Текст книги "A Wanted Man"

Автор книги: Lee Child

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

FIFTY-TWO

REACHER WRENCHED THE car door open and tore the phone out of the guy’s hand and hurled it high in the air, right over the roof of the bar. Then he grabbed the guy by the scruff of his sweater and hauled him out of his seat and half dragged and half ran him back the way he had come, ten feet, twenty, and then he spun him around like a discus thrower and launched him towards the back wall of the cocktail lounge. Then he sprinted back and jammed himself into the guy’s seat and slammed the lever into gear and stamped on the gas. Gravel sprayed all over the place and the car shot forward and he stamped on the brake and more or less fell out the door and danced around the trunk of Goodman’s car to the driver’s door. He blipped the fob and tore the door open and started up and backed away from the back wall of the bar and swung the wheel hard.

The sand-coloured Crown Vic was still moving. He had left it in gear. He overtook it and turned tight around its hood and its slow roll caught him with a soft low-speed impact, its front end against his rear quarter. He fishtailed free and drove on through the gap between the bar and the next establishment in line. He glanced left and saw the sandy-haired guy limping as fast as he could after something, either Goodman’s car or his own, he wasn’t sure. After that last glimpse he looked away from the guy and focused forward and drove through the front lot and bounced over the camber of the main drag and squeezed through a gap into the back lots on the other side of the road.

Then he slowed down and took a breath and got straightened up and edged forward until he was lined up with the next gap south and had a distant view of the motel and the diner together.

No sign of Sorenson.

No action at the diner.

The blue Crown Vic was still parked. Still quiet. No one was rushing towards it. The diner door stayed resolutely closed. There was no commotion visible through the windows.

Reacher watched for a whole minute, until he was convinced.

The State Department guy had not been on the phone to the diner.

So then he watched the motel, and three minutes later Sorenson’s room door opened and she stepped out. She was in the same pant suit with the new shirt under it. She had her old shirt balled up in the new shirt’s wrapper. She was taking her laundry home. A different approach. Because she had a home.

She stood for a second on the walkway outside her room, glancing left and right, head high, like a woman looking for a taxicab from a city sidewalk. Then she set off north towards the bar where he had said the car was parked. He turned the wheel and eased out through the gap and crunched through the front lot and bumped over the road again and swooped around and braked to a stop right next to her. He leaned over and opened her door and she slid into her seat like it was a manoeuvre they had rehearsed every day of their lives.

He said, ‘I had to move. I had a little trouble with your Mr Lester from the State Department.’

She said, ‘Mr Lester isn’t mine.’

Then he realized he had more trouble than he had thought. Far back in the mirror he saw Dawson and Mitchell burst out the diner door and run out into the parking lot. Both had phones to their ears. Their free hands were pumping and their jackets were flapping open. So Lester had in fact called the diner. But not deliberately. Not directly. In a very circuitous way instead. Probably he had been on the line with his people in Foggy Bottom, and his shouted You’re the person we’re looking for and the abrupt termination of the call had gotten some bright guy thinking, and that bright guy had immediately called the Hoover Building, and the Hoover Building had called Kansas City, and Kansas City had called Dawson and Mitchell on their cells, and were in fact probably still in the process of telling them The guy you’re looking for is currently kicking Lester Lester’s ass about twenty yards from you.

They saw him. Or they saw Sorenson. They froze in place and pointed and then ran for their car.

Reacher hit the gas and the sudden acceleration dumped Sorenson back in the passenger seat and the car slewed and fishtailed over the gravel. Reacher fought the wheel and bumped down over the kerb at an angle and took off north up the road. He craned his neck and watched in the mirror and saw the blue Bureau car jam backward and turn and come after him.

‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘I’m a lousy driver.’

‘Now you tell me,’ Sorenson said. She scrabbled around and clipped her seat belt and pulled it tight around her. Reacher kept his foot down hard. A big V-8, police spec, plenty of power and torque. Not bad at all. Except that Dawson and Mitchell had the exact same car. Same V-8, same spec, same power and torque. And maybe less weight, without the light bar on the roof and the push bars front and rear. Better aerodynamics, certainly.

