THIRTY-THREE

THE DUNCANS HAD MOVED FROM JONAS DUNCAN’S KITCHEN TO Jasper’s, because Jasper still had a mostly full bottle of Knob Creek in his cupboard. All four men were around the table, elbow to elbow, amber half-inches of bourbon in thick chipped glasses set out in front of them. They were sipping slow and talking low. Their latest shipment was somewhere between twelve and twenty-four hours away. Usually a time for celebration. Like the night before Christmas. But this time they were a little subdued.

Jonas asked, ‘Where do you suppose it is right now?’

‘Parked up for the night,’ Jacob said. ‘At least I hope so. Close to the border, but waiting for daylight. Prudence is the key now.’

‘Five hundred miles,’ Jonas said. ‘Crossing time plus ten hours, maybe. Plus contingencies.’

Jasper asked, ‘How long do you suppose it takes to read a police file?’

‘Good question,’ Jacob said. ‘I’ve been giving it a little thought, naturally. It must be a very big file. And it must be stored away somewhere. Let’s say government workers start at nine in the morning. Let’s say they quit at five. Let’s say there’s some measure of bureaucracy involved in gaining access to the file. So let’s say noon tomorrow would be a practical starting point. That would give him five hours tomorrow, and maybe the full eight on the day after. That might be enough.’

‘So he won’t come back for forty-eight hours at least.’

‘I’m only guessing. I can’t be sure.’

‘Even so. We’ll have plenty of margin.’

Seth Duncan said, ‘He won’t come back at all. Why would he? A hundred people read that file and said there was nothing wrong with it. And this guy isn’t a hundred times smarter than anyone else. He can’t be.’

Nobody spoke.

Seth said, ‘What?’

His father said, ‘He doesn’t have to be smarter than anyone else, son. Certainly not a hundred times smarter. He just has to be smart in a different way. Lateral, is what they call it.’

‘But there’s no evidence. We all know that.’

‘I agree,’ Jacob said. ‘But that’s the damn point. It’s not about what’s in the file. It’s about what isn’t in the file.’

The Malibu was like half a Cadillac. Four cylinders instead of eight, one ton instead of two, and about half as long. But it worked OK. It was cruising nicely. Not that Reacher was paying much attention to it. He was thinking about the dead Iranian, and the odds against hitting a T-wave window. The guy had been small, built like a bird, and Reacher tended to assume that people opposite him on the physical spectrum were also opposite him on the personality spectrum, so that in place of his own placid nature he imagined the guy was all strung out and nervous, which might have meant that back there in the parking lot the guy’s heart was going as fast as 180 beats a minute, which meant those T-waves were coming around fast and furious, three times a second, which meant that the odds of hitting one of those crucial fifteen-millisecond windows ahead of a peak were about forty-five in a thousand, or a little better than one in twenty.

Unlucky. For the Iranian, certainly. But no cause for major regret. Most likely Reacher would have had to put him down anyway, one way or another, sooner or later, probably within just a few more heartbeats. It would have been practically inevitable. Once a gun was pulled, there were very few other available options. But still, it had been a first. And a last, probably, at least for a spell. Because Reacher was pretty sure the next guy he met would be a football player. He figured the Duncans knew he had gone out of town, possibly for a day, possibly for ever. He figured they would have gotten hold of the doctor long ago and squeezed that news out of him. And they were realistic but cautious people. They would have stood down five of their boys for the night, and left just one lone sentry to the south. And that one lone sentry would have to be dealt with. But not via commotio cordis. Reacher wasn’t about to aim a wild punch at a Cornhusker’s centre mass. Not in this lifetime. He would break his hand.

He kept the Malibu humming along, eight miles, nine, and then he started looking ahead for the bar he had seen on the shoulder. The small wooden building. The Cell Block. Maybe just outside the city limit. Unincorporated land. Maybe a question of licensing or regulation. There was mist in the air and the Malibu’s headlights made crisp little tunnels. Then they were answered by a glow in the air. A halo, far ahead on the left. Neon, in kelly green, and red, and blue. Beer signs. Plus yellow tungsten from a couple of token spots in the parking lot.

Reacher slowed and pulled in and parked his yellow car next to a pick-up that was mostly brown with corrosion. He got out and locked up and headed for the door. From close up the place looked nothing at all like a prison. It was just a shack. It could once have been a house or a store. Even the sign was written wrong. The words Cell Block were stencilled like a notation on an electrician’s blueprint. Like something technological. There was noise inside, the warm low hubbub and hoo-hah of a half-empty late-evening bar in full swing, plus a little music under it, probably from a jukebox, a tune Reacher didn’t recognize but was prepared to like.

