THIRTY-NINE

REACHER POURED HIMSELF A CUP OF COFFEE AND THOUGHT FOR a long moment and said, ‘I left Seth Duncan’s Cadillac at the Marriott.’

The doctor’s wife asked, ‘So how did you get back here?’

‘I took a Chevy Malibu from one of the bad guys.’

‘That thing on the driveway?’

‘No, that’s a GMC Yukon I took from a football player.’

‘So what happened with the Cadillac?’

‘I left a guy stranded. I stole his car, and then I guess he stole mine. Probably not deliberate tit for tat. Probably just coincidental, because there wasn’t really an infinite choice down there. He didn’t want some piece-of-shit pick-up truck, obviously, and he didn’t want anything with big-time security built in. The Cadillac fit the bill. Probably the only thing that did. Or else he was just plain lazy, and didn’t want to look around too long. The Cadillac was right there. We were all in the same hotel.’

‘Did you see the guys?’

‘I didn’t see the Italians. But I saw the other four.’

‘That makes six, not five. Where’s the other one?’

‘I promise you something,’ Reacher said. ‘The guy who took the Cadillac put his bag on the back seat, not in the trunk.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because that’s where the sixth guy is. In the trunk. I put him there.’

‘Does he have air?’

‘He doesn’t need air. Not any more.’

‘Sweet Jesus. What happened?’

Reacher said, ‘I think whatever else they’re doing, they’re coming here to get me first. Like a side issue of some kind. Like mission creep. I don’t know why, but that’s the only way I can explain it. The way I see it, they all assembled tonight in the Marriott and the Italians announced the mission and gave the others a description, probably vague and definitely secondhand, because they haven’t actually laid eyes on me yet, and then I bumped into one of the others after that, in the lobby, and he was looking at me, like he was asking himself, is that the guy? Can it be? Can it? I could see him thinking. We got out to the lot and he put his hand in his pocket and I hit him. You ever heard of commotio cordis?’

‘Chest wall trauma,’ the doctor said. ‘Causes fatal cardiac dysrhythmia.’

‘Ever seen it?’

‘No.’

‘Neither had I. But I’m here to tell you, it works real good.’

‘What was in his pocket?’

‘A knife and a gun and an ID from Vegas.’

‘Vegas?’ the doctor said. ‘Do the Duncans have gambling debts? Is that the dispute?’

‘Possible,’ Reacher said. ‘No question the Duncans have been living beyond their means for a long time. They’ve been getting some extra income from somewhere.’

‘Why say that? They’ve been extorting forty farms for thirty years. And a motel. That’s a lot of money.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Reacher said. ‘Not really. This isn’t the wealthiest area in the world. They could be taking half of what everyone earns, and that wouldn’t buy them a pot to piss in. But Seth lives like a king and they pay ten football players just to be here. They couldn’t do all that on the back of a seasonal enterprise.’

The doctor’s wife said, ‘We should worry about that later. Right now the Cornhuskers are on the loose, and we don’t know where or why. That’s what’s important tonight. Dorothy Coe might be coming over.’

‘Here?’ Reacher asked. ‘Now?’

The doctor said, ‘That’s what happens sometimes. With the women, mostly. It’s a support thing. Like a sisterhood. Whoever feels the most vulnerable clusters together.’

His wife said, ‘Which is always Dorothy and me, and sometimes others too, depending on exactly what the panic is.’

‘Not a good idea,’ Reacher said. ‘From a tactical point of view, I mean. It gives them one target instead of multiple targets.’

‘It’s strength in numbers. It works. Sometimes those boys can act a little inhibited. They don’t necessarily like witnesses around, when they’re sent after women.’

They took cups of coffee and waited in the dining room, which had a view of the road. The road was dark. There was nothing moving on it. It was indistinguishable from the rest of the nighttime terrain. They sat quiet for a spell, on hard upright chairs, with the lights off to preserve their view out the window, and then the doctor said, ‘Tell us about the files.’

‘I saw a photograph,’ Reacher said. ‘Dorothy’s kid was Asian.’

