Past Tense

Chapter 43

Reacher climbed down from the cab, and gave Patty a wait-one signal, which he hoped she understood. Then he squeezed and slid down the side of the truck, to the rear, and out to the air.

Burke met him right there. The Reverend Patrick G. He had his hands up, palms out, in a kind of placatory I know, I know gesture. Patting the air. Apologizing in advance.

He said, “Detective Amos called on my phone. She said I should find you and tell you 10–41. I don’t know what that means.”

“It’s a military police radio code,” Reacher said. “It means immediate callback requested.”

“There’s no cell service here.”

“We’ll head south. But first move your car so I can move the truck. We got someone else also heading south. They’re in a bigger hurry.”

He squeezed back to the cab, and gave Patty what he hoped was a reassuring wave from the ladder. He got the selector back in reverse. He saw a live picture of Burke backing up, so he backed up after him, a little jerky, sometimes off line, fighting the trees here and there, beating most of them, getting thumped pretty hard once or twice. When he got out to the road he swung the wheel, and parked backward on the opposite shoulder, not totally straight, but not embarrassing either.

The black Mercedes nosed out after him.

He climbed down from the cab.

The Mercedes stopped beside him.

Patty buzzed the window down.

He said, “I’m getting a ride from the guy in the Subaru. It was nice meeting you. Good luck in Florida.”

She craned up in her seat, and looked down at the road.

“We’re out,” she said. “At last. Thank you. I mean it. I feel we owe you.”

“You would have figured it out,” Reacher said. “You still had the flashlight. It would have worked just as well. Four big batteries, all kinds of fancy LEDs. It’s not just a night vision thing. His first shot would have missed. Then you would have been in the trees.”

“But then what?”

“Rinse and repeat. I bet he didn’t have a spare magazine. He seems to have packed in a hurry.”

“Thank you,” she said again. “I mean it.”

“Good luck in Florida,” he said again. “Welcome to America.”

He crossed the road to where the Subaru was waiting. She drove away, south. She raised a hand through her open window, like a wave, and then she kept it there a hundred yards, fingers open, feeling the rush of nighttime air against her palm.

Burke drove south, on the back road. Reacher watched the bars on the phone. Burke was concerned about the lateness of the hour. He said he was sure Detective Amos would be fast asleep in bed by then. Reacher said he was sure she meant it when she sent the 10–41. Immediate callback. She could have used a different code.

One bar came up, and then a second, and then the wide gravel shoulder they had used before. Burke pulled over. Reacher dialed the number. Amos answered right away. Not asleep. There was car noise. She was driving.

She said, “The Boston PD called to tell us the cleanup hitter got home in the middle of the evening.”

“Does he have Carrington?”

“They’re making inquiries.”

“What about Elizabeth Castle?”

“Both are still missing.”

“Maybe I should go to Boston.”

“You have somewhere else to go first.”

“Where?”

She said, “I found Stan Reacher.”

“OK.”

“He showed up thirty years ago. He lived on his own for a long spell, and then he moved in with a younger relative. He’s registered to vote and he still has a driver’s license.”

“OK,” Reacher said again.

“I called his house. He wants to see you.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“It’s late.”

“He has insomnia. Normally he watches TV. He says you’re welcome to come over and talk all night.”

“Where does he live?”

“Laconia,” she said. “Right here in town. Chances are you walked right by his house.”

It turned out the closest Reacher had previously gotten was two streets away, in his second hotel. He could have made a left out the door, and a right, and a left, and then found an alley like the one where the cocktail waitress lived, with a door on the right and a door on the left, in this case not to upstairs apartments, but to neat three-story townhouses set either side of an interior courtyard.

Stan lived in the house on the left.

Amos met them in an unmarked car, out on the curb, at the entrance to the alley. She shook Burke’s hand and said she was pleased to meet him. Then she turned to Reacher and asked if he felt OK. She said, “This could be very weird.”

“Not very,” he said. “Maybe a little. I think I figured most of it out. There was always something wrong with the story. Now I know what. Because of something old Mr. Mortimer said.”

“Who is old Mr. Mortimer?”

“The old guy in the old people’s home. He said back in the day from time to time he would visit his cousins in Ryantown. He said he remembers the birdwatching boys. He said he was drafted near the end of the war. He said they didn’t need him. They had too many people already. He said he never did anything, and felt like a fraud every July Fourth parade.”

Amos said nothing.

They all went to the door together. More seemly, Burke insisted, given the hour. Like delivering a death message, Reacher thought. Two MPs and a priest.

He rang the bell.

A whole minute later a hallway light came on. He saw it through a pebbled glass pane set high in the door. He saw a broken-up mosaic of calm cream colors, a long narrow space, with what might have been family photographs on the wall.

He saw an old man shuffle into view. A broken-up mosaic. Stooped, gray, slow, unsteady. He walked with his knuckles pressed on a millwork rail. He got closer and closer, and then he opened the door.