23 Past Tense

by Lee Child

“Listen up,” he said. “That was a neighbor on the phone. Some old apple farmer twenty miles south of here. They had a guy there today, making trouble. They want us to keep an eye out for him. In case he happens to come by, looking for a room. They’ll send folks up to get him. Apparently they need to teach him a lesson.”

  “He won’t come by,” Peter said. “We took the signs down.”

  “The apple farmer said this was a big rough guy. Which is exactly what our friend at the county office said too. About a big rough guy named Reacher, who was researching his family history. Who looked at four separate censuses. At least two of which must have had a Ryantown address. Which is a place where theoretically I had distant relatives. And which is a place right there in the corner of the apple farm in question. This guy is mapping out Reacher real estate. He’s going from parcel to parcel. He must be some kind of mad hobbyist.”

  “You think he’ll come here?”

  “My grandfather’s name is still on the deed. But that was after Ryantown. It was after they got rich.”

  “We don’t need this now,” Robert said. “We have bigger fish to fry. The first arrival is less than twelve hours away.”

  “He won’t come here,” Mark said. “He must be a different branch of the family. I never heard about anyone like that. He’ll stick to his own lineage. Surely. Everyone does. No reason why he would come here.”

  “We just rolled their blind up.”

  “Leave it up,” Mark said. “He won’t come here.”

  “They could signal for help.”

  “Watch the track and listen for the bell.”

  “Why would we need to, if he won’t come here?”

  “Because someone else might. Anyone could. We need maximum vigilance now. Because this is where we earn it, guys. Attention to detail today pays dividends tomorrow.”

  Steven switched out the screens either side of center to two alternate views of the mouth of the track, where it came out of the trees, one close up, one wide angle.

  Nothing was moving.

  —

  Reacher did it Amos’s way. He went back to his room and holed up for the rest of the afternoon. No one saw him. Which was good. Except dinner was going to be a problem. The place he had picked to stay was just a bijou little inn. There was no room service. Probably no catering at all, except brought-in muffins for the breakfast buffet. Free, in the lobby. But not yet. Not for another twelve hours, at the earliest. Probably closer to fourteen. A person could starve to death.

  He looked out the window, which was a waste of time, because it showed him nothing but the back of the next street. But he knew the place with the all-day breakfast was only a block away. If he went there, who would see him? Maximum two or three passersby on a single downtown block, in a town like Laconia, at sundown. Plus the customers in the coffee shop. Plus the wait staff. Who had already seen him once, at lunch time. Not long before. Which was not good. Yes, they could say, he’s in here all the time. He’s practically a regular. Which would then focus any subsequent search on the immediate neighborhood. The bijou inn with the faded colors would be target number one. Front and center. The obvious location. Perhaps worthy of an immediate visit. Maybe first thing in the morning, before a civilized person was up and about.

  Not good.

  Better to go further afield. He turned away from the window and made a mental map in his head, of what he had seen so far. His first hotel, the city office, the county office, the police station, his second hotel, and all the establishments in between, where he had eaten and gotten coffee and window-shopped for shoes and bags and cookware. For dinner he wanted a place he hadn’t been before. He figured two sightings were ten times worse than one. Call it a rule. Always better to be a first-time stranger. He recalled a particular single-wide storefront bistro, with a half curtained window, and old-fashioned light bulbs inside, like glowing tangles of heated wire. Probably a small staff, and a small and discreet clientele. He had passed it by, but not gone in. Six blocks away, he thought. Or seven. Which was more than ideal, but he figured he could zigzag through the side streets, which would be quieter.

  Safe enough.

  He went downstairs and stepped out to the fading light and set out walking. His mental map worked well enough. One time he hesitated, but in the end he guessed right. The bistro came up dead ahead. Eight blocks out, not seven or six. Further than he thought. He had been exposed a long time. He had counted eighteen passersby. Not all of them had seen him. But some had. No one suspicious. All regular folk.

