A Wanted Man

FORTY-ONE

DELFUENSO’S DAUGHTER WAS called Lucy. Sheriff Goodman met her on the neighbour’s stoop. She was a thin child, dark-haired and sallow, still in pyjamas. She smelled faintly of sleep and a busy household. Goodman sat her down on the concrete step and sat next to her with his elbows on his knees and his hands hanging loose in front of him. Just two regular folks, chatting. Except they weren’t. He started out by asking how she was, and he didn’t get much of an answer. The kid was mute with incomprehension. But she was listening. He said her mom hadn’t come home from work. He said no one knew where she was. He said lots of people were out looking for her.

The kid didn’t really react. It was as if he had given her a piece of arcane and useless information from another world entirely, like the surface temperature of the planet Jupiter, or how AM was different from FM on the radio dial. She just nodded politely and fidgeted and shivered in the cold and wanted to go back inside.

Next Goodman spoke with the neighbour herself. He gave her the same incomplete information: Delfuenso was missing, her whereabouts were unknown, a search was continuing. He told the woman he had been advised that Lucy should stay home from school. He said maybe it would be a good idea if her own kid stayed home too. Then he asked the woman if she could stay home from work as well, to keep an eye on them both. He said familiar faces would probably be a good thing for Lucy, under the circumstances.

The neighbour hemmed and hawed and fussed a little, but in the end she said she would try to make it all work. She would do her best. She would make some calls. Goodman left her there at the door, the two kids energetic in the gloom behind her, the woman herself inert and distracted and looking worried about a dozen different things all at once.

The rain stopped and the clouds thinned and the Interstate went from streaming to damp to dry, all within a ten-mile stretch. Reacher started to recognize some of the road. It looked different by day. No longer a tunnel through the dark. Now it felt like an endless causeway, raised a little above the infinite flatness all around. He sat still and patient and watched the exits, most of them deceptive, some of them promising. Then he saw a really good one three or four miles ahead, vague in the distance, shapeless in the grey light, a cluster of buildings and a forest of bright signs, Exxon and Texaco and Sunoco, Subway and McDonald’s and Cracker Barrel, Marriott and Red Roof and the Comfort Inn. Plus a huge billboard for an outlet mall he hadn’t seen by night, because the sign was made of unlit paper, not neon.

He said, ‘Let’s get breakfast.’

Sorenson didn’t answer. He felt her stiffen in her seat. He felt her get a little wary. He said, ‘I’m hungry. You must be, too. And I’m sure we need gas, anyway.’

No response.

He said, ‘I’m not going to give you the slip. I wouldn’t be in this car in the first place unless I wanted to be. We have a deal. You remember that, right?’

She said, ‘The Omaha field office has to show something for a night’s work.’

‘I understand that. I’m coming with you, all the way.’

‘I have to be sure of that. So we’ll eat if there’s a drive-through.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ll go inside and sit at a table, like civilized people who trust each other. And I need to take a shower. And I need to buy some clothes.’

‘Where?’

‘At the outlet mall.’

‘Why?’

‘So I can change.’

‘Why do you need to change?’

‘So I make a good impression.’

‘Were your bags still in the Impala?’

‘I don’t have bags.’

‘Why not?’

‘What would I put in them?’

‘Clean clothes, for instance.’

‘And then what, three days later?’

Sorenson nodded. ‘You make a good point.’ She was quiet for half a mile and then she slowed the car and put on her turn signal for the exit. She said, ‘OK, I’m trusting you, Reacher. Don’t embarrass me. I’m way out on a limb here.’

Reacher said nothing. They turned left off the end of the ramp and nosed into a Texaco station. Sorenson got out of the car. Reacher got out too. She didn’t like that much. He shrugged. He figured if she was going to trust him at all, she might as well trust him from the very beginning. She dipped a plain Amex and started pumping. He said, ‘I’m going in the store. You need anything?’

She shook her head. She was worried. With good reason. A live gas hose was like a ball and chain. He was free, and she was anchored.

‘I’ll be back,’ he said, and walked away. The store was like a shabby version of the Shell station’s, south and east of Des Moines. Same kind of aisles, same kind of stuff, but run down and dirty. Same kind of clerk at the register. The guy was staring at Reacher’s nose. Reacher prowled the aisles until he found the section with travel necessities. He took a tube of antiseptic cream and a small box of Band-Aids. And a small tube of toothpaste. And a bottle of aspirin. He paid in cash at the register. The clerk was still staring at his nose. Reacher said, ‘Mosquito bite. That’s all. Nothing to worry about.’

He found Sorenson waiting for him halfway between the store and the pump. Still worried. He said, ‘Where do you want to get breakfast?’

She said, ‘Is McDonald’s OK with you?’

He nodded. He needed protein and fats and sugars, and he didn’t really care where they came from. He had no prejudice against fast food. Better than slow food, for a travelling man. They got back in the car and drove a hundred yards and pulled off again and parked. They went inside to fluorescent light and cold air and hard plastic seats. He ordered two cheeseburgers and two apple pies and a twenty-ounce cup of coffee. Sorenson said, ‘That’s lunch, not breakfast.’

