Past Tense

Chapter 18

Fifty yards would have been five or six seconds for an athlete, but Reacher was aiming nearer thirty. A slow walk. But purposeful. Intended to communicate something. He kept his strides long and his shoulders loose and his hands away from his sides. He kept his head up and his eyes hard on the guy. A primitive signal, learned long ago. The guy glanced away to the south. For help, maybe. Maybe he wasn’t alone.

Reacher got close.

The big guy turned to face him. He wrestled the old guy around in front, and used him like a human shield.

Reacher stopped six feet away.

He said, “Let him go.”

Just three words, but in a tone also learned long ago, with whole extra paragraphs hidden in the dying vowel sound at the end of the phrase, about the inevitable and catastrophic result of attempted resistance. The big guy let the old guy go. But he wasn’t quitting. No sir. He wanted Reacher to be sure about that. He made it like he wanted to free up his hands anyway. For more important purposes. He shoved the old guy aside and stepped right into Reacher’s space, not more than four feet away. He was twenty-some years old, dark haired and unshaven, more than six feet and two hundred pounds, tanned and muscled by outdoor labor.

He said, “This is none of your business.”

Reacher thought, what is this, Groundhog Day?

But out loud he said, “You were committing a crime on public land. I would be failing in my duty as a citizen if I didn’t point it out. That’s how civilization works.”

The guy glanced away to the south, and back again.

He said, “This ain’t public land. This is my granddaddy’s apple farm. And neither of you should be here. Him because he ain’t allowed and you because you’re trespassing.”

“This is the road,” Reacher said. “Your granddaddy stole it from the county forty years ago. Back when he was a brave young fellow. Like you are now.”

The guy glanced south again, but this time he didn’t glance back. Reacher turned and saw another guy approaching, walking fast between two lines of trees, where the orchard came down a slope. He looked the same as the first guy, except a generation older. Not more. The daddy, perhaps. Not the granddaddy. Better jeans than his son. Cleaner T shirt. Deeper tan, grayer hair. Built the same, but fifty-something.

He arrived, and said, “What’s going on here?”

Reacher said, “You tell me.”

“Who are you?”

“Just a guy standing on the public road asking you a question.”

“This is not the public road.”

“That’s the problem with denial. Reality doesn’t care what you think. It just keeps rolling along. This is the road. Always was. Still is.”

“What’s your question?”

“I saw your boy physically assaulting this much older gentleman. I guess my question is how well you think that reflects on your parenting skills.”

“In this case, pretty damn well,” the new guy said. “What are our apples worth if people think our water is poisoned?”

“That all was eight years ago,” Reacher said. “It came to nothing anyway. The top scientists in the world said your water is OK. So get over it. With a little humility. Probably you said some dumb thing eight years ago. Should I twist your arm today?”

The old guy with the ponytail said, “Technically they have a contract with the corporation in Colorado. There was a rider on the restraining order. It said they get paid if they can prove I was here. I hoped they had forgotten the arrangement. Apparently they hadn’t. They saw my car.”

“How do they prove it?”

“They just did. They texted a picture. That’s where he went. No cell signal, except up on the rise.”

“Law and order,” the daddy said. “It’s what this country needs.”

“Except for the part about stealing the county road to grow more apples.”

“I’m getting sick of hearing you say that, over and over.”

“It’s the sound of reality, rolling along.”

“Why were you in the woods anyway?”

“None of your business,” Reacher said.

“Maybe it is our business. We have a relationship with the landowner.”

“You can’t text a picture of me.”

“Why not?”

“You would have to take your phone out of your pocket. Whereupon I would take it away from you and break it. I guess that’s why you can’t.”

“There are two of us. Two phones.”

“Still not enough. You should call for reinforcements. But oh dear, you can’t. No cell signal, except up on the rise.”

“You’re a cocky son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

“I prefer realistic,” Reacher said.

“Want to put it to the test?”

“I would have an ethical dilemma. It might scar the boy for life to see his daddy laid out in front of him. Equally it might scar you to see your boy laid out. After being unable to protect him, I mean. You might feel bad about that. I believe it’s a parenting thing. I wouldn’t know for sure. I’m not a father myself. But I can imagine.”

The guy didn’t reply.

Reacher said, “Wait.”

He looked south, between the two lines of trees, where the orchard came down the slope.

“You were on your way back,” he said. “The text was already sent, from the top of the hill. The photograph must have been taken some moments before that. So why was our mutual friend still here, with his arms behind his back?”

No answer.

The guy with the ponytail said, “I was to get a beating. So I would learn my lesson. Just as soon as the text was sent and their money was guaranteed. At that point they didn’t know you were in the woods too.”

“That shouldn’t really make a difference,” Reacher said. “Should it? Not to men of conviction, surely.”

He looked at the daddy, and then at the son, full in the eye.

He said, “Time is wasting, guys. Go ahead and give him his beating.”

No one moved.

Reacher looked at the young guy.

He said, “It’s OK. He won’t hurt you. He’s seventy years old. You could push him over with a feather. He’s nothing to be scared of.”

The guy moved his head, like a dog sniffing the air.

“It’s a binary choice now,” Reacher said. “Either you hit him, or you’re scared of him.”

No response.

“Or maybe it’s conscience trouble. Maybe that’s it. You don’t want to hit an old guy. You really don’t. But hey, think about the apples. You have a job to do. I get it. In fact I could help you out. You could give me a beating first. That way you would feel you had earned it, when you start in on the old guy. It might make you feel less troubled.”

