Worth Dying For

FIFTY-ONE

THE DUNCANS HAD MOVED ON TO JONAS’S KITCHEN, BECAUSE the taped window in Jasper’s was leaking cold air, and the burning fabric in the stove was making smoke and smells. They had stopped drinking bourbon and had started drinking coffee. The sun was up and the day was already forty minutes old. Jacob Duncan checked the clock on the wall and said, ‘The sun is up in Canada too. Dawn was about ten minutes ago. I bet the shipment is already rolling. I know that boy. He likes an early start. He’s a good man. He doesn’t waste time. The transfer will be happening soon.’

The road that led south from Medicine Hat petered out after Pakowki Lake. The blacktop surface finished with a ragged edge, and then there was a quarter-mile of exposed roadbed, just crushed stone bound with tar, and then that finished too, in a forest clearing with no apparent exit. But the white van lined up between two pines and drove over stunted underbrush and found itself on a rutted track, once wide, now neglected, a firebreak running due south, designed with flames and westerly winds in mind. The van rolled slowly, tipping left and right, its wheels moving up and down independently, like walking. Ahead of it was nothing but trees, and then the Montana town of Hogg Parish. But the van would stop halfway there, a little more than two miles short of the border, at the northern limit of the safe zone, exactly symmetrical with its opposite number in America, which was no doubt already in place and waiting, all fresh and energetic and ready for the last leg of the journey.

The doctor went back to the kitchen and returned with more coffee. He said, ‘It could have been an accident. Maybe she went inside the barn.’

Reacher said, ‘With her bicycle?’

‘It’s possible. We don’t know enough about her. Some kids would dump a bike on the track, and others would wheel it inside. It’s a matter of personality. Then she might have injured herself on something in there. Or gotten stuck. The door is jammed now. Maybe it was baulky then. She could have gotten trapped. No one would have heard her shouting.’

‘And then what?’

‘An eight-year-old without food or water, she wouldn’t have lasted long.’

‘Not a pleasant thought,’ Reacher said.

‘But preferable to some of the alternatives.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Or she might have gotten hit by a truck. Or a car. On the way over there. You said it yourself, the roads could have been busy. Maybe the driver panicked and hid the body. And the bike with it.’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere. In that barn, or miles away. In another county. Another state, even. Maybe that’s why nothing was ever found.’

‘Maybe,’ Reacher said again.

The doctor went quiet.

Reacher said, ‘Now there’s something you’re not telling me.’

‘There’s time.’

‘How much?’

‘Probably half an hour.’

‘Before what?’

‘The other three Cornhuskers will come here for breakfast. Their buddies are here, so this is their temporary base. They’ll make my wife cook for them. They enjoy feudal stuff like that.’

‘I figured,’ Reacher said. ‘I’ll be ready.’

‘One of them is the guy who broke your nose.’

‘I know.’

The doctor said nothing.

Reacher said, ‘Can I ask you a question?’

‘What?’

‘Is your garage like your garden or like your television set?’

‘More like my television set.’

‘That’s good. So turn around and watch the road. I’ll be back in ten.’ Reacher picked up the Remington and found his way through the kitchen to the mud room lobby. He found the door that led to the garage. It was a big space, empty because the Subaru was still at the motel, and neat and clean, with a swept floor and no visible chaos. There were shelving racks all along one wall, loaded with the stuff that hadn’t been in the basement. There was a workbench along a second wall, well organized, again neat and clean, with a vice, and a full-width pegboard above, loaded with tools logically arrayed.

Reacher unloaded the Remington, five remaining shells from the magazine and one from the breech. He turned the gun upside down and clamped it in the vice. He found an electric jigsaw and fitted a woodcutting blade. He plugged it in and fired it up and put the dancing blade on the walnut and sawed off the shoulder stock, first with a straight cut across the narrowest point, and then again along a curving line that mirrored the front contour of the pistol grip. Two more passes put a rough chamfer on each raw edge, and then he found a rasp and cleaned the whole thing up, with twists of walnut falling away like grated chocolate, and then he finished the job with a foam pad covered with coarse abrasive. He blew off the dust and rubbed his palm along the result, and he figured it was satisfactory.

He swapped the jigsaw blade for a metal cutter, a fine blued thing with tiny teeth, and he laid it against the barrel an inch in front of the forestock. The saw screeched and screamed and howled and the last foot of the barrel fell off and rang like a bell against the floor. He found a metal file and cleaned the burrs of steel off the new muzzle, inside and out. He released the vice and lifted the gun out and pumped it twice, crunch-crunch, crunch-crunch, and then he reloaded it, five in the magazine and one in the breech. A sawn-off with a pistol grip, not much longer than his forearm.

He found the coat closet on his way back through the house and retrieved his winter parka. The Glock and the switchblade were still in the pockets, along with the two screwdrivers and the wrench. He used the switchblade to slit the lining inside the left-hand pocket, so the sawn-off would go all the way in. He put the coat on. Then he unlocked the front door, and went back to the dining room to wait.

The Cornhuskers came in separately, one by one, the first of them right on time, exactly thirty minutes after the doctor had spoken, in a black pick-up truck he left on the road. He jogged up the driveway and pushed in through the door like he owned the place, and Reacher laid him out with a vicious blow to the back of the head, from behind, with the wrench. The guy dropped to his knees and toppled forward on his face. Reacher invested a little time and effort in dragging him onward across the shiny wood, and then he taped him up, quick and dirty, not a permanent job, but enough for the moment. The crunch of the wrench and the thump of the guy falling and Reacher’s grunting and groaning woke the doctor’s wife and Dorothy Coe. They came out of their rooms wearing bathrobes. The doctor’s wife looked at the new guy on the floor and said, ‘I guess they’re coming in for breakfast.’

Reacher said, ‘But today they’re not getting any.’

Dorothy Coe asked, ‘What about tomorrow?’

‘Tomorrow is a new day. How well do you know Eleanor Duncan?’

‘She’s not to blame for anything.’

‘She’ll be hauling your harvest this year. She’s going to be in charge.’

Dorothy Coe said nothing.

The doctor’s wife said, ‘You want us to stay out of the way?’

‘Might be safer,’ Reacher said. ‘You don’t want one of these guys falling on you.’

‘Another one coming,’ the doctor called from the dining room, soft and urgent.

The second guy went down exactly the same as the first, and in the same place. There was no room left to drag him forward. Reacher folded his legs at the knees so the door would close, and then he taped him up right there.

The last to arrive was the guy who had broken Reacher’s nose.

And he didn’t come alone.