  On the sidewalk outside the bistro he stood up tall on tiptoes, so he could see inside over the half curtain. So he could make an assessment. He had no real taste in food. Anything would do. But he liked a corner table with his back to the wall, and a little hustle but not too much, and a few other customers but not too many. Whatever it took to be served fast and not remembered. The place looked like it would fit the bill. There was an empty two-top in the far rear corner. The waitresses looked brisk and on the ball. The room was about half full. Six people eating. All good. Ideal in every way. Except that two of the six people eating were Elizabeth Castle and Carter Carrington.

  A second date. Possibly delicate. He didn’t want to ruin their evening. They would feel obliged to ask him to join them at their table. Saying no wouldn’t help. Then he would be eating two tables away, and they would feel self conscious and scrutinized. The whole atmosphere would feel weird and strained and artificial.

  But he owed Amos. She was out on a limb. You don’t leave your room at any point. No one ever sees you . How much more walking around could he afford to do?

  In the end the decision made itself. For some reason Elizabeth Castle looked up. She saw him. Her mouth opened in a little O of surprise, which then changed instantly to a smile, which looked totally genuine, and then she waved, at first just an excited greeting, but then an eager come-in-and-join-us gesture.

  He went in. At that point it was the path of least resistance. He crossed the room. Carrington stood up to shake hands, courteous, a little old-fashioned. Elizabeth Castle leaned across and scraped out a third chair. Carrington held out his palm toward it, like a maître d’, and said, “Please.”

  Reacher sat down, his back to the door, facing a wall.

  The path of least resistance.

  He said, “I don’t want to wreck your evening.”

  Elizabeth Castle said, “Don’t be silly.”

  “Then congratulations,” he said. “To both of you.”

  “For what?”

  “Your second date.”

  “Fourth,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “Dinner last night, coffee break this morning, lunch break, dinner tonight. And it was your predicament that introduced us. So it’s lovely you were passing by. It’s like an omen.”

  “That sounds bad.”

  “Whatever the good version is.”

  “A good omen,” Carrington said.

  “I found Ryantown,” Reacher said. “It all matched up with the census. The occupation was listed as tin mill foreman, and the address was right across the street from a tin mill. Which was mothballed for a spell, which explains why later he was laboring for the county. I assume he went back to being foreman when the mill started up again. I didn’t look at the next census. My father had left home by then.”

  Carrington nodded, and said nothing, in a manner Reacher thought deliberate and reluctant, as if actually he had plenty to say, but he wasn’t going to, because of some fine point of manners or etiquette.

  Reacher said, “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “OK, something.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “We were just discussing it.”

  “On a date?”

  “We’re dating because of you. Obviously we’re going to discuss it. No doubt we’ll discuss your case forever. It will be of sentimental value.”

  “What were y
ou discussing?”

  “We don’t really know,” Carrington said. “We’re a little embarrassed. We can’t pin it down. We looked at the original documents. They’re both lovely censuses. You develop a feel. You can see patterns. You can recognize the good takers, and the lazy ones. You can spot mistakes. You can spot lies. Mostly about reading and writing for men, and age for women.”

  “You found a problem with the documents?”

  “No,” Carrington said. “They rang true. They were beautifully done. Among the best I ever saw. The 1940 in particular was a hall of fame census. We believed every word.”

  “Then it sounds pinned down pretty good to me.”

  “Like I said, you develop a feel. You’re in their world, right there with them. You become them, through the documents. Except you know what happens next, and they don’t. You stand a little apart. You know the end of the movie. So you’re thinking like them, but you’re also noticing which ones will be proved wise or foolish by future events.”

  “And?”

  “There’s something wrong with the story you told me.”

  “But not in the documents.”

  “Some other part.”

  “But you don’t know what.”

  “Can’t pin it down.”

  Then the waitress came by and took their orders, and the conversation moved on to other things. Reacher didn’t turn it back. He didn’t want to ruin their evening. He let them talk about whatever they felt like, and he joined in wherever he could.

