31

It took ten minutes of aimless driving south of the main drag before he found Nickel Street. The road signs were small and faded and the headlights on Vaughan’s old truck were weak and set low. He deciphered Iron and Chromium and Vanadium and Molybdenum and then lost metals altogether and ran through a sequence of numbered avenues before he hit Steel and Platinum and then Gold. Nickel was a dead end off Gold. It had sixteen houses, eight facing eight, fifteen of them small and one of them bigger.

Thurman’s pet judge Gardner lived in the big house on Nickel, the bartender had said. Reacher paused at the curb and checked the name on the big house’s mailbox and then pulled the truck into the driveway and shut it down. Climbed out and walked to the porch. The place was a medium-sized farmhouse-style structure and looked pretty good relative to its neighbors, but there was no doubt that Gardner would have done better for himself if he had gotten out of town and made it to the Supreme Court in D.C. Or to whatever Circuit included Colorado, or even to night traffic court in Denver. The porch sagged against rotted underpinnings and the paint on the clapboards had aged to dust. Millwork had dried and split. There were twin newel posts at the top of the porch steps. Both had decorative ball shapes carved into their tops and both balls had split along the grain, like they had been attacked with cleavers.

Reacher found a bell push and tapped it twice with his knuckle. An old habit, about not leaving fingerprints if not strictly necessary. Then he waited. In Reacher’s experience the average delay when knocking at a suburban door in the middle of the evening was about twenty seconds. Couples looked up from the television and looked at each other and asked,Who could that be? At this time of night? Then they mimed their way through offer and counteroffer and finally decided which one of them should make the trip down the hall. Before nine o’clock it was usually the wife. After nine, it was usually the husband.

It was Mrs. Gardner who opened up. The wife, after a twenty-three-second delay. She looked similar to her husband, bulky and somewhere over sixty, with a full head of white hair. Only the amount of the hair and the style of her clothing distinguished her gender. She had the kind of large firm curls that women get from big heated rollers and she was wearing a shapeless gray dress that reached her ankles. She stood there, patterned and indistinct behind a screen door. She said, “May I help you?”

Reacher said, “I need to see the judge.”

“It’s awful late,” Mrs. Gardner said, which it wasn’t. According to an old longcase clock in the hallway behind her it was eight twenty-nine, and according to the clock in Reacher’s head it was eight thirty-one, but what the woman meant was:You’re a big ugly customer. Reacher smiled.Look at yourself, Vaughan had said.What do you see? Reacher knew he was no kind of an ideal nighttime visitor. Nine times out of ten only Mormon missionaries were less welcome than him.

“It’s urgent,” he said.

The woman stood still and said nothing. In Reacher’s experience the husband would show up if the doorstep interview lasted any longer than thirty seconds. He would crane his neck out of the living room and call,Who is it, dear? And Reacher wanted the screen door open long before that happened. He wanted to be able to stop the front door from closing, if necessary.

“It’s urgent,” he said again, and pulled the screen door. It screeched on worn hinges. The woman stepped back, but didn’t try to slam the front door. Reacher stepped inside and let the screen slap shut behind him. The hallway smelled of still air and cooking. Reacher turned and closed the front door gently and clicked it against the latch. At that point the thirty seconds he had been counting in his head elapsed and the judge stepped out to the hallway.

The old guy was dressed in the same gray suit pants Reacher had seen before, but his suit coat was off and his tie was loose. He stood still for a moment, evidently searching his memory, because after ten long seconds puzzlement left his face and was replaced by an altogether different emotion, and he said, “You?”

Reacher nodded.

“Yes, me,” he said.

“What do you want? What do you mean by coming here?”

“I came here to talk to you.”

“I meant, what are you doing in Despair at all? You were excluded.”

“Didn’t take,” Reacher said. “So sue me.”

“I’m going to call the police.”

“Please do. But they won’t answer, as I’m sure you know. Neither will the deputies.”

“Where are the deputies?”

“On their way up to the first-aid station.”

“What happened to them?”

“I did.”

The judge said nothing.

Reacher said, “And Mr. Thurman is up in his little airplane right now. Out of touch for another five and a half hours. So you’re on your own. It’s initiative time for Judge Gardner.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to invite me into your living room. I want you to ask me to sit down and whether I take cream and sugar in my coffee, which I don’t, by the way. Because so far I’m here with your implied permission, and therefore I’m not trespassing. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“You’re not only trespassing, you’re in violation of a town ordinance.”

“That’s what I’d like to talk about. I’d like you to reconsider. Consider it an appeals process.”

“Are you nuts?”