He went in. The door opened directly in the left front corner of the main public room. The bar ran front to back on the right, and there were tables and chairs on the left. There were maybe twenty people in the room, mostly men. The decoration scheme was really no scheme at all. Wooden tables, wheelback chairs, bar stools, board floor. There was no prison theme. In fact the electronic visuals from outside were continued inside. The stencilled words Cell Block were repeated on the bar back, flanked by foil-covered cut-outs of radio towers with lightning bolts coming out of them.

Reacher threaded sideways between tables and caught the barman’s eye and the barman shuffled left to meet him. The guy was young, and his face was open and friendly. He said, ‘You look confused.’

Reacher said, ‘I guess I was expecting bars on the windows, maybe booths in the old cells. I thought maybe you would be wearing a suit with arrows all over it.’

The guy didn’t answer.

‘Like an old prison,’ Reacher said. ‘Like a cell block.’

The guy stayed blank for a second, and then he smiled.

‘Not that kind of cell block,’ he said. ‘Take out your phone.’

‘I don’t have a phone.’

‘Well, if you did, you’d find it wouldn’t work here. No signal. There’s a null zone about a mile wide. That’s why people come here. For a little undisturbed peace and quiet.’

‘They can’t just not answer?’

‘Human nature doesn’t really work that way, does it? People can’t ignore a ringing phone. It’s about guilty consciences. You know, wives or bosses. All kinds of hassle. Better that their phones don’t ring at all.’

‘So do you have a pay phone here? Strictly for emergencies?’

The guy pointed. ‘Back corridor.’

‘Thanks,’ Reacher said. ‘That’s why I came in.’

He threaded down the line of stools, some of them occupied, some of them not, and he found an opening that led to the restrooms and a rear door. There was a pay phone on the wall opposite the ladies’ room. It was mounted on a cork rectangle that was dark and stained with age and marked with scribbled numbers in faded ink. He checked his pockets for quarters and found five. He wished he had kept the Iranian’s coins. He dialled the same number he had used a quarter of an hour ago, and Dorothy Coe had used a quarter of a century ago. The call was answered and he asked for Hoag, and he was connected inside ten short seconds.

‘One more favour,’ he said. ‘You got phone books for the whole county, right?’

Hoag said, ‘Yes.’

‘I need a number for a guy called Seth Duncan, about sixty miles north of you.’

‘Wait one,’ Hoag said. Reacher heard the click and patter of a keyboard. A computer database, not a paper book. Hoag said, ‘That’s an unlisted number.’

‘Unlisted as in you don’t have it, or as in you can see it but you won’t tell me?’

‘Unlisted as in please don’t ask me, because you’ll be putting me on the spot.’

‘OK, I won’t ask you. Anything under Eleanor Duncan?’

‘No. There are four Duncans, all male names. All unlisted.’

‘So give me the doctor instead.’

‘What doctor?’

‘The local guy up there.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘I don’t know,’ Reacher said. ‘I don’t have his name.’

‘Then I can’t help you. This thing is purely alphabetical by last name. It’s going to say Smith, Dr Bill, or whatever. Something like that. In very small letters.’

‘Got to be a contact number for a doctor. There might be an emergency. Got to be some way of getting hold of the guy.’

‘I don’t see anything.’

‘Wait,’ Reacher said. ‘I know how. Give me the Apollo Inn.’

‘Apollo like the space rocket?’

‘Exactly like the space rocket.’

The keyboard pattered and Hoag read out a number, a 308 area code for the western part of the state, and then seven more digits. Reacher repeated them once in his head and said, ‘Thanks,’ and hung up and redialled.

*     *     *

Ten miles south, Mahmeini’s man was dialling too, calling home. He got Mahmeini on his cell, and said, ‘We have a problem.’

Mahmeini said, ‘Specifically?’

‘Asghar has run out on us.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Well, he has. I sent him down to the car to get me a bottle of water. He didn’t come back, so I checked. The car is gone, and he’s gone too.’

‘Call him.’

‘I tried ten times. His phone is off.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I want you to find him.’

‘I have no idea where to look.’

Mahmeini said, ‘He drinks, you know.’

‘I know. But there’s no bar in town. Just a liquor store. And it will be closed by now. And he wouldn’t have driven to the liquor store anyway. He would have walked. It’s only about three blocks away.’

‘There must be a bar. This is America. Ask the concierge.’

‘There is no concierge. This isn’t the Bellagio. They don’t even put water in the rooms.’

‘There must be someone at the desk. Ask him.’

‘I can’t go anywhere. I don’t have a car. And I can’t ask the others for help. Not now. That would be an admission of weakness.’

‘Find a way,’ Mahmeini said. ‘Find a bar, and find a way of getting there. That’s an order.’