Reacher said, ‘I’m not sure what it is. Last time I woke up was yesterday morning.’

‘Me too,’ Sorenson said, but she ordered regular breakfast items. Some kind of a sausage patty, with egg, in a bun, also with a cup of coffee. They ate together across a wet laminate table. Sorenson asked, ‘Where are you going to get a shower?’

‘Motel,’ Reacher said.

‘You’re going to pay for a night’s stay just to take a shower?’

‘No, I’m going to pay for an hour.’

‘They’re all chains here. They’re not hot-sheet places that rent by the hour.’

‘But they’re all run by human beings. And it’s still morning. So the maids are still around. The clerk will take twenty bucks. He’ll give a maid ten to do a room over again, and he’ll put ten in his own pocket. That’s how it usually works.’

‘You’ve done this before.’

‘I’d be pretty far gone if I hadn’t.’

‘Expensive, though. With the clothes and all.’

‘How much do you pay for your mortgage every month? And the insurance and the oil and the maintenance and the repairs and the yard work and the taxes?’

Sorenson smiled.

‘You make a good point,’ she said again.

Reacher finished first and headed for the men’s room. There was a pay phone on the wall outside. He ignored it. There was no window. No fire exit. He used the john and washed his hands and when he got back he found two men crowding Sorenson from behind. She was still in her chair and they were one each side of her, meaty thighs close to her shoulders but not quite touching them, giving her no room at all to swivel and get out. They were talking about her to each other, over her head, coarse and boorish, wondering out loud why the pretty little lady wasn’t inviting them to sit down with her. They were truckers, probably. Possibly they mistook her for a business traveller far from home. A woman executive. The black pantsuit, the blue shirt. A fish out of water. They seemed to like her hair.

Reacher stopped ten feet away and watched. He wondered which she would pull first, her ID or her Glock. He guessed ID, but would have preferred the Glock. But she pulled neither. She just sat there, taking it. She was a very patient person. Or perhaps there would be paperwork involved. Reacher didn’t know the ins and outs of Bureau protocol.

Then one of the guys seemed to sense Reacher’s presence and he went quiet and his head turned and his eyes locked on. His pal followed suit. They were large men, both of them bulky with the kind of flesh that wasn’t quite muscle and wasn’t quite flab. They had small dull eyes and unshaven faces, and bad teeth and stringy hair. They were what a doctor friend of Reacher’s used to write up as PPP. A diagnosis, a message, a secret insider medical code, one professional to another, for ease of reference.

It meant piss-poor protoplasm.

Decision time, boys, Reacher thought. Either break eye contact and walk away, or don’t.

They didn’t. They kept on staring. Not just fascination with the nose. A challenge. Some kind of a brainless hormonal imperative. Reacher felt his own kick in. Involuntary, but inevitable. Adrenalin, seasoned with an extra component, something dark and warm and primitive, something ancient and prehistoric and predatory, something that took out all the jitters and left all the power and all the calm confidence and all the absolute certainty of victory. Not like bringing a gun to a knife fight. Like bringing a plutonium bomb.

The two guys stared. Reacher stared back. Then the guy on the left said, ‘What are you looking at?’

Which was a challenge all by itself, with a predictable dynamic. For some unknown reason most people backed down at that point. Most people squirmed, and got defensive, and got apologetic. Not Reacher. His instinct was to double down, not back down.

He said, ‘I’m looking at a piece of shit.’

No response.

Reacher said, ‘But a piece of shit with a choice. Option one, get back in your truck and get breakfast fifty miles down the road. Option two, get in an ambulance and get breakfast through a plastic tube.’

No response.

‘It’s a limited time offer,’ Reacher said. ‘So be quick, or I’ll choose for you. And to be absolutely honest, right now I’m leaning towards the ambulance and the feeding tube.’

Their mouths moved and their eyes flicked from side to side. They stayed where they were. Just for a couple of seconds, just enough to save face. Then they picked option one, like Reacher knew they would. They turned and shuffled away, slowly enough to look unconcerned and a little defiant, but they kept on going. They made steady progress. They pushed out the door and disappeared into the lot. They didn’t look back. Reacher breathed out and sat down again.

Sorenson said, ‘I don’t need you to look after me.’

Reacher said, ‘I know. And I wasn’t. They were talking to me by that point. I was looking after myself.’

‘What would you have done if they hadn’t left?’

‘Moot point. Guys like that always leave.’

‘You sound disappointed.’

‘I’m perpetually disappointed. It’s a disappointing world. As in, why were you just sitting there and taking it?’

‘Paperwork,’ she said. ‘Arresting people is such a pain in the ass.’

She took out her phone and lit it up. She checked it for bars and battery. She shut it down again.

‘Expecting a call?’ Reacher asked.

‘You know I am,’ she said. ‘I’m waiting to be taken off this case.’

‘Maybe that isn’t going to happen.’

‘It should have happened two hours ago.’

‘So what’s your best guess?’

But she didn’t get a chance to answer that question, because right then, right on cue, her phone started ringing.