Past Tense

Chapter 32

Burke and Reacher stepped off the last of the blacktop onto the dirt of the motel lot. By then they had a pretty good close-up view of what was waiting ahead. Reacher heard Amos’s voice in his mind, talking about LSD in her coffee. Now he knew what she meant. Because up close the panel van parked second in line from the motel office turned out to be blue. A dark, dignified shade. Enhanced and explained by curls of gold writing. Persian carpets. Expert cleaning. A Boston address. A Massachusetts license plate.

The biggest déjà vu in history.

Except not exactly, because he hadn’t actually seen the van before. He had only heard about it on the radio. It had been caught by the cameras, coming off the highway, too early for a residential customer. Whereas he had actually seen the tow truck before. That was for damn sure. Two separate times. That really was déjà vu all over again. He had squeezed past a truck he had seen twice before, and then the very next vehicle he came upon was a van he had heard about on a police dispatcher’s broadcast. He slowed half a step, automatically, thinking. Burke got a step in front of him, and walked on ahead, slow but unflagging.

Beyond him Reacher saw that the station wagon parked first in line was a Volvo, with a Vermont plate on the back. The small compact was blue, probably an import, with a plate he didn’t know. The pick-up truck was a workhorse. It was the kind of thing a carpenter would use, to get boards in the back. It was dirty white. It had what he thought was an Illinois plate. Hard to be sure, given the distance. It was last in line. It was outside of what would be room eleven. The Volvo was outside of three, and the carpet van outside of seven. The small blue import was outside of ten. Ten’s window blind was down, and five’s lawn chair had been used. It had been scooted out of line.

They walked on toward the office, which had a red neon sign. They went in. There was a guy behind the counter. In his late twenties, maybe, with dark hair, and pale skin, and a slight look-away shyness in his manner. He had an air of intelligence. He was educated. He was healthy and fit. Maybe a college athlete. But a runner, not a weightlifter. Middle distance. Maybe a master’s degree in a technical subject. He was wiry, and coiled, and shot through with some kind of nervous buzz.

Reacher said, “I need a room for the night.”

The guy said, “I’m really sorry, but the motel is closed.”

“Is it?”

“I took the signs down at the entrance. I hoped I would save people a wasted trip.”

“There are plenty of vehicles here.”

“Work people. I’m way behind with the maintenance. There are things I really need to fix before the leaves turn and the tourists come back. Turns out the only viable way to do it was close for two weeks. I’m really sorry about that.”

“Are you doing all the rooms at once?”

“The plumber turned the water off. The electrician is messing with the power. There’s no heat and no AC. I’m way below code right now. I wouldn’t be allowed to give you a room, even if I could.”

“You got Persian carpets?”

“They’re organic jute, actually. I’m trying to be sustainable. It should last ten years, but only if you clean it carefully. It would be a false economy to use a regular commercial crew. These guys get Boston prices, believe me, but the spreadsheet says it should be worth it in the long term.”

Reacher asked, “What’s your name?”

“My name?”

“We’ve all got one.”

“Tony.”

“Tony what?”

“Kelly.”

“Mine is Reacher.”

The guy looked blank for a second, but then he focused, as if he was snagging on an odd coincidence.

He said, “I bought this place from a family called Reacher. Are you related?”

“I don’t know,” Reacher said. “I guess everyone is related if you go back far enough. When did you buy it?”

“Nearly a year ago. It was halfway renovated. I got it open in time for the season. But now I have some catching up to do.”

“Why did they sell?”

“A grandson took it on, but honestly, I think he found it wasn’t for him. He was more of an ideas guy. There was a lot of detail involved. He got in trouble with permits, I think. Pretty soon he decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. But my spreadsheet told me it was. So I bought him out. I like detail.”

“Is the electrician from Vermont, or the plumber?”

“The plumber. They have the best three-season guys in the world up there. Costs me more to bring them south, but my spreadsheet tells me it would be penny wise and pound foolish not to.”

“Same thing with the electrician from Illinois, I suppose.”

“Actually that’s slightly different. There’s unemployment out there, so they work for less, which offsets getting them here, so it’s a wash in terms of cost. But it’s way better in terms of how they do the job. These guys are auditioning, basically. This is a whole new market. There’s infinite work here, at their hourly rates. They want word of mouth recommendations. So their quality is excellent. Plus they already know their way around motels like this. There are more of them in the Midwest than here.”

“OK,” Reacher said.

“I’m really sorry about the wasted trip,” the guy said.

Then he stopped, and defocused again, and said, “Wait.”

They waited.

The guy glanced out the window.

Then he said, all in a rush, “How did you get here? I completely didn’t think. Don’t tell me you walked. But you can’t have driven. I just realized. The wrecker is stuck.”

“We walked,” Reacher said.

“I am so sorry. Today has been one damn thing after another. The last guest I had before I closed abandoned a broken-down car. Apparently it wouldn’t start, so he called a cab and disappeared. Naturally I wanted the car towed, and today was supposed to be the day, but it turned out the tow truck is so huge it got jammed in the trees.”

Then the guy looked out the window again, left and right, checking.

