TWENTY-FIVE

THE DOCTOR WAS IMMEDIATELY DEAD SET AGAINST THE IDEA. IT was a house call he didn’t want to make. He looked away and paced the kitchen and traced his facial injuries with his fingertips and pursed his lips and ran his tongue over his teeth. Then eventually he said, ‘But Seth might be there.’

Reacher said, ‘I hope he is. We can check he’s healing right, too. And if he is, I can hit him again.’

‘He’ll have Cornhuskers with him.’

‘He won’t. They’re all out in the fields, looking for me. The few that remain, that is.’

‘I don’t know about this.’

‘You’re a doctor. You took an oath. You have obligations.’

‘It’s dangerous.’

‘Getting out of bed in the morning is dangerous.’

‘You’re a crazy man, you know that?’

‘I prefer to think of myself as conscientious.’

Reacher and the doctor climbed into the pick-up truck and headed back to the county two-lane and turned right. They came out on the road a couple of miles south of the motel and a couple of miles north of the three Duncan houses. Two minutes later the doctor stared at them as they passed by. Reacher took a look, too. Enemy territory. Three white houses, three parked vehicles, no obvious activity. By that point Reacher assumed the second Brett had delivered his messages. He assumed they had been heard and then immediately dismissed as bravado. Although the burned-out truck should have counted for something. The Duncans were losing, steadily and badly, and they had to know it.

Reacher made the left where he had the night before in the Subaru wagon, and then he threaded through the turns until Seth Duncan’s house appeared ahead on his right. It looked much the same lit by daylight as it had by electricity. The white mailbox with Duncan on it, the hibernating lawn, the antique horse buggy. The long straight driveway, the outbuilding, the three sets of doors. This time two of them were standing open. The back ends of two cars were visible in the gloom inside. One was a small red sports car, maybe a Mazda, very feminine, and the other was a big black Cadillac sedan, very masculine.

The doctor said, ‘That’s Seth’s car.’

Reacher smiled. ‘Which one?’

‘The Cadillac.’

‘Nice car,’ Reacher said. ‘Maybe I should go smash it up. I’ve got a wrench of my own now. Want me to do that?’

‘No,’ the doctor said. ‘For God’s sake.’

Reacher smiled again and parked where he had the night before and they climbed out together and stood for a moment in the chill. The cloud was still low and flat, and mist was peeling off the underside of it and drifting back down to earth, ready for afternoon, ready for evening. The mist made the air itself look visible, grey and pearlescent, shimmering like a fluid.

‘Show time,’ Reacher said, and headed for the door. The doctor trailed him by a yard or two. Reacher knocked and waited and a long minute later he heard feet on the boards inside. A light tread, slow and a little hesitant. Eleanor.

She opened up and stood there, with her left hand cupping the edge of the door and her right-hand fingers spidered against the opposite wall, as if she needed help with stability, or as if she thought her horizontal arm was protecting the inside of the house from the outside. She was wearing a black skirt and a black sweater. No necklace. Her lips had scabbed over, dark and thick, and her nose was swollen, the white skin tight over yellow contusions that were not quite hidden by her make-up.

‘You,’ she said.

‘I brought the doctor,’ Reacher said. ‘To check on how you’re doing.’

Eleanor Duncan glanced at the doctor’s face and said, ‘He looks as bad as I do. Was that Seth? Or one of the Cornhuskers? Either way, I apologize.’

‘None of the above,’ Reacher said. ‘It seems we have a couple of tough guys in town.’

Eleanor Duncan didn’t answer that. She just took her right hand off the wall and trailed it through a courtly gesture and invited them in. Reacher asked, ‘Is Seth home?’

‘No, thank goodness,’ Eleanor said.

‘His car is here,’ the doctor said.

‘His father picked him up.’

Reacher asked, ‘How long will he be gone?’

‘I don’t know,’ Eleanor said. ‘But it seems they have much to discuss.’ She led the way to the kitchen, where she had been treated the night before, and maybe on many previous occasions. She sat down in a chair and tilted her face to the light. The doctor stepped up and took a look. He touched the wounds very lightly and asked questions about pain and headaches and teeth. She gave the kinds of answers Reacher had heard from many people in her situation. She was brave and somewhat self-deprecating. She said yes, her nose and mouth still hurt a little, and yes, she had a slight headache, and no, her teeth didn’t feel entirely OK. But her diction was reasonably clear and she had no loss of memory and her pupils were reacting properly to light, so the doctor was satisfied. He said she would be OK.

‘And how is Seth?’ Reacher asked.

‘Very angry at you,’ Eleanor said.

‘What goes around comes around.’

‘You’re much bigger than him.’

‘He’s much bigger than you.’

She didn’t answer. She just looked at Reacher for another long second, and then she looked away, seemingly very unsure of herself, an expression of complete uncertainty on her face, its extent limited only by the immobility caused by the stiff scabs on her lips and the frozen ache in her nose. She was hurting bad, Reacher thought. She had taken two blows, he figured, probably the first to her nose and the second aimed lower, at her mouth. The first had been hard enough to do damage without breaking the bone, and the second had been hard enough to draw blood without smashing her teeth.

Two blows, carefully aimed, carefully calculated, carefully delivered.

Expert blows.

Reacher said, ‘It wasn’t Seth, was it?’

She said, ‘No, it wasn’t.’

‘So who was it?’

