Nothing to Lose

48

The clock in Reacher’s head hit one in the morning and the clock on the diner’s wall followed it a minute later. Vaughan looked at her watch and said, “I better get back in the saddle.”

Reacher said, “OK.”

“Go get some sleep.”

“OK.”

“Will you come with me to Colorado Springs? To the lab, with the water sample?”

“When?”

“Tomorrow, today, whatever it is now.”

“I don’t know anything about water.”

“That’s why we’re going to the lab.”

“What time?”

“Leave at ten?”

“That’s early for you.”

“I don’t sleep anyway. And this is the end of my pattern. I’m off duty for four nights now. Ten on, four off. And we should leave early because it’s a long ride, there and back.”

“Still trying to keep me out of trouble? Even on your downtime?”

“I’ve given up on keeping you out of trouble.”

“Then why?”

Vaughan said, “Because I’d like your company. That’s all.”

She put four bucks on the table for her juice. She put the salt and the pepper and the sugar back where they belonged. Then she slid out of the booth and walked away and pushed through the door and headed for her car.

Reacher showered and was in bed by two o’clock in the morning. He slept dreamlessly and woke up at eight. He showered again and walked the length of the town to the hardware store. He spent five minutes looking at ladders on the sidewalk, and then he went inside and found the racks of pants and shirts and chose a new one of each. This time he went for darker colors and a different brand. Prewashed, and therefore softer. Less durable in the long term, but he wasn’t interested in the long term.

He changed in his motel room and left his old stuff folded on the floor next to the trash can. Maybe the maid had a needy male relative his size. Maybe she would know how to launder things so they came out at least marginally flexible. He stepped out of his room and saw that Maria’s bathroom light was on. He walked to the office. The clerk was on her stool. Behind her shoulder, the hook for Maria’s room had no key on it. The clerk saw him looking and said, “She came back this morning.”

He asked, “What time?”

“Very early. About six.”

“Did you see how she got here?”

The woman looked both ways and lowered her voice and said, “In an armored car. With a soldier.”

“An armored car?”

“Like you see on the news.”

Reacher said, “A Humvee.”

The woman nodded. “Like a jeep. But with a roof. The soldier didn’t stay. Which I’m glad about. I’m no prude, but I couldn’t permit a thing like that. Not here.”

“Don’t worry,” Reacher said. “She already has a boyfriend.”

Or had,he thought.

The woman said, “She’s too young to be fooling around with soldiers.”

“Is there an age limit?”

“There ought to be.”

Reacher paid his bill and walked back down the row, doing the math. According to the old man’s telephone testimony, he had let Maria out at the MP base around eight-thirty the previous morning. She had arrived back in a Humvee at six. The Humvee wouldn’t have detoured around the Interstates. It would have come straight through Despair, which was a thirty-minute drive, max. Therefore she had been held for twenty-one hours. Therefore her problem was outside of the FOB’s local jurisdiction. She had been locked in a room and her story had been passed up the chain of command. Phone tag, voice mails, secure telexes. Maybe a conference call. Eventually, a decision taken elsewhere, release, the offer of a ride home.

Sympathy, but no help.

No help about what?

He stopped outside her door and listened. The shower wasn’t running. He waited one minute in case she was toweling off and a second minute in case she was dressing. Then he knocked. A third minute later she opened the door. Her hair was slick with water. The weight gave it an extra inch of length. She was dressed in jeans and a blue T-shirt. No shoes. Her feet were tiny, like a child’s. Her toes were straight. She had been raised by conscientious parents, who had cared about appropriate footwear.

“You OK?” he asked her, which was a dumb question. She didn’t look OK. She looked small and tired and lost and bewildered.

She didn’t answer.

He said, “You went to the MP base, asking about Raphael.”

She nodded.

He said, “You thought they could help you, but they didn’t.”

She nodded.

He said, “They told you it was Despair PD business.”

She didn’t answer.

He said, “Maybe I could help you. Or maybe the Hope PD could. You want to tell me what it’s all about?”

She said nothing.

He said, “I can’t help you unless I understand the problem.”

She shook her head.

“I can’t tell you,” she said. “I can’t tell anyone.”

The way she said the wordcan’t was definitive. Not surly or angry or moody or plaintive, but calm, considered, mature, and ultimately just plain informative. As if she had looked at a whole bunch of options, and boiled them down to the only one that was viable. As if a world of trouble was surely inevitable if she opened her mouth.

