Past Tense

Chapter 28

The Reverend Patrick G. Burke insisted on driving as far as his restraining order would permit, which was all the way to the forty-year-old fence, beyond which the road no longer ran anyway. He said he would wait there. Reacher said he didn’t have to. But Burke insisted. In turn Reacher insisted he turn his car around. Nose out, not in. Ready for a fast getaway, in a forward gear. If necessary. Worst case. Turning around in the narrow fenced space made for an awkward maneuver. Back and forth, shoulder to shoulder, many times. But eventually the task was accomplished. The Subaru sat like a dragster at the start of the strip.

Reacher further insisted Burke keep his engine running. Yes, pollution. Yes, the price of gas. But better than fumbling the key. Better than the car not starting. When the time came. If necessary. Worst case. Burke agreed. Then Reacher insisted he feel free to take off without him. Immediately, no warning, at any time at all, for any reason or none, whatever his gut or his instincts told him.

“Don’t second-guess it,” Reacher said. “Don’t overthink it. Don’t wait even half a second.”

Burke didn’t answer.

“I mean it,” Reacher said. “If they come for you, it means they got past me. In which case you really don’t want to meet them.”

Burke agreed.

Reacher got out of the car. He closed the door. He swung his legs over the fence. He set out walking. The weather was the same. The smells were the same. The heavy ripe fruit, the hot dry grass. He heard the same buzz of the same insects. Overhead was a hawk, on the thermals. Two more, in the far distance, widely separated. Too far away to tell what kind. Stan would have said it was typical raptor behavior. Each one claimed an exclusive slice of the action. My street corner, your street corner. No trespassing. Like tough guys everywhere.

Reacher walked on, looking straight ahead. Refusing to glance left, at the top of the rise, where they might be waiting and watching. Refusing to give them the satisfaction. Let them come to him. He walked on. He got halfway across the orchard. Where he had knocked the kid down. There was no sign. No evidence. Maybe a little scuffed grass, from tensed-up footsteps. Maybe in a TV show they would make something out of it. But not in the real world. He walked on.

He made it all the way to the second fence. Undisturbed. All around was peace and quiet and silence. Nothing was moving. Straight ahead the leaves were darker, and the smell was ranker. The sunless shadows looked colder. He glanced back. Nothing doing.

He climbed over the fence.

Ryantown, New Hampshire.

He walked down Main Street, like the day before, stepping between swaying pipe-thin trees, stumbling now and then on tipped-up stones, passing the low remains of the church, and the school. He picked his way onward, to the four-flats. To the right-hand foundation. To the remains of the kitchen, in the far back corner. The fragment of tile. He pictured his grandfather, like a clean-shaven Blackbeard, yelling and screaming and throwing punches and knocking people down. Probably drinking. He pictured his grandmother, hard and cold and sour. Never smiling. Never saying a nice thing. Always looking cross. Angrily sewing the kind of bedsheets she would never get to use.

He pictured his father, crawling around on the floor. Or not. Maybe sitting quietly in a corner, staring out the window. At a teeming patch of sky.

Your dad joined the Marines at seventeen, Carter Carrington had said. Got to be a reason.

He stood there for a long moment more, and then he said his goodbyes to the place. He turned and retraced his steps. Out the kitchen, through the hallway, past the trees, through the lobby, out the street door.

No one there. Nothing but peace and quiet and silence, all over again. He walked back up Main Street. He stopped at the school. Up ahead the street bent around to meet the church. Without sixty years of trees the vista would have been wide open. A person would have seen a big patch of sky. Maybe right there was their birdwatching spot. Where they saw the hawk. Maybe the binoculars belonged to the school. A grant from the county. Communally owned. Not to be taken away. Or maybe a kindly teacher had found them in a junk shop, and laid out a couple of bucks.

He walked on. He passed the church. He got back to the fence. Ryantown’s city limit. Ahead of him was the orchard. Where the road used to be. A straight shot, a hundred yards, to the parked Subaru. Which was still there. It was clearly visible in the distance. Between it and him were only two points of interest. The more distant was Burke himself. He was standing in the space between the back of his car and the safe side of the fence, and he was hopping from foot to foot, and jumping up and down, and waving his arm.

The second point of interest was fifty yards closer. Halfway across the orchard, strung out across the width of the stolen road, was a line of five men.

Overhead the hawk circled slowly.

