THIRTY-EIGHT

REACHER MADE THE GUY GET OUT OF THE TRUCK THE SAME WAY he had before, through the passenger door, awkward and unbalanced and unable to spring any surprises. He tracked him with the Glock and glanced beyond the wire and asked, ‘Where are all the harvest trucks?’

The guy said, ‘They’re in Ohio. Back at the factory, for refurbishment. They’re specialist vehicles, and some of them are thirty years old.’

‘What are the two grey vans for?’

‘This and that. Service and repairs, tyres, things like that.’

‘Are there supposed to be three?’

‘One is out. It’s been gone a few days.’

‘Doing what?’

‘I don’t know.’

Reacher asked, ‘When do the big trucks get back?’

The guy said, ‘Spring.’

‘What’s this place like in the early summer?’

‘Pretty busy. The first alfalfa crop gets harvested early. There’s a lot of preparation ahead of time and a lot of maintenance afterwards. This place is humming.’

‘Five days a week?’

‘Seven, usually. We’re talking forty thousand acres here. That’s a lot of output.’ The guy closed the passenger door and took a step. Then he stopped dead, because Reacher had stopped dead. Reacher was staring ahead at the empty rectangle in front of the building. The cracked stones. The managerial parking lot. Nothing in it.

Reacher asked, ‘Where do you normally park your truck, John?’

‘Right out front there, by the doors.’

‘Where do your buddies park?’

‘Same place.’

‘So where are they?’

The night-time silence clamped down and the young man’s mouth came open a little, and he whirled around as if he was expecting his friends to be hiding somewhere behind him. Like a practical joke. But they weren’t. He turned back and said, ‘I guess they’re out. They must have gotten a call.’

‘From you?’ Reacher asked. ‘When you saw Mrs Duncan?’

‘No, I swear. I didn’t call. You can check my phone.’

‘So who called them?’

‘Mr Duncan, I guess. Mr Jacob, I mean.’

‘Why would he?’

‘I don’t know. Nothing was supposed to happen tonight.’

‘He called them but he didn’t call you?’

‘No, he didn’t call me. I swear. Check my phone. He wouldn’t call me anyway. I’m on sentry duty. I was supposed to stay put.’

‘So what’s going on, John?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Best guess?’

‘The doctor. Or his wife. Or both of them together. They’re always seen as the weakest link. Because of the drinking. Maybe the Duncans think they have information.’

‘About what?’

‘You, of course. About where you are and what you’re doing and whether you’re coming back. That’s what’s on their minds.’

‘It takes five guys to ask those questions?’

‘Show of force,’ the kid said. ‘That’s what we’re here for. A surprise raid in the middle of the night can shake people up.’

‘OK, John,’ Reacher said. ‘You stay here.’

‘Here?’

‘Go to bed.’

‘You’re not going to hurt me?’

‘You already hurt yourself. You showed no fight at all against a smaller, older man. You’re a coward. You know that now. That’s as good to me as a dislocated elbow.’

‘Easy for you to say. You’ve got a gun.’

Reacher put the Glock back in his pocket. He folded the flap down and stood with his arms out, hands empty, palms forward, fingers spread.

He said, ‘Now I don’t. So bring it on, fat boy.’

The guy didn’t move.

‘Go for it,’ Reacher said. ‘Show me what you’ve got.’

The guy didn’t move.

‘You’re a coward,’ Reacher said again. ‘You’re pathetic. You’re a waste of good food. You’re a useless three-hundred-pound sack of shit. And you’re ugly, too.’

The guy said nothing.

‘Last chance,’ Reacher said. ‘Step up and be a hero.’

The guy walked away, head down, shoulders slumped, towards the dark building. He stopped twenty feet later and looked back. Reacher looped around the rear of the Yukon, to the driver’s door. He got in. The seat was too far back. The kid was huge. But Reacher wasn’t about to adjust it in front of the guy. Some stupid male inhibition, way in the back of his brain. He just started up and turned and drove away, and fixed it on the fly.