  —

  He ate a main course only, and got up to go. He wanted them to have dessert on their own. It seemed the least he could do. They didn’t object. He made them take a twenty. They said it was too much. He said tell the waitress to keep the change.

  He stepped out the door, and turned right, back the way he had come. The dark was noticeably darker. The streets were noticeably quieter. Traffic was light. No one was walking. The stores were all closed. A car came by from behind, and it drove on ahead, maybe a little slower than it wanted to, like nighttime cars in towns everywhere. Nothing to worry about, the back part of his brain told him, after computing a thousand points of instinctive data about speed and direction and intent and consistency, and coming up with a result right in the center of normal.

  Then it saw something that wasn’t.

  Headlights, coming toward him. A hundred yards away. Big and blinding and spaced high and wide. A large vehicle. Dead level, as if it was driving in the middle of the road. As if it was straddling the line. And it was driving slow. Which is what rang the bell. Neither one speed or another. Wrong for the context. Like a cautious rush hour creep, but one click slower, as if the driver was also preoccupied with something else. A modern person might have guessed his phone, but Reacher thought the guy was searching for something. Visually. Hence the central position. Hence the bright lights. He was sweeping both sidewalks at once.

  Searching for what?

  Or searching for who?

  It was a large vehicle. Maybe a cop car. Cops were allowed to drive slow in the middle of the road. They were allowed to search for whatever or whoever they wanted.

  He was pinned by the lights. They washed over him, hard and blue and bright, and then they slid past him, and suddenly he was in a half gray world, half lit by the bright lights’ reflection off the night mist ahead. He turned and saw a pick-up truck, high and shiny and handsome, immensely long, with two rows of seats and a long, long bed, and big chrome wheels turning slow, just rolling along, relaxed as can be.

  It was on the inside where the action was happening.

  It looked like an explosion of incredulous joy, like a crazy bet was paying out. The impossible had happened. Five faces were swiveling toward him. Five pairs of eyes were locked on his. Five mouths were open. One of them was moving.

  It was saying, “That’s him.”

  The guy with the moving mouth was the daddy from the apple farm.

  Chapter 21

  The guy from the apple farm was in the second row, behind the driver. Not a natural squad leader position. Not a throne of authority, like the front passenger seat. Maybe the guy saw himself more as an active-duty soldier. Just one of the boys. Which was encouraging. It might indicate a low bar. At least a lowered average. Like looking at the opposition batting order. It was nice to know there was a guy you could get out.

  The other four were a generation younger. Not so different from the kid in the orchard. Same kind of build, same kind of muscle, same kind of tan. The same human species. But poorer. Different kind of grandfather. No one said life was fair. But they looked happy to help. Picking time was coming up. Maybe baby needed shoes.

  The truck squelched to a stop, and all four doors opened, in a ragged sequence. Five men jumped down. Boots clattered on the blacktop. Two guys came around the hood and formed up shoulder to shoulder with the other three, with the older guy right in the middle, all of them gray and ghostly in the reflected half light. They looked like a faded billboard for an old-time black and white movie. Some sentimental story. Maybe their mother died young and the old guy raised them all solo. Now they’re grateful. Or now for the first time ever a fractured family is seeing eye to eye, because of a terrible external threat. Some kind of dramatic hokum. They were acting it out.

  Reacher was thinking about Brenda Amos.

  We don’t want trouble here .

  But she was talking about collateral damage. Which in this case was likely to be very minor. Even non-existent. The street was empty. There were no guns. There was no action at all. Not yet. Just a staring competition. And posing. Which Reacher guessed he was, too. He was acting relaxed and unconcerned, standing easy, almost smiling, but not quite, as if he had just found out an irksome task might need attention, before an otherwise excellent day came finally to a close. Opposite him the other five were still giving it the full-on shoulder to shoulder thing, with high crossed arms and hard tilted-up stares, and slowly it dawned on Reacher that their display was not after all intended to be seen as a narrative tableau, with a poignant implied backstory explaining their sudden new solidarity. It was intended to be seen as a much less subtle message. It was a raw statement of numbers. Nothing more. It was five against one.