Reacher climbed the fence. He left the mossy tangle of unchecked nature behind him, and walked between orderly lines of pruned and identical trees. Up ahead the five men stood still. They were shoulder to shoulder, but not quite touching. They looked like a singing group, about to start up with a tune. Like a barbershop quartet, plus one. Maybe an alto, two tenors, a baritone and a bass. In which case the bass would be the guy in the center. He was bigger than the others. Reacher was pretty sure he hadn’t seen him before. Also he was pretty sure the older guy was standing on the big guy’s right. The middle generation. Better jeans, cleaner shirt, grayer hair. The other three were the same as the night before. Minus the one that got popped. Big healthy specimens, but no military service or prison time or secret sessions with Mossad.

He walked on.

They waited.

Way beyond them in the distance Burke was still hopping up and down and waving his arm. Reacher wasn’t sure why. As a warning it would always be too late. Because of the linear geometry. He would see the problem before he saw the warning. Which made no sense. Maybe Burke was offering tactical advice. Do this, then do that. But Reacher couldn’t understand the semaphore. And he felt it would likely be superfluous anyway. No doubt a man like Burke had many and various talents, but brawling didn’t seem to be one of them. Not so far.

Maybe it was just general agitation.

Reacher walked on.

The guy in the center of the line of five was tall and wide and shaped like an artillery shell. He had a small head set on a thick bull neck fully four inches wider than his temples. Below that his shoulders sloped down, smooth and fast, like a sea creature. He had a big barrel chest, which made his arms and legs look short. He looked young, and fit, and strong.

He was a wrestler, Reacher thought. Maybe once a high school star. Then a college star. Now an apple picker. Was there a big leagues for college wrestlers? If so, the guy hadn’t made it. That was clear.

But still, he was big.

Twenty yards to go.

They waited.

The wrestler was staring dead ahead. He had tiny dark eyes set back deep in his tiny head. Not much expression. Altogether passive. Hence his relative lack of success in the post-college world, perhaps. Perhaps he lacked drive. Perhaps he failed to interpret the world around him. In which case, too bad. He was going to have to suck it up. He had been warned. Obviously. He had been drafted as a replacement. There was a clue in the word. He knew what he was getting into. He could have declined.

Fifteen yards to go.

The older guy was glancing left and right at his troops. He looked mostly excited. He was about to see some real good fun. But he was a little anxious too. In a faraway corner of his mind. Which he knew was crazy. How could they lose? It was a slam dunk, surely. But he couldn’t shake the feeling. Reacher saw it in his face. He helped it along, any way he could. The slow walk. The long strides, the loose shoulders. The hands away from the sides. The head up, and the eyes hard on the guy. The primitive signal, learned long ago.

Ten yards out.

The older guy couldn’t shake the feeling. It was right there in his face. Suddenly he looked like he was working on a contingency plan. A potential change of tactics. Just in case. As an alternative. He looked ready to shout new orders. Which made him a legitimate target. Even though he was fifty-something and soft. He was a commander in the field. Rules of engagement. They were what they were. He was going to have to suck it up too.

Reacher figured the other three would run away. Or at least they would back off, palms out, and they would stammer their way through some kind of not-our-idea plea deal. Loyalty had its limits. Especially to promises of menial labor from people who were pretty much assholes anyway.

They would run.

Five yards to go.

Reacher believed in staying flexible, but also having a plan, and in his experience it was about fifty-fifty which got used in the end. On this occasion the plan was to never slow down, to arrive at full speed, and to head-butt the wrestler mid stride. Which would check all the boxes. Surprise, overwhelming force, general shock and awe. With a convenient ethical twist. Literally. It would leave the older guy perfectly situated for a left hook, which was Reacher’s weaker hand, which was about as humane as he could see how to make it.

But it turned out flexibility was better. Because of the wrestler. He dropped into some kind of combat stance. Like a theatrical pose. Like a photographer was egging him on. Telling him to bring it. Maybe for the front page of the local newspaper. High School Star Wins Trophy. That kind of thing. The guy was giving it his best shot. Wasn’t really working. He looked like a fat kid pretending to be a grizzly bear. Stubby arms, like claws. At the ready. Kind of crouching, knees bent, feet apart.

So Reacher modified the plan. On the fly. West Point would have been proud of him. He preserved the essentials, and altered only the details. He never slowed down. He arrived at full speed. But instead of head-butting the guy, he kicked him in the balls. A sudden target of opportunity. Because of the feet apart. He got him with pace, and momentum, and a vicious scything upswing, and a dead-on perfect connection.

A football would have left the stadium.

It came out both good and bad.

The good part was it put him exactly where he should be. Ready for the left hook. Which he delivered. It was short and choppy by classical standards. Not elegant at all. Not much more than a whipped-in clout. But it was effective. Bang. Daddy went down sideways. His command influence was terminated.