The Yukon drove OK, but the brakes were a little spongy. The result of the panic stop, probably, back at the old roadhouse. Five years’ wear and tear, all in one split second. But Reacher didn’t care. He wasn’t braking much. He was hustling hard, concentrating on speeding up, not slowing down. Twenty miles was a long distance, through the empty rural darkness.

He saw nothing the whole way. No lights, no other vehicles. No activity of any kind. He got back to the main two-lane north of the motel and five minutes later he passed the place. It was all closed up and dark. No blue neon. No activity. No cars, except the wrecked Subaru. It was still there, beaded over with dew, low down on slowly softening tyres, sad and inert, like road kill. Reacher charged onward past it, and then he made the right and the left and the right, along the boundaries of the dark empty fields, like twice before, to the plain ranch house with the post-and-rail fence and the flat, featureless yard.

There were lights on in the house. Plenty of them. Like a cruise ship at night on the open ocean. But there was no sign of uproar. There were no cars on the driveway. No pick-up trucks, no SUVs. No large figures in the shadows. No sound, no movement. Nothing. The front door was closed. The windows were intact.

Reacher turned in and parked on the driveway and walked to the door. He stood right in front of the spy hole and rang the bell. There was a whole minute’s delay. Then the spy hole darkened and lightened and locks and chains rattled and the doctor opened up. He looked tired and battered and worried. His wife was standing behind him in the hallway, in the bright light, with the phone to her ear. The phone was the old-fashioned kind, big and black on a table, with a dial and a curly wire. The doctor’s wife was not talking. She was just listening, concentrating hard, her eyes narrowing and widening.

The doctor said, ‘You came back.’

Reacher said, ‘Yes, I did.’

‘Why?’

‘Are you OK? The Cornhuskers are out and about.’

‘We know,’ the doctor said. ‘We just heard. We’re on the phone tree right now.’

‘They didn’t come here?’

‘Not yet.’

‘So where are they?’

‘We’re not sure.’

Reacher said, ‘Can I come in?’

‘Of course,’ the doctor said. ‘I’m sorry.’ He stepped back and Reacher stepped in. The hallway was very warm. The whole house was warm, but it felt smaller than before, like a desperate little fortress. The doctor closed the door and turned two keys and put the chain back on. He asked, ‘Did you see the police files?’

Reacher said, ‘Yes.’

‘And?’

‘They’re inconclusive,’ Reacher said. He moved on into the kitchen. He heard the doctor’s wife say, ‘What?’ She sounded puzzled. Maybe a little shocked. He glanced back at her. The doctor glanced back at her. She said nothing more. Just continued to listen, eyes moving, taking mental notes. The doctor followed Reacher into the kitchen.

‘Want coffee?’ he asked.

I’m not drunk, he meant.

Reacher said, ‘Sure. Lots of it.’

The doctor set about filling the machine. The kitchen was even warmer than the hallway. Reacher took off his coat and hung it on the back of a chair.

The doctor asked, ‘What do you mean, inconclusive?’

Reacher said, ‘I mean I could make up a story about how the Duncans did it, but there’s really no proof either way.’

‘Can you find proof? Is that why you came back?’

Reacher said, ‘I came back because those two Italian guys who were after me seem to have joined up with a regular United Nations of other guys. Not a peacekeeping force, either. I think they’re all coming here. I want to know why.’

‘Pride,’ the doctor said. ‘You messed with the Duncans, and they won’t tolerate that. Their people can’t handle you, so they’ve called in reinforcements.’

‘Doesn’t make sense,’ Reacher said. ‘Those Italians were here before me. You know that. You heard what Eleanor Duncan said. So there’s some other reason. They have some kind of a dispute with the Duncans.’

‘Then why would they help the Duncans in their own dispute with you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘How many of them are coming?’ the doctor asked.

From the hallway his wife said, ‘Five of them.’ She had just gotten off the phone. She stepped into the kitchen and said, ‘And they’re not coming. They’re already here. That was the message on the phone tree. The Italians are back. With three other men. Three cars in total. The Italians in their blue Chevy, plus two guys in a red Ford, and one guy in a black car that everyone swears is Seth Duncan’s Cadillac.’