‘But?’
‘But I’m pretty much a black and white kind of a person, and I like things confirmed yes or no, beyond a reasonable doubt.’
‘Then no. It’s confirmed. Right now. Straight from the horse’s mouth. For absolute sure. Beyond any kind of doubt. It is completely inconceivable the Bureau was involved with this. That’s the worst kind of crazy thinking.’
‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘Let’s go. Tell me if you want me to drive for a bit. I know the way.’
Sorenson pulled a big wide U-turn of her own, and then she hit it hard and hurried north through the rain. They passed the motel doing about sixty. It looked different by day. The low bulkhead lights were off, and the siding looked paler.
Reacher said, ‘I paid for two nights in there. And I spent about thirty seconds in the room.’
Sorenson said, ‘Why did you pay?’
‘I was feeling guilty about the guy’s wall.’
‘Not your fault.’
‘That was my impression at the time.’
‘So you shouldn’t feel guilty. Not about him, anyway. I didn’t like him.’
‘Well, I’ve still got his key. It’s in my pocket. Maybe I’ll mail it back, and maybe I won’t.’
Then they came to the first junction, and Sorenson braked late and made the left with all kinds of squealing and sliding on the slick surface. She came off the gas and got straightened out and hit it again.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
Reacher said nothing. He was in no position to complain. They were still on the road. He would have been in a field.
‘The tyres are worn,’ she said. ‘I noticed on the way out here.’
Reacher said nothing.
She said, ‘Which means the bad guys’ tyres are worn too. If the pictures are identical, that is. Which is step two. We know what kind of tyres they have, and we know approximately how old they are. Maybe an older car. Maybe an older driver. Could be some old person around here, with one of those big old cars.’
‘I doubt it,’ Reacher said. ‘I don’t think old people really love to come out in the middle of the night to watch women burn to death. Because you realize that fire was started when they were all still there? They didn’t set a fuse. It wasn’t spontaneous combustion. They lit it and they all stood around and watched and waited until they were sure it was going well.’
‘OK,’ Sorenson said. ‘It wasn’t a local senior. It was someone from somewhere urban.’
‘With taxi companies and car services and offices and an airport,’ Reacher said. ‘And maybe with a metro-area population around a million and a half. That’s something Alan King let slip. He said a million and a half people live where he lives.’
‘That’s potentially interesting. Unless it was misdirection.’
‘I don’t think it was. I don’t think they had a script. They were generally fast and smart, but it was a random question and an instant answer. No thinking time. Too fluid for a lie. Their other lies were slower and more clumsy.’
‘Anything else?’
‘At one point McQueen used what I felt was an odd word choice. I was sceptical about the gas station being where the highway sign said it was, and when we got there McQueen said You should have trusted me. I think most people would have said believed instead. Don’t you think? You should have believed me?’
‘What does it mean?’
‘I’m not sure. In the service we were taught to listen out for odd words. The Russians had language schools, with perfect accents, and slang and so on and so forth, and sometimes the only tells were odd words. So for a minute I wondered if McQueen was foreign.’
Sorenson drove on and said nothing.
She was thinking: The shirt was bought in Pakistan, or possibly the Middle East. She asked, ‘Did McQueen have an accent?’
Reacher answered, ‘None at all. Very generic American.’
‘Did he look foreign?’
‘Not really. Caucasian, six feet, maybe one-sixty, fair hair, pale blue eyes, slender, long arms and legs, kind of gangly, but when it came to pulling the gun out of his pocket and running up the path and jumping in the car he turned out to be plenty athletic. Gymnastic, even.’
‘OK,’ Sorenson said. ‘So the word choice was probably innocent.’
‘Except you have to look at the victim. He will have had dealings with foreigners.’
‘As a trade attaché? I suppose that’s the point.’
‘Have you ever met a trade attaché?’
‘No.’
‘Me neither,’ Reacher said. ‘But I met a few folks who claimed they were trade attachés.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘How much help does Coca-Cola really need to sell its stuff around the world? Not very much, right? Generally speaking American products speak for themselves. Yet every embassy has a trade attaché.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Have you ever seen a trade attaché’s office? I’ve been in two. Both had courtyard windows, not street windows, both were lined with lead and Faraday cages, and both were swept for bugs four times a day. I know the Coke formula is a secret, but that’s ridiculous.’
‘Cover for something?’
‘Exactly,’ Reacher said. ‘Every CIA head of station on the planet calls himself a trade attaché.’
