One Shot (22 page)

The interior smelled of perfume.

The west-east part of the dogleg was some kind of
major county road. But after the turn north the blacktop
narrowed and the shoulders grew ragged. There was
agriculture going on to the left and the right. Some kind
of a winter crop was planted in giant circles. Radial
irrigation booms turned slowly. The corners where the
booms didn't reach were unplanted and stony.

Superimposing circles on squares wasted more than
twenty-one per cent of every acre, but Reacher figured
that might be an efficient trade-off in places where land
was plentiful and irrigation hardware wasn't.

He drove four more miles through the fields and
passed a half-dozen tracks with mailboxes at the end of
them. The mailboxes were painted with numbers and
the tracks led away west and east to small swaybacked
farm dwellings maybe two hundred yards off the road.

He watched the numbers and slowed before he got to
the Oliver place. It had a mailbox like all the others, up
on a post made out of two figure-eight concrete blocks
stacked end on end. The number was daubed in white
on a weathered plywood rectangle wired to the
concrete. The track was narrow with two muddy ruts
flanking a weedy centre hump. There were sharp tyre
tracks in the mud. New treads, wide, aggressive, from a
big truck. Not the kind of tyres you bought at the $99-for-four place.

Reacher turned the Toyota in and bumped down the
track. At the end of it he could see a clapboard
farmhouse with a barn behind it and a clean red pickup
truck next to it. The truck was turned nose-out and it
had a massive chrome radiator grille. A Dodge Ram,
Reacher figured. He parked in front of it and got out.

The house and the barn were about a hundred years old
and the truck was about a month old. It had the big Hemi
motor, and the crew cab, and four wheel drive, and huge
tyres. It was probably worth more than the house, which
was badly maintained and one winter away from serious
trouble. The barn was no better. But it had new iron
clasps on the doors, with a bicycle U-lock through them.

There was no sound except for a distant rainfall hiss
as the irrigation booms turned slowly in the fields. No
activity anywhere. No traffic on the road. No dogs
barking. The air was still and full of the sharp smell of
fertilizer and earth. Reacher walked to the front door
and knocked twice with the flat of his hand. No
response. He tried again. No response. He walked
round to the back of the house and found a woman
sitting on a porch glider.

She was a lean and leathery person wearing a faded
print dress and holding a pint bottle of something
golden in colour. She was probably fifty, but she could
have passed for seventy, or forty if she took a bath and
got a good night's sleep. She had one foot tucked up
underneath her, and was using the other to scoot the
glider slowly back and forth. She wasn't wearing shoes.

'What do you want?' she said.

'Jeb,' Reacher said.

'Not here.'

'He's not at work either.'

'I know that.'

'So where is he?'

'How would I know?'

'Are you his mother?'

'Yes, I am. You think I'm hiding him here? Go ahead
and check.' Reacher said nothing. The woman stared at
him and rocked the glider, back and forth, back and
forth. The bottle rested easy in her lap. 'I insist,' she
said. 'I mean it. Search the damn house.'

'I'll take your word for it.'

"Why should you?'

'Because if you invite me to search the house it means
he's not in it.' 'Like I said. He's not here.'

What about the barn?'

'It's locked from the outside. There's only one key and
he's got if Reacher said nothing.

'He went away,' the woman said. 'Disappeared.'

'Disappeared?'

'Only temporarily, I hope.'

'Is that his truck?'

The woman nodded. Took a small, delicate sip from
her bottle.

'So he walked?' Reacher said.

'He was picked up. By a friend.'

When?'

'Late last night.'

'To go where?'

'I have no idea.'

'Take a guess.'

The woman shrugged, rocked, sipped.

'Far away, probably,' she said. 'He has friends all over.

California, maybe.

Or Arizona. Or Texas. Or Mexico.' "Was this trip
planned?' Reacher asked.

The woman wiped the neck of the bottle on the hem of
her dress and held it out towards him. He shook his
head. Sat down on the porch step. The old wood
creaked once under his weight. The glider kept on
rocking, back and forth. It was almost silent. Almost, but
not quite. There was a small sound from the mechanism
that came once at the end of each swing, and a little
creak from a porch board as it started its return.

Reacher could smell mildew from the cushions, and
bourbon from the bottle. 'Cards on the table, whoever
the hell you are,' the woman said. 'Jeb got home last
night limping. With his nose busted. And I'm figuring
you for the guy who bust it' Why?'

Who else would come looking for him? I'm guessing
he started something he couldn't finish.' Reacher said
nothing.

'So he ran,' the woman said. 'The pussy.'

'Did he call someone last night? Or did someone call
him?'

'How would I know? He makes a thousand calls a day,
he takes a thousand calls a day. His cell phone is the
biggest thing in his life. Next to his truck.'

'Did you see who picked him up?'

