wet, cold, and tired, staring ahead through the windshield, not seeing much, and not saying anything.

  Next on scene was a very large thirty-five-year-old man in a deputy’s car. He was fair-haired and bulky and red-faced, and he was wearing a padded nylon jacket open over a uniform. The jacket had a sergeant’s stripes on the sleeves. The guy came to Sorenson’s window and bent down. The jacket fell open and Reacher saw a black plate with the name Puller over one shirt pocket and a sheriff’s department star over the other. The star had the words Chief Deputy on it. The guy knocked on the window with fat red knuckles. Sorenson didn’t lower her glass. She just pointed. The guy walked towards his chief’s car with short nervous steps, like he was approaching a fortified position. Like he was expecting an armed enemy to open fire. He made it around to the passenger side and stopped. He looked down. Then he staggered away to the shoulder and bent double and threw up in the mud.

  Reacher noticed the rain had stopped.

  A long moment later the guy named Puller straightened up a little and stared out over the open land. He was green in the face. Not sentimental about the old man, but upset by the sight of a corpse. Reacher got out of the car. The road was still streaming, but the air felt suddenly fresh and dry. Sorenson got out on her side. The guy named Puller started back towards them and they all met as a threesome in the space between the cars.

  Sorenson asked, ‘Are you the department’s second in command?’

  Puller said, ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Then you guess wrong. As of now you’re the chief. Acting chief, anyway. And you’ve got things to do. You need to bring us up to speed, for instance.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘There’s a missing kid here.’

  ‘I didn’t really keep up with that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I do traffic mostly. To and from the Interstate. Up beyond Sin City. You know, with the radar gun.’

  ‘Were you briefed on what happened here last night?’

  ‘We all were.’

  ‘But you didn’t keep up with it?’

  ‘I do traffic mostly.’

  ‘Didn’t Sheriff Goodman take you off your normal duties?’

  ‘He took us all off.’

  ‘So why didn’t you pay attention?’

  ‘He didn’t really tell me what to do.’

  Reacher asked, ‘Were you dropped on the head as a baby?’

  The guy named Puller didn’t answer.

  Sorenson said, ‘Call your dispatcher and arrange for an ambulance to take the body away.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Then call Sheriff Goodman’s family.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Then call the funeral home.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘From a telephone. Any telephone. Just make sure it’s nowhere near me.’

  The guy named Puller walked back to his cruiser and Reacher and Sorenson walked up Delfuenso’s neighbour’s driveway.

  Delfuenso’s neighbour was a woman not much more than thirty. Her daughter was a ten-year-old version of the same person, still straight and slender and unlined. Her name was Paula. She was camped out in the back room. No view of the road. No view of anything, except mud. She had an electronic box hooked up to the TV. All kinds of things were happening on the screen. Explosions, mostly. Tiny cartoon figures were getting vaporized in sudden puffs of smoke smaller than golf balls.

  The neighbour said, ‘I had to go to work. I’m sorry.’

  Sorenson said, ‘I understand,’ like she meant it. Reacher understood too. He read the papers. He heard people talking. He knew jobs were easy to lose, and hard to get back.

  The neighbour said, ‘I told them not to answer the door.’

  Sorenson looked at the kid and asked, ‘Paula, why did you?’

  The kid said, ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Why did Lucy?’

  ‘Because the man called her name.’

  ‘He called Lucy’s name?’

  ‘Yes. He said, Lucy, Lucy.’

  ‘What else did he say?’

  ‘I didn’t hear.’

  ‘Are you sure? You must have heard something.’

  The kid didn’t answer.

  Sorenson waited.

  The kid asked, ‘Am I in trouble?’

  Sorenson hesitated.

  Reacher said, ‘Yes, kid, you are. Quite a lot of trouble, to be honest. But you can get out of all of it if you tell us everything you heard and everything you saw this morning. You do that, and you’ll be completely free and clear.’

  A plea bargain. An incentive. A stick and a carrot. A time-honoured system. Reacher had gone that route many times, back in the day. A ten-year stretch reduced to a three-to-five, probation instead of jail time, charges dropped in exchange for information. The system worked with twenty-year-olds and thirty-year-olds. It worked just fine. Reacher saw no reason why it wouldn’t work just as well with a ten-year-old.

  The kid said nothing.

  Reacher said, ‘And I’ll give you a dollar for candy, and my friend will give you a kiss on the head.’

  Bribery worked, too.

  The kid said, ‘The man said he knew where Lucy’s mom was.’

  ‘Did he?’

  The kid nodded, earnestly. ‘He said he would take Lucy to her mom.’

  ‘What did the man look like?’

  The kid was squeezing her fingers, like she could wring the answer out of her hands.