Reacher listened to the ring tone. It was loud and sonorous and resonant in his ear, the product of a big old-fashioned earpiece maybe an inch and a half across, buried deep inside a big old-fashioned plastic handset that probably weighed a pound. He pictured the two phones ringing in the motel, fifty miles north, one at the desk, one behind the bar. Or maybe there were more than two phones. Maybe there was a third extension in a back office, and a fourth in Vincent’s private quarters. Maybe the whole place was a regular rats’ nest of wiring, just like the inside of a lunar module. But however many phones there were, they all rang for a long period, and then one of them was answered. Vincent came on and said, ‘This is the Apollo Inn,’ just like Reacher had heard him say it before, very brightly and enthusiastically, like it was a brand new establishment taking its first-ever call on its first-ever night in business.

Reacher said, ‘I need Eleanor Duncan’s phone number.’

Vincent said, ‘Reacher? Where are you?’

‘Still out of town. I need Eleanor’s number.’

‘Are you coming back?’

‘What could possibly keep me away?’

‘Are you not going to Virginia?’

‘Eventually, I hope.’

‘I don’t have Eleanor’s number.’

‘Isn’t she on the phone tree?’

‘No, how could she be? Seth might answer.’

‘OK, is the doctor there?’

‘Not right now.’

‘Slow night, then.’

‘Unfortunately.’

‘Do you have his number?’

‘Hold the line,’ Vincent said. There was a thump as he put the handset down, maybe on the bar, and then a pause, just about long enough for him to walk across the lounge, and then the sound of a second handset being raised, maybe at the desk. The two open lines picked up on each other and Reacher heard the room’s slow echo hissing and bouncing off the round domed ceiling. Vincent read out a number, the area code and seven more digits, and Reacher repeated them once in his head and said, ‘Thanks,’ and hung up and redialled.

The guy at the Marriott’s desk told Mahmeini’s man that yes, there was a bar, not exactly in town but ten miles north, just outside the city limit, on the left shoulder of the two-lane, called the Cell Block, a pleasant place, reasonably priced, and that yes, it was usually open late, and that yes, there was a taxi service in town, and that yes, he would be happy to call a cab immediately.

And so less than five minutes later Mahmeini’s man was sliding across stained vinyl into the rear seat of an ancient Chevy Caprice, and the driver was pulling out of the lot, and heading down McNally Street, and making the right at the end.

The doctor answered a lot faster than Vincent had. Reacher said, ‘I need Eleanor Duncan’s phone number.’

The doctor said, ‘Reacher? Where are you?’

‘Still out of town.’

‘Are you coming back?’

‘What, are you missing me?’

‘I didn’t tell the Duncans about the Cadillac.’

‘Good man. Has Seth gone home yet?’

‘He was still with his father when I left.’

‘Will he stay?’

‘People say he often does.’

‘You OK?’

‘Not too bad. I was in the truck. The Cornhuskers got me.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing much. Just words, really.’

Reacher pictured the guy, maybe standing in his hallway or his kitchen, quaking, shaking, watching the windows, checking the doors. He asked, ‘Are you sober?’

The doctor said, ‘A little.’

‘A little?’

‘That’s about as good as it gets these days, I’m afraid.’

‘I need Eleanor Duncan’s number.’

‘She’s not listed.’

‘I know that.’

‘She’s not on the phone tree.’

‘But she’s your patient.’

‘I can’t.’

‘How much more trouble could you be in?’

‘It’s not just that. There are confidentiality issues too. I’m a doctor. Like you said, I took an oath.’

‘We’re making an omelette here,’ Reacher said. ‘We’re going to have to break some eggs.’

‘They’ll know it came from me.’

‘If it comes to it I’ll tell them different.’

The doctor went quiet, and then he sighed, and then he recited a number.

‘Thanks,’ Reacher said. ‘Take care. Best to your wife.’ He hung up and redialled and listened to yet more ring tone, the same languid electronic purr, but this time from a different place, from somewhere inside the restored farmhouse, among the pastel colours and the fancy rugs and the oil paintings. He figured that if Seth was home, then Seth would answer. It seemed to be that kind of a relationship. But he bet himself a buck Seth wasn’t home. The Duncans were in two kinds of trouble, and Reacher’s experience told him they would huddle together until it passed. So Eleanor was probably home alone, and would pick up. Or not. Maybe she would just ignore the bell, whatever the barman thirty feet away thought about human nature.

She picked up.

‘Hello?’ she said.

Reacher asked, ‘Is Seth there?’

‘Reacher? Where are you?’

‘Doesn’t matter where I am. Where’s Seth?’

‘He’s at his father’s. I don’t expect him home tonight.’

‘That’s good. You still up and dressed?’

‘Why?’

‘I want you to do something for me.’