A Wanted Man (37 page)

“This is it,” Delfuenso said.

“Which house?”

“The second house over the hill on the left.”

“You sure? We can’t see it yet.”

“The satellite pictures,” she said. “I looked at the neighbors. Up and down the street. And the corners. I know this is the right street. No fire hydrant. Every other corner has had one. This one doesn’t.
W
for without a fire hydrant,
W
for Wadiah. That’s how I planned to remember it.”

Reacher glanced around. No fire hydrant.

“Good work,” he said.

Sorenson volunteered to go in through the cellar door. If there was one. If not, she would find a side window and break in from there. Reacher was OK with that. The third angle would help, but it wouldn’t be decisive. Clearly the most dangerous spot would be the front, and clearly the most effective spot would be the back. Only two real choices. Risk and reward.

He said, “I’ll be the back door man.”

Delfuenso said, “Then I’ll take the front.”

“But don’t tell them you’re lost. Shoot them in the face instead. Before they even say hello.”

“We should give Sorenson a head start. If there is a cellar door, I mean. That’s a slower way in.”

“We will,” Reacher said. “When we get there.”

And then they moved off together, walking fast, up the street to their right.

Chapter 63

They stayed off the sidewalk and walked in the road. No
point in wasting what little tree cover there was. Reacher stopped them when he figured they were about seven feet below the crest of the rise. From there he and Sorenson would go yard to yard behind the houses, and Delfuenso would pause a long moment and then walk on alone. She would give them that head start because of their sideways detour and their tougher going. Fences, hedges, dogs. Maybe even barbed wire. This was Missouri, after all. The Southern Wire Company of St. Louis had once been the world’s biggest manufacturer of bootleg cattle wire. Three cents a pound. Enough to go round.

But Delfuenso’s approach was always going to be the most dangerous. Lookouts were always posted out front. Not always posted out back. If any approach was going to be spotted, it was going to be hers. Then it would depend on their paranoia level. Which might be high, by that point. Was she just an innocent pedestrian, or was everything a threat now?

There was no
barbed wire. No dogs. Suburban pets were too pampered to spend the night outside. Suburban yards were too fancy for wire. But there were hedges and fences. Some of the fences were high and some of the hedges had thorns. But they got through OK.
Sorenson was very agile over the fences. Better than Reacher. And thorny hedges could be backed through. Cheap denim was a tough material.

It was going to be hard to tell exactly when they would hit the top of the hill, because they were on flat rolled lawns in yards built up with all kinds of terraced landscaping. But there was a weak moon in the sky and Reacher could see the power lines through the gaps between houses, and he saw them peak on one particular pole, in a very shallow inverted V, and he took that to mean they were at the crest of the rise.

The second house over the hill on the left
.

Sorenson got it. She used her hands and mimed it out,
one, two
, and then she pointed at the
two
as if to say
That’s the target
. Reacher nodded and they moved on, through the yard they were in, over a picket fence with rabbit wire stapled to it, into the next yard, which belonged to the target’s next-door neighbor. It was crowded with stuff. There was a gas grill, and lawn chairs, and many and various wheeled vehicles. They were the kind small children sit astride and either pedal or scoot. One was in the shape of a tennis shoe. Reacher stopped and looked at the house. Three bedrooms, probably. Two of them full of kids. Thin walls. Nothing but siding and sheetrock. Better to shoot in the other direction. Unless the other neighbor was an orphanage.

They moved on, to the last fence. They looked over at their target.

Their target was a two-story house.

It was about half as wide and twice as high as any of its neighbors. It had dark red siding. It had what looked like a full-width kitchen across the back. Then would come a front central hallway, probably, with rooms either side. And a staircase. Probably four rooms on the second floor. About the size of any other house, really, but split in half and stacked.

Not good. Not good at all. Two-story houses were about eight times as difficult as one-story houses. That had been Reacher’s experience.

Sorenson looked a question at him.

He winked. Left eye.