Sheriff Goodman was dog tired. And he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to take Delfuenso’s daughter out of school for the day. Or for a couple of days, or a week, or a month, or whatever Special Agent Sorenson might have in mind. His attitude was the opposite. He felt work and structure and familiarity were useful crutches in stressful times. He encouraged his own people to come in as normal no matter what had happened. Bereavement, divorce, illness in the family, whatever. In his experience routine helped people cope. Obviously he had to go through the compassionate motions, telling people to take all the time they needed, stuff like that, but he always added that no one would think less of them if they stuck to their tasks. And most of them seemed grateful for it. Most of them worked on as usual, and they seemed to benefit in the long term.
But those were grown-ups, and Delfuenso’s kid was a kid.
He drove out to the short row of ranch houses slowly and reluctantly. Four times in his career he had been required to tell a parent a child had died. He had never had to tell a child its parent had died. Not a ten-year-old, anyway. He didn’t really know how. Just the facts, Sorenson had said, in an earlier conversation. Don’t say anything more until we know for sure. Not very helpful. The facts were tough. Hey kid, guess what? Your mom burned to death in a car. There was no easy way to say it. Because there was no easy way for the kid to face it. She goes to bed one night all hunky dory, and she wakes up the next morning with a different life.
Although: Just the facts. Don’t say anything more until we know for sure.
What were the facts? What did they actually know for sure? He had seen burned bodies. House fires, barn fires. You had to get dental records. Or DNA. For the death certificate, and the insurance. A couple of days, at least. Medical opinions, which had to be signed off and notarized. So as far as Delfuenso was concerned, nobody really knew anything for sure. Not yet. Except that she was missing, apparently carjacked.
And maybe a two-stage process would be better, with a ten-year-old. First, I’m sorry, but your mom is missing. Then, a couple of days later, when they were really sure, I’m sorry, but your mom died. Drip, drip. Maybe better than one massive blow. Or was that just cowardice on his own part?
He parked in front of the neighbour’s house and concluded, yes, it was cowardice on his own part, no question, but it was also the best approach, probably, with a ten-year-old kid. Kids were different.
Just the facts. Don’t say anything more until we know for sure.
He got out of his car, slow and reluctant. He closed the door and stood for a second, and then he tracked around the hood and stepped over the muddy gutter and walked up the neighbour’s short driveway.
>
FORTY
SORENSON GOT THROUGH the chequerboard and back to the Interstate without further incident. The car stayed on the road. The rain kept on falling. It was a gloomy day. The sky was low and the colour of iron. Traffic was heavier than Reacher had seen it the night before. Each vehicle was trailing a long grey Zeppelin of spray. Sorenson had her wipers on fast. She was sticking to seventy miles an hour. She asked, ‘What’s the fastest way of finding Alan King’s brother from the army?’
‘King claimed he was a red leg,’ Reacher said. ‘Probably just a dagby. The Gulf, the first time around. Mother Sill will know.’
‘I didn’t understand a word of that.’
‘A red leg is an artilleryman. Because way back they had red stripes on their dress pants. And their branch colour is still red. A dagby is a 13B MOS. Which is a cannon crewmember’s military occupational specialty. In other words, a dagby. A dumb-ass gun bunny. Mother Sill is Fort Sill, which is artillery HQ. Someone there will have a record. The Gulf the first time around was the thing with Saddam Hussein, back in 1991.’
‘I knew that part.’
‘Good.’
‘The brother’s first name was Peter, right?’
‘Correct.’
‘And you still think King was his real last name?’
‘More likely than not. Worth a try, anyway.’
‘Dumb-ass gun bunny isn’t very polite.’
‘But very necessary,’ Reacher said. ‘Unfortunately Frederick the Great once said that field artillery lends dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl. It went to their heads. They started calling themselves the kings of battle. They started to think they’re the most important part of the army. Which obviously isn’t true.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because the military police is the most important part of the army.’
‘What did they call you?’
‘Sir, usually.’
‘And?’
‘Meatheads. Monkey patrol. And chimps, but that was an acronym.’
‘For what?’
‘Completely hopeless in most policing situations.’
‘Where is Fort Sill?’
‘Lawton, Oklahoma.’
She speed-dialled her phone in its cradle. Reacher heard the ring tone loud and clear through the stereo. A voice answered, male, low and fast and without preamble. A duty officer, probably, with Sorenson’s number front and centre on his caller ID, and therefore instantly on the ball and ready for business. The night guy, most likely, still there at the end of his watch. He didn’t sound like a guy who had just gotten out of bed. Sorenson said to him, ‘I need you to call the army at Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma, and get what they have on an artilleryman named Peter King, who was on active service in 1991. Present whereabouts and details of family would be especially appreciated. Give them my cell number and ask them to call me back direct, OK?’
‘Understood,’ the guy said.
‘Is Stony in his office yet?’
‘Just arrived.’
