Never Go Back

TWENTY-SEVEN

They walked on, following the curve of the road, west and a little south, getting closer to the fire all the time, until it was level with them, about two hundred yards into the hilly woods. Ten yards later, on the left shoulder, there was the mouth of a stony track. A driveway, of sorts. It ran uphill, between the trees. Turner wrapped Reacher’s shirt tight around her and said, ‘That’s just some kind of random brush fire.’

‘Wrong season,’ Reacher said. ‘Wrong place. They don’t get brush fires here.’

‘So what is it?’

‘Where are we?’

‘West Virginia.’

‘Correct. Miles from anywhere, in backwoods country. That fire is what we’ve been waiting for. But be quiet as you can. There could be someone up there.’

‘Firefighters, probably.’

‘That’s one thing there won’t be,’ Reacher said. ‘I can guarantee that.’

They started up the stony path. It was loose and noisy underfoot. Hard going. Better driven than walked. On both sides the trees crowded in, some of them pines, some of them deciduous and bare. The track snaked right, and then left again, rising all the way, with a final wide curve up ahead, with the fire waiting for them beyond it. They could already feel heat in the air, and they could hear a vague roar, with loud cracks and bangs mixed in.

‘Real quiet now,’ Reacher said.

They rounded the final curve, and found a clearing hacked out of the woods. Dead ahead was a tumbledown old barn-like structure, and to their left was a tumbledown old cabin, both buildings made of wooden boards alternately baked and rotted by a century of weather. To their far right was the fire, raging in and around and above a wide, low rectangular structure with wheels. Yellow and blue and orange flames blazed up and out, and the trees burned and smouldered near them. Thick grey smoke boiled and swirled and eddied, and then caught the up-draught and whipped away into the darkness above.

‘What is it?’ Turner asked again, in a whisper.

‘Like that old joke,’ Reacher whispered back. ‘How is a fire in a meth lab the same as a redneck divorce?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Someone’s gonna lose a trailer.’

‘This is a meth lab?’

‘Was,’ Reacher said.

‘Hence no firefighters,’ Turner said. ‘Illegal operation. They couldn’t call it in.’

‘Firefighters wouldn’t come anyway,’ Reacher said. ‘If they came to every meth lab that caught on fire, they wouldn’t have time for anything else. Meth labs are accidents waiting to happen.’

‘Where are the people?’

‘Probably just one person. Somewhere around.’

They moved into the clearing, towards the cabin, away from the fire, staying close to the trees. Smoke drifted and light and shadow danced all around them, pagan and elemental. The fire roared on, fifty yards away, undisturbed. The cabin was a simple one-storey affair, with an outhouse in the back. Both unoccupied. No one there. The barn was wide enough for two vehicles, and it had two vehicles in it, a big red Dodge pick-up truck with huge tyres and acres of bulging chrome, brand new, and a red convertible sports car, a Chevrolet Corvette, waxed and gleaming, with tail pipes as big as Reacher’s fists. Also brand new, or close to it.

Reacher said, ‘This country boy is doing well.’

‘No,’ Turner said. ‘Not so well.’

She pointed towards the fire.

The skeleton of the trailer was still visible, twisting and dancing in the flames, and there was burning debris all around it, spilled and fallen, but changing the basic rectangular shape was a flat protrusion on the ground in front of it, like a tongue hanging out of a mouth, something low and rounded and very much on fire, with flames of a different colour and a different intensity. The kind of flames you see if you leave a lamb chop on the grill too long, but a hundred times bigger.

‘I guess he tried to save it,’ Reacher said. ‘Which was dumb. Always better to let it burn.’

‘What are we going to do?’ Turner said.

‘We’re going to make a withdrawal,’ Reacher said. ‘From the ATM. It was a decent-sized lab, and he had a couple of nice cars, so my guess is our credit limit is going to be pretty handsome.’

‘We’re going to take a dead man’s money?’

‘He doesn’t need it any more. And we have eighty cents.’

‘It’s a crime.’

‘It was already a crime. The guy was a dope dealer. And if we don’t take it, the cops will. When they get here tomorrow. Or the day after.’

‘Where is it?’

‘That’s the fun part,’ Reacher said. ‘Finding it.’

‘You’ve done this before, haven’t you?’

‘Usually while they’re still alive. I was planning to take a walk behind Union Station. Think of it like the IRS. We’re government employees, after all.’

‘That’s terrible.’

‘You want to sleep in a bed tonight? You want to eat tomorrow?’

‘Jesus,’ Turner said.

But she searched just as hard as Reacher did. They started in the cabin. The air was stale. There was nothing hidden in the kitchen. No false backs in the cupboards, no fake tins of beans, nothing buried in flour canisters, no voids behind the wall boards. There was nothing in the living room. No trapdoors in the floor, no hollowed-out books, nothing in the sofa cushions, nothing up the chimney. There was nothing in the bedroom, either. No slits in the mattress, no locked drawers in the night table, nothing on top of the wardrobe, and no boxes under the bed.

Turner said, ‘Where next?’

Reacher said, ‘I should have thought of it before.’

‘Where?’

‘Where did this guy feel real private?’

‘This whole place feels real private. It’s a million miles from anywhere.’

‘But where most of all?’

She got it. She nodded. She said, ‘The outhouse.’

It was in the outhouse ceiling. There was a false panel right above the toilet, which Reacher unlatched and handed to Turner. Then he put his arm in the void and felt around and found a plastic tub. He hauled it out. It was the kind of thing he had seen in houseware stores. In it was about four thousand dollars in bricked twenties, and spare keys for the Dodge and the Corvette, and a deed for the property, and a birth certificate for a male child named William Robert Claughton, born in the state of West Virginia forty-seven years previously.

‘Billy Bob,’ Turner said. ‘Rest in peace.’

Reacher bounced the keys in his hand and said, ‘The truck or the sports car?’

‘We’re going to steal his car as well?’

‘They’re already stolen,’ Reacher said. ‘No titles in the box. Probably some tweaker, boosting cars, paying off a debt. And the alternative is walking.’

Turner was quiet a second more, like it was going to be a bridge too far, but then she shook her head and shrugged and said, ‘The sports car, of course.’

So they kept the money and the Corvette key and put the rest of the stuff back in the outhouse ceiling. They hiked over to the barn, and dumped the money in the Corvette’s load space. On the edge of the clearing the fire was still going strong. Reacher tossed the car key to Turner and climbed in the passenger seat. Turner started the engine, and found the headlight switch, and clipped her belt low and tight.

And a minute later they were back on the road, heading west in the dead of night, fast, warm, comfortable, and rich.