“A little unconventional, maybe. But I’m not armed and I’m not making threats. I just want to talk.”

“Get lost.”

“On the other hand I am a large stranger with nothing to lose. In a town where there is no functioning law enforcement.”

“I have a gun.”

“I’m sure you do. In fact I’m sure you have several. But you won’t use any of them.”

“You think not?”

“You’re a man of the law. You know what kind of hassle comes afterward. I don’t think you want to face that kind of thing.”

“You’re taking a risk.”

“Getting out of bed in the morning is a risk.”

The judge said nothing to that. Didn’t yield, didn’t accede. Impasse. Reacher turned to the wife and took all the amiability out of his face and replaced it with the kind of thousand-yard stare he had used years ago on recalcitrant witnesses.

He asked, “What do you think, Mrs. Gardner?”

She started to speak a couple of times but couldn’t get any words past a dry throat. Finally she said, “I think we should all sit down and talk.” But the way she said it showed she wasn’t all the way scared. She was a tough old bird. Probably had to be, to have survived sixty-some years in Despair, and marriage to the boss man’s flunky.

Her husband huffed once and turned around and led the way into the living room. A sofa, an armchair, another armchair, with a lever on the side that meant it was a recliner. There was a coffee table and a large television set wired to a satellite box. The furniture was covered in a floral pattern that was duplicated in the drapes. The drapes were closed and had a ruffled pelmet made from the same fabric. Reacher suspected that Mrs. Gardner had sewed them herself.

The judge said, “Take a seat, I guess.”

Mrs. Gardner said, “I’m not going to make coffee. I think under the circumstances that would be a step too far.”

“Your choice,” Reacher said. “But I have to tell you I’d truly appreciate some.” He paused a moment and then sat down in the armchair. Gardner sat in the recliner. His wife stood for a moment longer and then sighed once and headed out of the room. A minute later Reacher heard water running and the quiet metallic sound of an aluminum percolator basket being rinsed.

Gardner said, “There is no appeal.”

“There has to be,” Reacher said. “It’s a constitutional issue. The Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments guarantee due process. At the very least there must be the possibility of judicial review.”

“Are you serious?”

“Completely.”

“You want to go to federal court over a local vagrancy ordinance?”

“I’d prefer you to concede that a mistake has been made, and then go ahead and tear up whatever paperwork was generated.”

“There was no mistake. You are a vagrant, as defined by law.”

“I’d like you to reconsider that.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“I’d like to understand why it’s so important to you to have free rein in our town.”

“And I’d like to understand why it’s so important to you to keep me out.”

“Where’s your loss? It’s not much of a place.”

“It’s a matter of principle.”

Gardner said nothing. A moment later his wife came in, with a single mug of coffee in her hand. She placed it carefully on the table in front of Reacher’s chair and then backed away and sat down on the sofa. Reacher picked up the mug and took a sip. The coffee was hot, strong, and smooth. The mug was cylindrical, narrow in relation to its height, made of delicate bone china, and it had a thin lip.

“Excellent,” Reacher said. “Thank you very much. I’m really very grateful.”

Mrs. Gardner paused a beat and said, “You’re really very welcome.”

Reacher said, “You did a great job with the drapes, too.”

Mrs. Gardner didn’t reply to that. The judge said, “There’s nothing I can do. There’s no provision for an appeal. Sue the town, if you must.”

Reacher said, “You told me you’d welcome me with open arms if I got a job.”

The judge nodded. “Because that would remove the presumption of vagrancy.”

“There you go.”

“Have you gotten a job?”

“I have prospects. That’s the other thing we need to talk about. It’s not healthy that this town has no functioning law enforcement. So I want you to swear me in as a deputy.”

There was silence for a moment. Reacher took the pewter star from his shirt pocket. He said, “I already have the badge. And I have a lot of relevant experience.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Just trying to fill a hole.”

“You’re completely insane.”

“I’m offering my services.”

“Finish your coffee and get out of my home.”

“The coffee is hot and it’s good. I can’t just gulp it down.”

“Then leave it. Get the hell out. Now.”

“So you won’t swear me in?”

The judge stood up and planted his feet wide and made himself as tall as he could get, which was about five feet nine inches. His eyes narrowed as his brain ran calculations about present dangers versus future contingencies. He was silent with preoccupation for a long moment and then he said, “I’d rather deputize the entire damn population. Every last man, woman, and child in Despair. In fact, I think I will. Twenty-six hundred people. You think you can get past them all? Because I don’t. We aim to keep you out, mister, and we’re going to. You better believe it. You can take that to the bank.”