‘Vietnamese,’ the doctor’s wife said. ‘Artie Coe did a tour over there. Something about it affected him, I guess. When the boat people thing started, they stepped up and adopted.’

‘Did many people from here go to Vietnam?’

‘A fair number.’

‘Did the Duncans go?’

‘I don’t think so. They were in an essential occupation.’

‘So was Arthur Coe.’

‘Different strokes for different folks.’

‘Who was chairman of the local draft board?’

‘Their father. Old man Duncan.’

‘So the boys didn’t keep on farming to please him. They kept on to keep their asses out of the war.’

‘I suppose.’

‘Good to know,’ Reacher said. ‘They’re cowards, too, apart from anything else.’

The doctor said, ‘Tell us about the investigation.’

‘Long story,’ Reacher said. ‘There were eleven boxes of paper.’

‘And?’

‘The investigation had problems,’ Reacher said.

‘Like what?’

‘One was a conceptual problem, and the others were details. The lead detective was a guy called Carson, and the ground kind of shifted under his feet over a twelve-hour period. It started out as a straightforward missing persons issue, and then it slowly changed to a potential homicide. And Carson didn’t really revisit the early phase in the light of the later phase. The first night, he had people checking their own outbuildings. Which was reasonable, frankly, with a missing kid. But later he never really searched those outbuildings independently. Only one of them, basically, for an old couple who hadn’t done it themselves. Everyone else self-certified, really. In effect they said no sir, the kid ain’t here, and she never was, I promise. At some point Carson should have started over and treated everyone as a potential suspect. But he didn’t. He focused on the Duncans only, based on information received. And the Duncans came out clean.’

‘You think it was someone else?’

‘Could have been anyone else in the world, just passing through. If not, it could have been any of the local residents. Probably not Dorothy or Arthur Coe themselves, but that still leaves thirty-nine possibilities.’

The doctor’s wife said, ‘I think it was the Duncans.’

‘Three different agencies disagree with you.’

‘They might be wrong.’

Reacher nodded in the dark, his gesture unobserved.

‘They might be,’ he said. ‘There might have been another conceptual error. A failure of imagination, anyway. It’s clear that the Duncans never left their compound, and it’s clear that the kid never showed up there. There are reliable witnesses to both of those facts. Four boys were building a fence. And the science came up negative, too. But the Duncans could have had an accomplice. A fifth man, essentially. He could have scooped up the kid and taken her somewhere else. Carson never even thought about that. He never checked known associates. And he should have, probably. You wait five years to build a fence, and you happen to be doing it on the exact same day a kid disappears? Could have been a prefabricated alibi. Carson should have wondered, at least. I would have, for sure.’

‘Who would the fifth man have been?’

‘Anyone,’ Reacher said. ‘A friend, maybe. One of their drivers, perhaps. It’s clear a vehicle was involved, otherwise why was the bike never found?’

‘I always wondered about the bike.’

‘Did they have a friend? Did you ever see one, when you were babysitting?’

‘I saw a few people, I guess.’

‘Anyone close? This would have been a very intimate type of relationship. Shared enthusiasms, shared passions, absolute trust. Someone into the same kind of thing they were into.’

‘A man?’

‘Almost certainly. The same kind of creep.’

‘I’m not sure. I can’t remember. Where would he have taken her?’

‘Anywhere, theoretically. And that was another major mistake. Carson never really looked anywhere else, apart from the Duncans’ compound. It was crazy not to search the transportation depot, for instance. As a matter of fact I don’t think that was a real problem, because it seems like that place is real busy in the early part of the summer, seven days a week. Something to do with alfalfa, whatever that is. No one would take an abducted kid to a work site full of witnesses. But there was one other place Carson should have checked for sure. And he didn’t. He ignored it completely. Possibly because of ignorance or confusion.’

‘Which was where?’

But Reacher didn’t get time to answer, because right then the window blazed bright and the room filled with moving lights and shadows. They played over the walls, the ceiling, their faces, alternately stark white and deep black.

Headlight beams, strobing through the posts of the fence.

A car, coming in fast from the east.