The bad part was the wrestler was wearing an athletic protector. A cup. Smart kid. He had interpreted the world. He had prepared. Even so, he had taken a heavy blow. Like a blunt cookie-cutter smashing down on tough and gristly dough. But he wasn’t disabled. He was still on his feet, stumping around, breathing hard. Shock, yes. Awe, not so much. Which meant the other three guys didn’t run away. They didn’t back off, palms out, pleading. Instead they crowded in a step, a blocking maneuver, to let their quarterback recover behind them.

Reacher thought, damn. The vagaries of chance. He should have stuck to the original plan. The guy wasn’t wearing a football helmet. He wanted to back off a pace, to reset the geometry, but he didn’t let himself. It would send the wrong message. Instead he hit the guy crowding nearest. A solid shot to the gut. Which doubled the guy over, his face on his knees, puking and gasping, so Reacher hit him again, with an elbow chopped down hard against the back of the guy’s head, which planted him face first in the grass. Game over right there, so Reacher stepped left and lined up the next guy. No delay. Nothing to be gained by standing around shooting the breeze. Better just to set them up and knock them down.

But the next guy was barged out the way. By the wrestler coming through the line. His hands were out and his body was all swelled up with rage. He shoved another guy out the way. He was coming on like a dump truck. Then he planted his feet. He crouched. Face to face. Like the start of a bout. He glared. He snarled.

Reacher thought, OK, then.

He knew squat about wrestling. He had never tried it. Never felt the need. Too sweaty. Too many rules. Too much like a last resort. He believed a fight should be won or lost long before it came to rolling around on the floor.

In the distance Burke was still jumping up and down and waving his arm.

The wrestler moved. His body turned like a single rigid unit, and he thumped his right foot down, just ahead of where it had been before. Then he turned the other way, just as rigid, and he thumped his left foot down. Like sumo. Now he was half a step closer. He was maybe a couple inches shorter than Reacher. But probably twenty pounds heavier. He was a big solid guy. That was for damn sure. He was all hard sleek muscle, smoothed out into a fluid shape, as if by passage through air or water. Like a bull seal. Or a mortar shell.

A replacement. Not exactly, Reacher thought. The guy was an improvement. He was there to strengthen the roster. He was specialist talent, drafted in for the occasion. After the lessons of the night before. Maybe he had been borrowed from a friend of a friend. Maybe he was a nightclub bouncer. In Manchester. Or even Boston. Maybe that was the big leagues, for college stars.

Reacher decided to stay clear of his arms. Wrestling was all about grabbing and grasping and grappling. The guy was probably good at it. Or at least experienced. He probably knew all kinds of follow-up tricks. He would know a dozen different ways to get his opponent down on the mat. Which would be a fate best avoided. A horizontal struggle would be a problem. Too much bulk. It could end up like trying to bench press a whale. Fortunately the guy’s arms were not long. The exclusion zone was not large. There was some scope for action. Something could be done.

But what exactly? For once in his life Reacher wasn’t sure. The head butt was still a possibility, but risky, because it meant stepping right into the bear-claw grasp. And maybe the guy knew enough to twist away and take the blow on his neck, which up close looked about as sensitive as an automobile tire. Body shots could be delivered, fast right-left-right combinations, like working with the heavy bag, but the guy was built with the kind of slabby construction that would feel like punching a bulletproof vest. With about as much effect.

The wrestler moved again. The same dramatic maneuver. Again like sumo. Reacher had seen it on the television. In the afternoons, in motels. Grainy orange pictures. Huge men in fancy loincloths, blank and oiled and implacable.

Now the guy was a whole step closer.

Overhead the hawk circled slowly.

Too late Reacher realized what the guy was going to do. Which was to barge forward, leading with his stomach, again like the sumo on the television, except in that case the other guy was also doing the exact same thing, so they met in the middle with a loud slap, but Reacher wasn’t moving at all, which meant the other guy had all the momentum to himself, which meant Reacher was about to get hit hard. Like getting run over by a tractor tire.

He ducked and twisted and flung a Hail Mary right hook into the guy’s side, which landed hard, and therefore according to Isaac Newton’s laws of equal and opposite reactions took some momentum out of the equation, but the guy’s barreling bulk was basically unstoppable, and Reacher was spun around and bounced away, and then he had to twist again to avoid a bear claw swinging out toward him. He staggered backward, flailing his arms, trying to stay on his feet.