  She said, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But you peeked a little bit, right?’

  The kid nodded again.

  Reacher asked, ‘How many men did you see at the door?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘What did they look like?’

  ‘Like you see on the TV.’

  ‘Did you see their car?’

  ‘It was big and low.’

  ‘A regular car? Not a pick-up truck or a four wheel drive?’

  ‘Regular.’

  ‘Was it muddy?’

  ‘No, it was shiny.’

  ‘What colour was it?’

  The kid was wringing her hands again.

  She said, ‘I don’t know.’

  Sorenson’s phone rang. She checked the window and mouthed, ‘Omaha.’

&nb
sp; Reacher shook his head. Sorenson nodded, but she didn’t look happy. She let it ring. Eventually it stopped and Reacher looked back at the kid and said, ‘Thanks, Paula. You did great. You’re not in trouble any more. You’re totally free and clear.’ He dug in his pocket and peeled a buck off his roll of bills. He handed it over. Sorenson’s phone trilled once. Voice mail. Reacher said, ‘Now the pretty lady will give you a kiss on the forehead.’

  The kid giggled. Sorenson looked a little shy about it, but she went ahead and bent down and did the deed. The kid went back to her on-screen explosions. Reacher looked at her mom and said, ‘We need to borrow the key to Karen’s house.’

  The woman got it from a drawer in the hallway. It was a regular house key, on a fob with a crystal pendant. Just like the car key. Reacher wondered what kind of temperature would melt crystal glass. A lower temperature than regular glass, probably. Because of whatever they put in it to make it sparkle. So the car key fob was gone for ever. It was a smear of trace elements on the Impala’s burned-out floor, or a tiny cloud of vapour already halfway to Oregon on the wind.

  He took the key and said, ‘Thanks,’ and then he and Sorenson stepped out the door. Goodman’s car was still there, but the ambulance had been and gone with the body. Puller’s car was gone. And the clouds had gone too. The sky had brightened up. A watery winter sun was visible, high overhead.

  Sorenson paused on the driveway and checked her voice mail list. Reacher said, ‘No need to listen to it. You already know what it says.’

  ‘I’m going to have to call in,’ she said. ‘The situation has changed. There’s still a missing kid here and now there’s no local law enforcement. Nothing competent, anyway. Not any more.’

  ‘Call later,’ Reacher said. ‘Not yet.’ He looped around the wet grass and started up Delfuenso’s driveway, with the door key in his hand.

  Sorenson asked, ‘What do you expect to find in there?’

  ‘Beds,’ Reacher said. ‘Or sofas, at least. We need to take naps. Right now we’re no good to anyone. And we don’t want to end up like Goodman.’

  FORTY-NINE

  DELFUENSO’S HOUSE WAS identical to her neighbour’s in practically every respect. Same exact layout, same kitchen, same windows and floors and doors. Same handles, same knobs, same bathrooms. A cookie-cutter development. There were three small bedrooms. One was clearly Delfuenso’s, and one was clearly her daughter’s, and one was clearly a guest room.

  ‘Your pick,’ Reacher said. ‘The guest bed, or the living room sofa.’

  ‘This is crazy,’ Sorenson said. ‘I just ignored two calls from my field office. Probably from my boss personally. So I’m effectively a fugitive now. And you think I should sleep?’

  ‘It’s an efficiency issue. Like you said, there’s a missing kid. Your people aren’t going to do anything about her. The locals are useless now. Therefore we’ll have to deal with it. Which we can’t do if we’re dead on our feet from fatigue.’

  ‘They’ll come after me. I’ll be a sitting duck, asleep in bed.’

  ‘They’re two hours away. A two-hour nap is better than nothing.’

  ‘We can’t deal with it anyway. We have no idea what’s going on. We have no resources.’

  ‘I know,’ Reacher said. ‘I heard you the first time. No contacts, no support, no help, no back-up, no budget, no facilities, no lab, no computers. No nothing. But what else do you want to do? The guys who have all that stuff are ignoring this whole thing. So we’ll have to manage without.’

  ‘How? Where do we start?’

  ‘With Karen Delfuenso’s autopsy. The initial results. We’ll know more when we get those.’

  ‘How will those help?’

  ‘Wait and see. You could hustle them along, if you like.’

  ‘I don’t need to. I know those guys. They’ll be working as fast as they can.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Des Moines, probably. The nearest decent morgue. They’ll have walked in and commandeered it. That’s how we work.’

  ‘When will we hear from them?’

  ‘You know something, don’t you?’

  ‘Get some sleep,’ Reacher said. ‘Answer your phone if it’s your tech guys, and don’t if it isn’t.’