  The guy from the apple farm said, “You need to come with us.”

  Reacher said, “Do I?”

  “Best to come quietly.”

  Reacher said nothing.

  The guy said, “Well?”

  “I’m trying to figure out where that would fall, on a scale of likelihood. Where ten means it’s extremely likely to happen, and one means it ain’t going to happen in a million years. I have to tell you, right now the numbers popping up in my mind are all fairly small.”

  “Your choice,” the guy said. “You could save yourself a couple of bruises. But you’re coming with us one way or the other. You put your hands on my son.”

  “Only one hand,” Reacher said. “And only briefly. Not much more than a tap. The kid’s got a glass jaw. You should look after him better. You should explain to him why he can’t play with the grown ups. It’s cruel not to. You’re doing him a disservice.”

  The guy didn’t answer.

  Reacher said, “Are these new boys any better? I sure hope so. Or you need to explain to them, too. This is the big leagues now.”

  A ripple ran down the line, like a little spasm. Sharply drawn breaths rustled arms against chests, and jabbed glares jerked heads above shoulders.

  We don’t want trouble here .

  Reacher said, “We don’t have to do this.”

  The guy from the farm said, “Yes, we do.”

  “This is a nice town. We shouldn’t make a mess.”

  “Then come with us.”

  “Where to?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “We already discussed that part. Right now the likelihood is still close to zero. But hey, I’m open to offers. You could sweeten the deal.”

  “What?”

  “You
could pay me. Or offer me something.”

  “We’re offering you the chance to save yourself a couple of extra bruises.”

  Reacher nodded.

  “You mentioned that before,” he said. “It raised a number of questions.”

  He looked left and right and back again, at the four younger guys.

  He asked, “Where were you born?”

  None of them answered.

  “You should tell me,” he said. “It’s important to your futures.”

  “Around here,” one of them said.

  “And then you grew up around here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not Southie or the Bronx or South-Central LA?”

  “No.”

  “Not in a shantytown outside of Rio de Janeiro? Or in Baltimore or Detroit?”

  “No.”

  “Any law enforcement experience?”

  “No.”

  “Have you done time in prison?”

  “No.”

  “Any military service?”

  “No.”

  “Any secret clandestine training by Mossad? Or the SAS in Britain? Or the French Foreign Legion?”

  “No.”

  “You understand this is going to be different than picking apples, right?”

  The boy didn’t answer.

  Reacher turned back to the guy from the apple farm.

  “See the problem?” he said. “This whole thing with the bruises just doesn’t work. It has no internal logic. It’s an optical illusion. You’re offering the absence of something you can’t deliver anyway. Not with this crew. You need to do better than that. Use your imagination. An inducement is required. Maybe a large cash payment would be tempting. Or the keys to the truck. Or maybe one of these boys could introduce me to his sister. Just one night. He could tear himself away.”

  Obviously Reacher knew they would all react, which was exactly what he wanted, but he didn’t know which one of them would react first and fastest, so he stayed loose, already winding up his countermeasures, but keeping his aim flexible, as long as he could, hoping he would know before the point of no return, when finally he had to commit to a direction. And he did, because the kid to the left of center started forward a foot ahead of the others, enraged by the abuse and derision, so Reacher lined him up and threw his punch. Legend had it the fastest hands in boxing could move at thirty miles an hour, much faster than Reacher, who was happy with twenty, but even at that slower speed his fist crossed the yard of air in front of him in a tenth of a second. Virtually instantaneous. It hit the kid in the face, and then Reacher snapped it back just as fast, like a crisp parade ground move, and he stood upright and easy, like nothing had happened, like you had blinked and missed it.