The wrestler charged again. He was nimble, for a guy built like a walrus. Reacher ducked away and got a weak jab into the guy’s kidney as he passed. It made no discernable difference. The guy reversed direction with a neat one-two shuffle and came barreling back again, hot and fierce and feinting left and right, looking to get a grip. Best avoided. Reacher stepped back, and again, and the guy came on, and Reacher launched a straight right to the guy’s face, which was like punching the wall of a rubber room, and then he ducked away, low down under the bear claw’s swing, and came back up and twisted and got a hard left hook into the guy’s back, before bouncing away out of range.

Now the wrestler was breathing hard. He had run around a little and taken two and a half decent body shots. Soon he would be stiffening up. Reacher stepped back. Underfoot the ground was lumpy. On his left was a windfall apple, bright like a jewel on the sunburned grass. The two surviving guys from the night before were creeping nearer, smelling blood.

Overhead the hawk was still circling.

The two surviving guys formed up and fanned out, a step ahead of the wrestler. Flank support. Or a chase-down crew. Maybe they expected him to run.

The wrestler dropped down into his combat stance. Reacher waited. The wrestler charged. Same as before. A low-down swarming thrust off bent and powerful legs, and a high-speed waddle, leading with the stomach, aiming to use it like a battering ram. Reacher swayed left, but his foot caught in an undulation and the guy hit him a glancing blow with his charging shoulder, which felt like getting run over by a truck, twice, first with the original impact and then immediately again with its equal and opposite echo as he hit the ground, right shoulder first, then his head, then his body, then a tangle of limbs.

The guy was nimble and came straight back. Reacher rolled away, but not fast enough. The guy got in a kick that caught him high on the back and rolled him faster. A rare position for Reacher to be in. But not unknown. Rule one was get the hell up, right now. So was rule two. And three. Staying down was one foot in the grave. So he waited until he rolled face down and then sprang upright like he was a gym rat showing off after fifty push-ups. Now he was breathing hard. And swelling up with anger. He was pretty sure kicking wasn’t in the rules of wrestling. The game had changed.

He thought, OK, then.

The wrestler dropped down into his combat stance again. And Reacher saw what he should have seen before. Or would have seen before, if the game had changed a little sooner.

He waited.

The wrestler charged. A low-down swarming thrust, off bent and powerful legs. Reacher stepped in and kicked him in the knee, just as hard as he had kicked him in the cup, with the same scything upswing, and an equally perfect connection. Plus the guy ran right into it. He brought all his own momentum to the party. A football would have left two stadiums. The result was spectacular. The knee was any heavy guy’s weak spot. A knee was a knee. A humble joint. It was what it was. It didn’t get bigger and stronger just because a guy chose to spend a whole semester lifting weights. It just got more and more stressed.

In this case it more or less exploded. The knee cap shattered or dislocated and maybe a whole bunch of stuff was severed inside, because the guy went down like his strings were cut, and then the same rule-one instinct bounced him upright again, immediately, howling, standing on one leg, waving the bear claws for balance. The two surviving guys stepped back a pace. Like the stock market. Investments can go down as well as up. Behind them in the distance Burke was standing still and watching, peering anxiously, pressed up tight against the fence.

From that point on Reacher opted for brutal efficiency. Style points no longer mattered. The wrestler threw a despairing bear claw at him, and Reacher caught it and jerked him off balance, and he went down again, awkwardly, clumsily, whereupon Reacher kicked him in the head, once, twice, until he went still.

Reacher stood up straight, and breathed out, and in, and out.

The two surviving guys stepped back another pace. They shuffled in place and tried to look aw-shucks sheepish. They raised their hands, palms out. They patted the air in front of them. Surrendering. But also distancing themselves. Making a point.

Not our idea.

Reacher asked them, “Where did you find this tub of lard?”

He kicked the wrestler one more time, in the ribs, but gently, as if merely to indicate which particular tub of lard he was talking about.

No one answered.

“You should tell me,” Reacher said. “It’s important to your futures.”

The kid on the right said, “He came up this morning.”

“From where?”

“Boston. He lives there now, but he grew up here. We knew him in high school.”

“Did he win trophies?”

“Lots of them.”

“Get lost now,” Reacher said.

They did. They ran south, at a sprint, up the slope, knees and elbows pumping. Reacher watched them go. Then he picked his way through the vanquished and walked on through the orchard. Burke was waiting at the fence. He held up the hand he had been waving. In it was his phone.

“It kept trying to ring,” he said. “But there’s really no service here. So I walked back to where I got half a bar. It was the ornithologist. He was returning your call, from the university. He said it was his only chance to talk, because he’s tied up the rest of the day. So I ran back here and tried to attract your attention.”

“I saw,” Reacher said.

“He left a message.”

“On the phone?”

“With me.”

Reacher nodded.

He said, “First I need to call Amos at the Laconia PD.”