  Reacher used the living room sofa. It was a compact three-seater with low arms, and it was upholstered in flowery yellow fabric. It was worse than a bed and better than the floor. He stretched out on his back and got his head comfortable and pulled his knees up to fit. He set the clock in his head for two hours, and he breathed in once, and he breathed out once, and then he fell asleep, almost instantly.

  And then he was woken again almost instantly, by the phone. Not Sorenson’s phone, but the house phone in the kitchen. Delfuenso’s landline. It had a traditional metal bell, and it pealed slow and relaxed, six times, patient and unknowing, and then it went to the answering machine. Reacher heard Delfuenso’s voice on the greeting, bright and alive, happy and energetic: ‘Hi, this is Karen and Lucy. We can’t come to the phone right now, but please leave us a message after the tone.’

  Then came the tone, and then came another woman’s voice. She said something about making a play date with Lucy, and then the call ended, and Reacher went back to sleep.

  He woke up for the second time right on his two-hour deadline. His knees were numb and his back felt like it had been hit with hammers. He sat up and swivelled and put his feet on the floor. There was no sound in the house. Just still air. Far from anywhere, in the middle of winter.

  He stood up and stretched and put his palms flat on the ceiling. Then he found the bathroom and rinsed his face and brushed his teeth with dinosaur toothpaste he guessed was Lucy’s. Then he checked the guest room.

  Sorenson was fast asleep on the bed. Her face was turned towards him and a lock of hair was across one eye, just like it had been behind her gun. One arm was up above her head and the other was folded defensively across her body. Half secure, and half insecure. An active subconscious. A conflicted state of mind. He was wondering how best to wake her when her phone rang and did it for him. The plain electronic sound, thin and accusing. One ring. Two. She stirred and her eyes opened wide and she sat bolt upright. She fumbled for the phone with sleep-numbed hands and checked the window.

  ‘Omaha,’ she said.

  Three rings.

  She said, ‘I can’t ignore it any more.’

  Four rings.

  She said, ‘I’m kissing my career goodbye.’

  Five rings.

  Reacher stepped over to the bed and took the phone from her. He pressed the green button. He raised the phone to his ear. He said, ‘Who is this?’

  A man’s voice in his ear said, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I asked first.’

  ‘Where did you get this phone?’

  ‘Take a wild-ass guess.’

  ‘Where is Special Agent Sorenson?’

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  There was a long pause. Maybe the guy was hooking up a recording device or setting up some kind of a GPS locator. Or maybe he was just thinking. He said, ‘My name is Perry. I’m the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s special agent in charge at the field office in Omaha, Nebraska. In other words I’m a very senior federal law enforcement officer and I’m also Agent Sorenson’s boss. Who are you?’

  Reacher said, ‘I’m the guy who was driving the car in Iowa. And right now Agent Sorenson is my prisoner. She’s a hostage, Mr Perry.’

  FIFTY

  SORENSON WAS GOING a mute kind of crazy on the bed. The guy in Reacher’s ear was breathing hard. Reacher said, ‘I have very modest demands, Mr Perry. If you want to get Agent Sorenson back safe and sound, all you have to do is precisely nothing. Don’t call me, don’t try to track me, don’t try to find me, don’t hassle me, don’t interfere with me in any way at all.’

  The guy said, ‘Tell me what you want.’

  ‘I just did.’

  ‘I can help you. We can work together on this.’

  Reacher
asked, ‘Did you take the hostage negotiator’s course?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘It shows. You’re not listening. Just stay away from me.’

  ‘What are you planning to do?’

  ‘I’m planning to do your job.’

  ‘My job?’

  Reacher said, ‘You’ve got dead people here, and a missing kid. You should have told the CIA and the State Department to sit down and shut up, but you didn’t. You caved instead. So stay out of my way while I fix things for you.’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  Reacher didn’t answer that. He just clicked off the call and tossed the phone on the bed.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ Sorenson said.

  ‘Not really,’ Reacher said. ‘This way he’s blameless and you’re blameless but the job still gets done. Everyone wins.’

  ‘But he’s not going to do what you told him. I know this guy, Reacher. He’s not going to just sit there and take it. He’s not going to let you embarrass him in front of the CIA. He’s going to come after you. He’s going to start a full-on manhunt.’

  ‘Let the best man win,’ Reacher said. ‘I’ve been hunted before. Many times. And no one ever found me.’

  ‘You don’t get it. It’ll be easy. He can track my phone.’

  ‘We’ll leave it right there on the bed. We’ll buy another one.’

  ‘He can track my car, for God’s sake.’

  ‘We’re not going to use your car.’

  ‘What, we’re going to walk?’

  ‘No, we’re going to use Sheriff Goodman’s car. It’s right here. And he doesn’t need it any more, does he?’