'Some guy in a car. He waited on the road. Wouldn't
come down the track. I didn't see much. It was dark.

White lights on the front, red lights on the back, but all
cars have those.'

Reacher nodded. He had seen only a single set of tyre
marks in the mud, from the big pickup. The car that had
waited on the road was probably a sedan, too low-slung
to make it down the farm track. 'Did he say how long he
would be gone?'

The woman just shook her head.

'Was he scared of something?'

'He was kind of beaten down. Deflated.'

Deflated. Like the redhead in the auto parts store.

'OK,' Reacher said. 'Thanks.'

'You going now?'

'Yes,' Reacher said. He walked back the way he had
come, listening to the glider moving, listening to the hiss
of irrigation water. He backed the Toyota all the way to
the road and swung the wheel and headed south.

He put the Toyota next to the Chevy and headed inside
the store. Gary was still behind the register. Reacher
ignored him and headed straight for the No Admittance
door. The redhead was still behind the desk. She was
almost through with the invoices. The stack on her right
was tall, and the stack on her left had just one sheet of
paper in it. She wasn't doing anything with it. She was
leaning back in the chair, unwilling to finish, unwilling to
get back out to the public. Or to Gary. Reacher put the
car keys on the desk.

'Thanks for the loan,' he said.

'Did you find him?' she asked.

'He's gone.'

She said nothing.

'You look tired,' Reacher said.

She said nothing.

'Like you've got no energy. No sparkle. No
enthusiasm.'

'So?'

'Last night you were full of beans.'

I'm at work now.' "You were at work last night too. You
were getting paid.'

'You said you were going to forget all about that.'

'I am. Have a nice life, Sandy.'

She watched him for a minute.

'You too, Jimmy Reese,' she said.

He turned round and closed the door on her again and
headed out to the daylight. Started walking south, back
to town.

There were four people in Helen Rodin's office when
he got there. Helen herself, and three strangers. One of
them was a guy in an expensive suit. He was sitting in
Helen's chair, behind her desk. She was standing next
to him, head bent, talking. Some kind of an urgent
conference. The other two strangers were standing near
the window, like they were waiting, like they were next in
line. One was a man, one was a woman. The woman had
long dark hair and glasses. The man had no hair and
glasses. Both were dressed casually. Both had lapel
badges with their names printed large. The woman had
Mary Mason followed by a bunch of letters that had to
be medical. The man had Warren Niebuhr with the same
bunch of letters. Doctors, Reacher figured, probably
psychiatrists.

The name badges made them look like they had been
dragged out of a convention hall. But they didn't seem
unhappy about it.

Helen looked up from her discussion.

'Folks, this is Jack Reacher,' she said. 'My investigator
dropped out and Mr Reacher agreed to take over his
role.'

News to me, Reacher thought. But he said nothing.

Then Helen gestured at the guy in her chair, proudly.

'This is Alan Danuta,' she said. 'He's a lawyer
specializing in veterans' issues. From D.C. Probably the
best there is.'

'You got here fast,' Reacher said to him.

'I had to,' the guy said back. 'Today is the critical day
for Mr Barr.'

We're all headed for the hospital,' Helen said. The
doctors say he's ready for us. I was hoping that Alan
would consult by phone or e-mail, but he flew right in.'

'Easier for me that way,' Danuta said.

'No, I got lucky,' Helen said. 'And then even luckier,
because

there's

a

psychiatric

conference

in

Bloomington all week. Dr Mason and Dr Niebuhr drove
straight down.'

'I specialize in memory loss,' Dr Mason said.

'And I specialize in coercion,' Dr Niebuhr said.

'Dependency issues in the criminal mind, and so on.'

'So this is the team,' Helen said.

'What about his sister?' Reacher asked.

'She's already with him.'

'We need to talk.'

'Privately?'

'Just for a moment'

She made an excuse me face to the others and led
Reacher into the outer office. 'You get anywhere?' she
asked him.

'The bimbo and the four other guys were recruited by a
friend of theirs called Jeb Oliver. He paid them a
hundred bucks each. I figure he kept another five for his
trouble. I went to his house, but he's gone.' 'Where?'

'Nobody knows. He was picked up by a guy in a car.'

Who is he?'

'He works at the store with the bimbo. But he's also a
small-time dope dealer.' 'Really?'

Reacher nodded. 'There's a barn behind his house
with a fancy lock on it.

Maybe a meth lab, maybe a store room. He spends a
lot of time on his cell phone. He owns a truck that had to
cost twice what a store clerk makes in a year. And he
lives with his mother.' What does that prove?'

'Drug dealers are more likely than anyone else to live
with their mothers. I read it in the paper.' 'Why?'

'They've usually got small-time priors. They can't pass
the kind of background checks that landlords like to
run.' Helen said nothing.