‘I’ll quote your earlier conclusion. It seems we have a couple of tough guys in town.’

‘They were here?’

‘Twice.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Who are they?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘They’ve been saying they represent the Duncans.’

‘Well, they don’t. The Duncans don’t need to hire people to beat me. They’re perfectly capable of doing that themselves.’

‘How many times has Seth hit you?’

‘A thousand, maybe.’

‘That’s good. Not from your point of view, of course.’

‘But good from the point of view of your own clear conscience?’

‘Something like that.’

She said, ‘Have at Seth all you like. All day, every day. Beat him to a pulp. Break every bone in his body. Be my guest. I mean it.’

‘Why do you stay?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Whole books have been written on that subject. I’ve read most of them. Ultimately, where else would I go?’

‘Anywhere else.’

‘It’s not that simple. It never is.’

‘Why not?’

‘Trust me, OK?’

‘So what happened?’

She said, ‘Four days ago two men showed up here. They had East Coast accents. They were kind of Italian. They were wearing expensive suits and cashmere overcoats. Seth took them into his den. I didn’t hear any of the discussion. But I knew we were in trouble. There was a real animal stink in the house. After twenty minutes they all trooped out. Seth was looking sheepish. One of the men said their instructions were to hurt Seth, but Seth had bargained it down to hurting me. At first I thought I was going to be raped in front of my husband. That was what the atmosphere was like. The animal stink. But, no. Seth held me in front of him and they took turns hitting me. Once each. Nose, and then mouth. Then yesterday evening they came back and did all the same things over again. Then Seth went out for a steak. That’s what happened.’

‘I’m very sorry,’ Reacher said.

‘So am I.’

‘Seth didn’t tell you who they were? Or what they wanted?’

‘No. Seth tells me nothing.’

‘Any ideas?’

‘They were investors,’ she said. ‘I mean, they were here on behalf of investors. That’s the only sense I can make out of it.’

‘Duncan Transportation has investors?’

‘I suppose so. I imagine it’s not a wonderfully profitable business. Gas is very expensive right now, isn’t it? Or diesel, or whatever it is they use. And it’s wintertime, which must hurt their cash flow. There’s nothing to haul. Although, really, what do I know? Except that they’re always complaining about something. And I see on the news that apparently ordinary banks are difficult right now, for small businesses. So maybe they had to find a loan through unconventional sources.’

‘Very unconventional,’ Reacher said. ‘But if this is all about some financial issue with Duncan Transportation, why are those guys looking for me?’

‘Are they looking for you?’

‘Yes,’ the doctor said. ‘They are. They were at my house this morning. They hit me four times and threatened to do much worse to my wife. And all they ever asked was where Reacher was. It was the same at the motel, apparently. Mr Vincent was visited. And Dorothy, the woman who works for him. His housekeeper.’

‘That’s awful,’ Eleanor said. ‘Is she OK?’

‘She survived.’

‘Is your wife OK?’

‘A little shaken.’

‘I can’t explain it,’ Eleanor said. ‘I know nothing about Seth’s business.’

Reacher asked, ‘Do you know anything about Seth himself?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like who he is, and where he came from.’

‘Do you guys want a drink?’

‘No, thank you,’ Reacher said. ‘Tell me where Seth came from.’

‘That old question? He’s adopted, like a lot of people.’

‘Where from?’

‘He doesn’t know, and I don’t think his father knows for sure, either. It was some kind of charity network. There was a degree of anonymity involved.’

‘No stories at all?’

‘None.’

‘Doesn’t Seth remember anything? People say he was ready for kindergarten when he got here. He should have some memories of where he was before.’

‘He won’t talk about it.’

‘What about the missing girl?’

‘That other old question? Lord knows I’m not blind to Seth’s faults, or his family’s, but as I understand it they were cleared after an investigation by a federal agency. Isn’t that good enough for people?’

‘You weren’t here at the time?’

‘No, I grew up in Illinois. Just outside of Chicago. Seth was twenty-two when I met him. I was trying to be a journalist. The only job I could find was at a paper out of Lincoln. I was doing a story about corn prices, of course. That’s all that was in that paper, that and college sports. Seth was the new CEO of Duncan Transportation. I interviewed him for the story. Then we had a cocktail. At first, I was bowled over. Later, not so much.’

‘Are you going to be OK?’

‘Are you? With two tough guys looking for you?’

‘I’m leaving,’ Reacher said. ‘Heading south and then east, to Virginia. You want to ride along? You could hit the Interstate and never come back.’

Eleanor Duncan said, ‘No.’

‘You sure?’

‘I am.’

‘Then I can’t help you.’

‘You helped me already. More than I can say. You broke his nose. I was so happy.’

Reacher said, ‘You should come with me. You should get the hell out. It’s crazy to stay, talking like that. Feeling like that.’

‘I’ll outlast him,’ the woman said. ‘That’s my mission, I think, to outlast them all.’

Reacher said nothing more. He just looked around the kitchen, at the stuff she would inherit if she succeeded in outlasting them all. There was a lot of stuff, all of it expensive and high quality, a lot of it Italian, some of it German, some of it American. Including a Cadillac key in a glass bowl.

‘Is that Seth’s key?’ Reacher asked.

Eleanor said, ‘Yes, it is.’

‘Does he keep his car gassed up?’

‘Usually. Why?’

‘I’m going to steal it,’ Reacher said.