They climbed the fence. Into the target’s yard. It was minimally maintained. Rough grass, no flowerbeds. No trees. No ornamental plantings. No grills, no chairs, no toys.

But there was a cellar door.

And it was wide open.

It was the traditional kind of cellar door. Made of pressed metal, maybe five feet long by four feet wide, split down the middle into two halves, built at a very shallow angle into the ground, the top end hard up against the foundation of the house and about a foot and a half higher than the bottom end. It gave onto a short flight of rough wooden steps.

There was no light in the basement. Reacher walked left and right and saw no light anywhere in the house, except behind a small pebble-glass window on the ground floor, on the left-hand side of the building. A powder room, presumably. Occupied, possibly. Worst case, all kinds of fanatics sleeping four to every room, with one of them awake and in the toilet.

Dining room, living room, maybe four rooms upstairs.

Worst case, maybe twenty-four people.

He walked back to Sorenson and she held forked fingers under her eyes and then put them together and pointed them down through the cellar door:
I’m going to take a look down there
. He nodded. She took the wooden steps slowly and carefully, putting her weight near the outer ends, where creaks were less likely. She reached the concrete floor and ducked her head and disappeared under the house.

Reacher waited. Forty seconds. A whole minute.

Sorenson came back. The duck of the head, the reappearance in the well at the foot of the steps. In the moonlight she looked a little out of breath. But she nodded.
OK. It’s clear
. Reacher pointed at her, and tapped his left wrist, and then touched his ear.
Wait until you hear us at the doors
.

Sorenson disappeared again.

Reacher backed away until he could see down the side of the house to the street. Delfuenso was waiting there. In the shadows. She was leaning on a sidewalk tree. She was practically merged with it. He waved. She pushed off the tree. She mimed:
What’s happening?
A
cupped hand, brought up to her shoulder, her elbow tucked in. He shrugged. A big exaggerated gesture:
I’m not sure
. She held her thumb sideways:
Yes or no?

He held his thumb up.

Yes
.

She nodded. She took a breath. She held her palms out to him, both hands, including the gun, and she spread all her fingers:
In ten
.

She curled a finger down:
In nine
.

Another finger:
In eight
.

Then she scooted sideways out of the picture, toward the front door, and Reacher did the same thing, toward the back.

Seven. Six. Five. Four
.

Three
.

Two
.

One
.

Delfuenso had been counting faster than Reacher. He heard a hammering on the front door while his foot was still in the air. The hammering sounded like the butt of a Glock on a steel plate. A steel front door. Reinforced. A security measure. He wondered what kind of resistance the back door was about to offer him.

Not much, as it turned out.

He smashed his boot heel an inch above the knob, accelerating all the way, punching hard through the last final fraction, and the door burst inward and then Reacher was right there in the kitchen, a little fast, but otherwise with no more trouble than stepping over some kind of small hurdle in his way. The hammering continued at the front. The kitchen was cold and empty. Recently used, but currently deserted. Reacher stepped into the hallway, ready to find someone on the way to answer the door, ready to shoot that someone in the back.

The hallway was deserted.

The hammering continued. Loud enough to wake the dead. Reacher prowled the hallway, his gun stiff-armed way out in front of him, his torso jerking violently left and right from the hips, like a crazy disco dance. The house-storming shuffle. There was a dining room on the left. It was full of stuff and full of furniture. But it was empty of people.

There was a parlor on the right.

Full of stuff. Full of furniture.

Empty of people.

There were two more doors off the hallway. One had a bar of light under it. The pebble-glass window. The powder room. Occupied, possibly. Reacher took a long step and raised his boot and smashed it through the lock. The lock proved no stronger than the kitchen’s. The door crashed open and Reacher stepped back with his finger tight on the trigger.

The powder room was empty.

The light was on, but there was no one home.

Then Sorenson stepped in through the final door, leading with her Glock.

“Don’t shoot,” Reacher said. “It’s me.”

He saw the cellar stairs behind her. Empty. No one there.

Ground floor all clear
.