He said, quieter, “Or else he just doesn’t want to scratch his paint. I have to say, I’m not very satisfied. The trees on both sides of that track are trimmed precisely according to Department of Transportation guidelines. I’m pretty much a detail guy. I take care of things like that, believe me. Any highway-legal commercial vehicle should fit just fine.”

Then he stopped again, struck by another new thought, and he said, “Let me drive you back. At least that far. I assume your car is parked behind the truck. It’s the least I can do.”

Reacher said, “What was wrong with the abandoned car?”

“I don’t know,” the guy said. “It’s pretty old.”

“What’s the plate on it?”

“Canadian,” the guy said. “Maybe one-way airfare is cheaper than the disposal fees they charge up there. I’m sure there are environmental regulations. Maybe he drove the car here just to dump it. It would be a simple profit and loss calculation.”

“OK,” Reacher said. “You can drive us back now.”

“Thank you,” Burke said.

The guy ushered them out of the office, and locked the door behind them, and asked them to wait in the lot. Then he jogged away, toward a barn, maybe thirty yards distant. It was a blunt square building, with nine quad-bikes parked outside, in a neat three-by-three formation. Beyond the barn was a house, with heavy furniture on wide porches.

A minute later the guy drove out of the barn in a black SUV. It was medium sized, and shaped like a fist. Probably European. Maybe a Porsche or a Mercedes-Benz. Or a BMW. Maybe an Audi. It was a Mercedes. It stopped right beside them. Reacher saw the badge. It had a V8 engine. The guy at the wheel waited, expectantly, so Burke climbed in the front, and Reacher got in the back. The guy crunched through the lot and thumped up on the blacktop and sped through the meadow.

He said, “You should head east toward the lake country. You’ll find plenty of options there, I’m sure.”

They re-entered the woods through the same natural arch they had come out of. The guy drove fast. He knew there was going to be no oncoming traffic. The two miles that had taken Burke three quarters of an hour took the Mercedes three minutes. The guy stopped nose to nose with the tow truck. The light was dim and green and the red paint looked soured, like blood. The trees were tight on either side, pressing in with bent boughs and leaves spread like fingers. The lower canopy flopped down, level with the top of the windshield. The truck was in firm contact with the surrounding vegetation, certainly. But it was not physically restrained, surely. Not with the torque of its giant motor and the traction of its giant tires. The guy wasn’t stuck. He was worried about his paint. Understandable. It must have cost a buck or two. Multiple coats of red. Miles and miles of gold pinstripes, all done by hand. His name, Karel, fortunately short, spelled out in expensive copperplate, like a letter from an old Victorian aunt.

The guy at the wheel apologized again for their wasted trip, and he wished them good luck, and Burke said thank you, and got out, and Reacher followed him. Burke squeezed down the side of the truck, and Reacher went after him, elbow high, but then he stopped where the cab towered over him, and he turned around to watch. The Mercedes backed up smartly, and the guy reversed into and drove out of the natural hole in the trees, neatly, crisply, and fast. As if he had done it before. Which he had. He had picked up the truck driver.

Reacher stood for a second more, and then he turned again and blundered his way back to where Burke was waiting, on the other side of the fat rubber wire, next to the Subaru’s front fender. They got in the car and Burke backed up slowly, craning his neck, all the way to where the track met the road, where the wide gravel mouth gave him room to turn, either way.

“East to the lakes?” he said.

“No,” Reacher said. “South until your cell phone works. I want to call Amos.”

“Something wrong?”

“I want an update on Carrington.”

“You asked a lot of questions at the motel.”

“Did I?”

“Like you were suspicious.”

“I’m always suspicious.”

“Were you happy with the answers?”

“The front part of my brain thought the answers were fine. They all made perfect sense. They were all plausible. They all had the ring of truth.”

“But?”

“The back part of my brain didn’t like that place very much.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Every question had an answer.”

“So it’s just a feeling.”

“It’s a sense. Like smell. Like waking up for a prairie fire.”

“But you can’t pin it down.”

“No.”

They drove on, south. Reacher watched the phone. Still no service.

Afterward Peter nearly collapsed from tension. He let the two men out, and then he backed up and turned and hustled home as fast as he dared. He drove straight to the house. He ran through to the parlor, where he leaned on the wall, and then he slid down until he was sitting on the floor. The others crowded around him, crouching eye to eye, silent, as if in awe, and then they all burst out in a fist-pumping hiss of triumph, like a winning touchdown had been scored on TV.

Peter said, “Did the customers see anything?”

“Nothing at all,” Mark said. “We got lucky with the timing. The customers were all in here. Thirty minutes earlier would have been a problem. They were still milling around in the lot, shooting the shit.”

“When are we going to explain the situation to Patty and Shorty?”

“Do you have a preference?”

“I think we should do it now. The timing would be right. It would give them enough hours to make some choices, and then start doubting them. Their emotional state will be important.”

“I vote yes,” Steven said.

“Me too,” Robert said.

“Me three,” Mark said. “One for all and all for one. We’ll do it now. We should let Peter do it himself. As a way of thanking him for his performance. As a reward.”

“I vote yes on that too,” Steven said.

“And me,” Robert said.

Peter said, “First let me get my breath back.”