‘What’s the word?’
‘Nothing is happening yet. It’s weird.’
‘No three-ring circus?’
‘Phones are quiet. No one has even asked for the night log yet.’
‘Weird.’
‘Like I said.’
The eyewitness was not kept waiting at the reception desk. There was no line. He had been given a cup of coffee and he had eaten a breakfast muffin. The woman at the desk took his name and asked what kind of bed he preferred. She was a plump, motherly type, seemingly very patient and capable. The eyewitness didn’t really understand her question.
He said, ‘Bed?’
The woman said, ‘We have rooms with kings, queens, and twins.’
‘I guess anything will do.’
‘Don’t you have a preference?’
‘What would you suggest?’
‘Honestly, I think the rooms with the queens are ideal. Overall they feel a little more spacious. With the armchairs and all? Most people like those rooms the best.’
‘OK, I’ll take one of those.’
‘Good,’ the woman said, brightly. She marked it up in a book and took a key off a hook. She said, ‘Room fourteen. It’s easy to find.’
The eyewitness carried the key in his hand and left the lobby. He stood for a moment in the chill air and looked up at the sky. It was going to rain. It was probably already raining in the north. He set off down the path and saw a knee-high fingerpost for rooms eleven through fifteen. He followed the sign. The path wound its way through sad winter flowerbeds and came out at a long low block of five rooms together. Room fourteen was the last but one. There was an empty leaf-strewn swimming pool not far from it. The eyewitness thought it would make a nice facility in the summer, with blue water in it, and the flowers all around it in bloom. He had never been in a swimming pool. Lakes and rivers, yes, but never a pool.
Beyond the pool was the perimeter wall, a waist-high decorative feature made of stucco over concrete blocks. Ten feet beyond that was the security fence, all tall and black and angular and topped with canted-in rolls of razor wire. The eyewitness figured it must have been very expensive. He knew all about the price of fencing, being a farmer. Labour and materials could kill you.
He unlocked room fourteen. He stepped inside. The bed was a little wider than the one he shared at home. There were clothes on it, in neat piles. Two outfits, both the same. Blue jeans, blue shirts, blue sweaters, white undershirts, white underwear, blue socks. There were pyjamas on the pillow. There were toiletries in the bathroom. Soap, shampoo, shaving cream. Some kind of lotion. Deodorant. There were razors. There was toothpaste, and a toothbrush sealed in cellophane. There was a comb. There was a bathrobe. There were lots of towels.
He looked at the bed but sat down in an armchair. He had been told lunch was available from twelve o’clock onward. Nothing to do until then. So he figured he might start his day with a nap. Just a short doze. It had been a long night.
Reacher waited until Sorenson was safely past a howling semi truck, and then he said, ‘Tell me about how the fingerprint thing worked with the dead guy.’
‘Standard procedure,’ Sorenson said. ‘It’s the first thing they do, before decomposition starts to make it difficult. They take the prints and upload them to the database.’
‘By satellite?’
‘No, over the regular cell phone networks.’
‘That’s convenient.’
‘You bet it is. We love cell phones. We love them to death. For all kinds of reasons. I mean, can you imagine? Suppose twenty years ago Congress had proposed a law saying every citizen had to wear a radio transponder around his neck, all day and all night, so the government could track him wherever he went. Can you imagine the outrage? But instead the citizens went right ahead and did it to themselves. In their pockets and purses, not around their necks, but the outcome is the same.’
‘Were there prints in the bright red car?’
‘Plenty. Those guys took no care at all.’
‘Did you upload them?’
‘Of course.’
‘Any results?’
‘Not yet,’ Sorenson said. ‘Which almost certainly means those guys aren’t in the database. The software will hunt for hours, until it’s sure, but it never takes this long. They must be virgins.’
‘Therefore not foreign,’ Reacher said. ‘There are no foreign fingerprint virgins, right? Everyone gets fingerprinted at the port of entry. Or for their visas. Unless they’re illegals. They could have come over the Canadian border, I guess. People say it’s full of holes.’
‘Except how did they get into Canada? We have access to their databases too. And Canada has no other borders. Unless they hiked across the North Pole or swam the Bering Strait.’
‘There’s Alaska.’
‘But to get into Alaska from overseas you have to be fingerprinted.’
‘No chance of errors or glitches?’
‘Not for the last ten
years.’
‘OK, they’re not foreign.’
Sorenson drove on. She had driven the opposite way just hours before, but she didn’t really recognize the terrain. The highway looked different. It was lit up a dull grey and there was no view to the sides and no horizon ahead or behind. It was like passing through an endless cloud. The rain was easing but the road was still streaming. There was spray everywhere.