He said, “Let Delfuenso in. I’m going to check upstairs.”

He went up. His least favorite situation. He hated the stairs. Everyone did. Everything was against you, including gravity. Your enemy had the high ground and the better angle. And the limitless possibilities of concealment. And the immense satisfaction of seeing you lead with your head.

Not good, but Reacher went up those particular stairs happily enough, because by that point he was certain the house was empty. He had busted into houses before. The vibe was wrong. There was no heartbeat. It felt still and quiet. It felt abandoned.

And it was.

There were four bedrooms with four walk-in closets and two bathrooms, and Reacher checked them all, jerking left and right again, pirouetting like a damn paramilitary ballerina. There should have been music playing, with sudden orchestral climaxes.

All the bedrooms and closets and bathrooms were empty.

There was junk, there were beds, there were clothes, there was furniture.

But there were no people.

Ground floor all clear
.

Second floor all clear
.

Nobody home.

Which in some
small portion of everyone’s mind is a very welcome result. Human nature. Relief. Anticlimax. Peace with honor. But Reacher and Sorenson and Delfuenso met in the central hallway and admitted to nothing but frustration. If McQueen wasn’t there, he had to be somewhere else just as bad, if not worse. He had been evacuated in a hurry.

“They must have a bigger place somewhere,” Reacher said. “Surely. They’re supposed to be two medium-sized groups working together. This place is too small for them, apart from anything else. This place is just a pied-à-terre, or officers’ quarters, or guest quarters. Something like that. Some kind of extra facility.”

“Could be a mail drop,” Sorenson said.

“McQueen lived here,” Delfuenso said. “We know that for sure. He told us so, and we have seven months of GPS to prove it.”

Reacher walked up and down the hallway, turning lights on as he went. He lit up the dining room and he lit up the parlor. He lit up the kitchen. He said, “Start looking. If they’re back and forth between two places regularly, they’ll have left some kind of a trace. However well they cleaned up.”

And they had cleaned up pretty well. That was clear. They had done a decent job. But not in any conventional sense. There was considerable disarray. There were used dishes in the sink. The beds were unmade. Sofa cushions had not been plumped, old newspapers had not been removed, the trash had not been taken out. Mugs had not been washed, ashtrays had not been emptied, clothes had not been folded and put away. The occupants had gotten out fast.

But they had prioritized. They had taken a lot of stuff with them. That was where their clean-up effort had been spent. Mail, paperwork, bills, bureaucracy, officialdom. No trace of any such items had been left behind. No names. No papers large or small. No scraps. No notes, no doodles, no messages. Not that Reacher was expecting to find a treasure map with
OUR HQ
and an arrow on it, in bright red
ink. But most people leave something behind. Some small unconsidered item. A toll receipt, a matchbook, a cinema ticket. In the trash, dropped in a corner, under a sofa cushion. These guys hadn’t. They were pretty good. Careful, meticulous, alert and aware. Very disciplined. That was clear. Disciplined on an ongoing day-to-day basis, too. Not just high days and holidays. Good security. Further progress was going to depend on a random mistake.

Then Sorenson called from the kitchen.

With the random mistake.

Chapter 64

Sorenson had seven big-size McDonald’s paper sacks
lined up on the kitchen counter. Take-out food. The bags were used and stained and crumpled. Sorenson had emptied them all. There were soda cups and milk shake cups and burger clamshells and apple pie wrappers. There were cheeseburger papers and register receipts. There was old lettuce going brown, and chopped onion going slimy, and ketchup packets going crusted.

Sorenson said, “They like McDonald’s.”

“Not a crime in itself,” Reacher said. “I like McDonald’s.”

“But it’s a good plan B,” Delfuenso said. “We could leave them alone and they’ll die anyway in five years from heart attacks.”

“They like McDonald’s,” Sorenson said again. “My guess is pretty much every day they sent a gofer to the nearest drive-through for a couple of sacks. I bet there’s a drive-through not more than five minutes from here.”