No response.

“Why not?” Reacher said. “You scared of me too? Scared I’m going to hurt you? I have to tell you, it’s a possibility. Full disclosure. You need to make an informed decision. Because now it really is a binary choice. Either you hit me, or you’re scared of me.”

No answer.

Reacher stepped in close. The opposite of risky. Better to crowd him. If the kid was dumb enough to throw a punch, it was better to smother it early, before it had speed and development and direction. Which would be easy enough. If the kid was dumb enough. Reacher was thirty pounds heavier and three inches taller and probably five inches longer in the arm. That much was visible.

The kid was dumb enough.

His shoulder jerked back in what Reacher took to be the early-warning stages of what was no doubt intended to be a short clubbing right to his face. Which gave him a choice. Either instantaneous reaction, involving a wide outward-sweeping gesture with his left forearm, designed to deflect the incoming short right, while his own short right crashed home. Which would be in any realistic sense the best move to make. It would be fast, hard, and elegantly abrupt. But it wouldn’t be forensic. Reacher felt like he was in front of a jury. Like he was giving evidence. Or being asked to explain it, like an expert witness. He felt in order to be effective he should let the narrative unspool a little longer than an instant. A crime required both intent and action, and he felt he should let both components become plainly visible, all the way to where they were provable beyond a reasonable doubt.

So he jerked his head sideways and let the short right fizz past his ear, in all its glory, a big punch now, right there for every eye to see, unmistakable, obvious in its intent, and then he waited for the kid to drag his fist back unrequited, and then he waited again, for what felt to him like a very long interval, purely to allow adequate time for jury-room deliberations, and then he hit the kid under the chin with a solid right-hand uppercut. The kid went up weightless in his boots, and then collapsed backward on the grass, with a bristly thump, with all kinds of dust and pollen puffing up in the sunshine. The kid’s limbs went slack and his head lolled to the side.

Reacher gave the guy with the ponytail a let’s-go nod.

Then he looked at the kid’s daddy.

“Parenting tip,” he said. “Don’t leave him lying in the road. He could get run over.”

“I won’t forget this.”

“That’s the difference between us,” Reacher said. “I already have.”

He caught up to the old guy, and they walked the second fifty yards together, back to the ancient Subaru.

Eventually Patty got up off the bed. She walked to the door, where the light switch was. Three steps. Through the first she was certain the power would still be on. Through the second she was sure it would be off. If they could lock the door and shade the window by remote control, surely they could kill the electricity. Then she changed her mind again. Why would they? Through the third step she was once again convinced it would be on. Because of the meals. Why would they give them meals and then expect them to eat in the dark? Then she remembered the flashlights. What were they for? She remembered Shorty’s comment. In case you have to eat in the dark. Maybe not so dumb.

She tried the switch.

It worked. The lights came on. Hot and yellow. She hated electric light in the daytime. She tried the door. Still locked. She tried the buttons for the window blind. Nothing. Shorty sat still in the brassy glare, and watched her. She turned and looked all around the room. At the furniture. At their bags, still where they had dropped them, when the truck didn’t come back. At the walls, and the slim molding where they met the ceiling. At the ceiling itself. It was a snowy expanse of perfectly smooth old-fashioned New England white, containing nothing except a smoke alarm and a bulkhead light, both above the bed.

Shorty said, “What?”

Patty looked back at their bags.

She said, “How well were they hidden?”

“Where?”

“In the hedge, Shorty.”

“Pretty well,” he said. “The big one is heavy. It squashed right down. You saw.”

“And then Peter got lucky and got his truck started and took it down the track to warm it up. There and back, real quick. Yet he had time to spot our luggage.”

“Maybe it was his headlights as he turned. Maybe it was more visible from behind. It was on the right. He would have turned counterclockwise. Different view than you got with the flashlight. You checked from the road.”

“He had time to make a rope handle.”

Shorty said nothing.

“Using rope he just happened to have with him,” she said.

“What are you thinking?”

“There were other things too,” she said. “We made fun of Karel for saying he might get lucky with a wreck, and then he said it right back to us, practically the first thing out of his mouth. In the back of the junkyard.”

“Maybe he says it a lot.”

“Why did they make a rope handle?”

“I thought they were maybe helping us.”

“Are you kidding?”

“I suppose. I didn’t understand it.”

“They were taunting us.”

“Were they?”

“We talked about getting a rope to make a handle, so that’s exactly what they did. They got a rope and made a handle. To demonstrate their power. And to show us how they’re secretly laughing up their sleeves at us.”

“How could they know what we talked about?”

“They’re listening to us,” Patty said. “There’s a microphone in this room.”

“That’s crazy.”

“You got another explanation?”

“Where is it?”

“Maybe in the light.”

They both squinted at it, hot and yellow.

Shorty said, “Mostly we talked outside. In the chairs.”

“Then there must be a microphone out there too. That’s how Peter found our luggage. They heard us talking about where to put it. They heard the whole plan. Back and forth with the damn quad-bike. Which is why Mark said we must be tired. Which was a weird remark otherwise. But he knew what we had been doing. Because we told him ahead of time.”

“What else did we say?”

“Lots of things. You said maybe Canadian cars are different, and the next thing we hear is, hey, Canadian cars are different. They were listening all along.”

“What else?”

“Doesn’t matter what else. What else we said is not what matters. What matters is what we say next.”

“Which is what?”

“Nothing,” Patty said. “We can’t even plan what to do. Because they’ll hear us.”