She couldn’t tell anyone.

Simple as that.

“OK,” Reacher said. “Hang in there.”

He walked away, to the diner, and had breakfast.

He guessed Vaughan planned to pick him up at the motel, so at five to ten he was sitting in the plastic lawn chair outside his door. She showed up three minutes past the hour, in a plain black Crown Vic. Dull paint, worn by time and trouble. An unmarked squad car, like a detective would drive. She stopped close to him and buzzed the window down. He said, “Did you get promoted?”

“It’s my watch commander’s ride. He took pity on me and loaned it out. Since you got my truck smashed up.”

“Did you find the litterbug?”

“No. And it’s a serial crime now. I saw the silver foil later. Technically that’s two separate offenses.”

“Maria is back. The MPs brought her home early this morning.”

“Is she saying anything?”

“Not a word.” He got out of the chair and walked around the hood and slid in beside her. The car was very plain. Lots of black plastic, lots of mouse-fur upholstery of an indeterminate color. It felt like a beat-up rental. The front was full of police gear. Radios, a laptop on a bracket, a video camera on the dash, a hard-disc recorder, a red bubble light on a curly cord. But there was no security screen between the front and the rear, and therefore the seat was going to rack all the way back. It was going to be comfortable. Plenty of legroom. The water sample was on the rear seat. Vaughan was looking good. She was in old blue jeans and a white Oxford shirt, the neck open two buttons and the sleeves rolled to her elbows.

She said, “You’ve changed.”

“In what way?”

“Your clothes, you idiot.”

“New this morning,” he said. “From the hardware store.”

“Nicer than the last lot.”

“Don’t get attached to them. They’ll be gone soon.”

“What’s the longest you ever wore a set of clothes?”

“Eight months,” Reacher said. “Desert BDUs, during Gulf War One. Never took them off. We had all kinds of supply snafus. No spares, no pajamas.”

“You were in the Gulf, the first time?”

“Beginning to end.”

“How was it?”

“Hot.”

Vaughan pulled out of the motel lot and headed north to First Street. Turned left, east, toward Kansas. Reacher said, “We’re taking the long way around?”

“I think it would be better.”

Reacher said, “Me too.”

It was an obvious cop car and the roads were empty and Vaughan averaged ninety most of the way, charging head-on toward the mountains. Reacher knew Colorado Springs a little. Fort Carson was there, which was a major army presence, but it was really more of an Air Force town. Aside from that, it was a pleasant place. Scenery was pretty, the air was clean, it was often sunny, the view of Pikes Peak was usually spectacular. The downtown area was neat and compact. The state lab was in a stone government building. It was a satellite operation, an offshoot of the main facility in Denver, the capital. Water was a big deal all over Colorado. There wasn’t much of it. Vaughan handed over her bottle and filled out a form and a guy wrapped the form around the bottle and secured it with a rubber band. Then he carried it away, ceremoniously, like that particular quart had the power to save the world, or destroy it. He came back and told Vaughan that she would be notified of the results by phone, and to please let the lab know some figures for Despair’s total TCE consumption. He explained that the state used a rough rule-of-thumb formula, whereby a certain percentage of evaporation could be assumed, and a further percentage of absorption by the ground could be relied upon, so that what really mattered was how much was running off and how deep an aquifer was. The state knew the depth of Halfway County’s aquifer to the inch, so the only variable would be the exact amount of TCE heading down toward it.

“What are the symptoms?” Vaughan asked. “If it’s there already?”

The lab guy glanced at Reacher.

“Prostate cancer,” he said. “That’s the early warning. Men go first.”

They got back in the car. Vaughan was distracted. A little vague. Reacher didn’t know what was on her mind. She was a cop and a conscientious member of her community, but clearly she was worrying about more than a distant chemical threat to her water table. He wasn’t sure why she had asked him to travel with her. They hadn’t spoken much. He wasn’t sure that his company was doing her any good at all.

She pulled out off the curb and drove a hundred yards on a tree-lined street and stopped at a light at a T-junction. Left was west and right was east. The light turned green and she didn’t move. She just sat there, gripping the wheel, looking left, looking right, as if she couldn’t choose. A guy honked behind her. She glanced in the mirror and then she glanced at Reacher.

She said, “Will you come with me to visit my husband?”