Reacher knew the Interstate was fifty miles ahead, and he knew there wasn’t much of anything else before that. There were some turns left and right, and there were some small stands of trees here and there, and there were occasional old wooden farm buildings standing all rotted and abandoned and unexplained in the fields. Apart from that there was just winter dirt, and it was all very flat. No dips, no valleys. No hills, no ridges.

Places to run.

No place to hide.

The road surface was bad, and the road bed had been heaved up and down by years of winter frosts and summer droughts. Acceptable at normal speeds, but dangerous going fast. Goodman’s cruiser was riding like a yacht on an ocean swell. The engine was howling and the wheel was writhing in Reacher’s hands. Dawson and Mitchell were maybe four hundred yards back, but they were gaining. Reacher jammed his foot down harder. Pedal to the metal. A hundred miles an hour.

Places to run.

No place to hide.

Puller, he thought.

He said, ‘Do you know how to work the radio?’

Sorenson said, ‘I could try.’

‘Find out where Puller is with his radar gun. Tell him he’s got a speeder heading north. A dark blue sedan.’

Reacher drove on. No steering involved. The road was dead straight. The car went weightless over dips and hollows. Never airborne, but not far from it. Sorenson took the microphone out of its clip and fiddled with switches. She cleared her throat and said, ‘Deputy Puller, what is your location?’

Puller’s voice came back over static: ‘Who is that?’

‘This is Agent Sorenson with the FBI. Where are you now?’

‘A mile shy of the county line, ma’am.’

‘North, south, east or west?’

‘North.’

‘OK, good. You have a speeder coming north towards you. A dark blue Ford Crown Victoria. Please stop the driver and caution him against his reckless and unsafe behaviour.’

‘Will do, ma’am.’

‘Out,’ Sorenson said. She hung up the microphone. She said, ‘How do you stop a car doing a hundred miles an hour? We’ll probably get Puller killed.’

‘In which case we’ll be helping the gene pool.’ Reacher hurtled onward. Dawson and Mitchell were now three hundred yards back. About six seconds, at a hundred miles an hour. But they were still gaining. Reacher scanned far ahead. Straight road, flat dirt, low horizon. No sign of Puller.

He asked, ‘Did your tech team call?’

Sorenson said, ‘Not yet. What’s on your mind?’

‘Motive,’ Reacher said. ‘Who snatches a dead woman’s kid? Especially a kid who saw nothing and knows nothing?’

‘How can the autopsy answer that question?’

‘It might not,’ Reacher said. ‘That’s what’s on my mind.’ His foot was hard on the boards. It was crushing the pedal. But the car was tapped out. It wouldn’t go any faster. A hundred was as good as it got. They passed a turn to the left. Another, on the right. Paved, but not much more than tracks between fields.

‘There,’ Sorenson said.

Reacher saw a dot on the horizon. A tiny smudge, vaguely black and white and gold against the brown. Puller’s cruiser, waiting on the shoulder. Maybe a mile away. Thirty-six seconds. No more turns before it. Far away to the right was a copse of trees. Faraway to the left was an old barn, swaybacked and grey with age.

Thirty seconds.

Twenty seconds.

‘Hold tight,’ Reacher said.

Fifteen seconds.

He clamped the wheel tight in his hands and came off the gas and stamped on the brakes. The front end dipped radically and he and Sorenson were thrown forward and he fought to keep the car straight. Dawson and Mitchell didn’t slow down. They kept on coming. Puller’s car was a hundred yards ahead. Then fifty. Then thirty. Then Reacher swung the wheel hard and drove off the road into the dirt on the right and Dawson and Mitchell were launched ahead of him like a slingshot. Reacher hugged a tight bouncing circle in the dirt and saw Dawson and Mitchell passing Puller at about seventy and Puller lighting up his strobes and his siren and pulling out behind them. Reacher continued the circular turn and thumped back up on the road and headed south, fast, back the way he had come, all the way to the turn he had seen on the left, which was now on the right. He braked hard and took it and pattered over the lumpy surface and turned in on a rutted track and came to a dead stop behind the old swaybacked barn. He got out and ran to the far corner of the ramshackle structure and peered out north.

Nothing in the distance. No sign of Dawson and Mitchell. Not yet. They were still out of sight, more than a mile to the north. He counted out time and space in his head. Right then they would be slowing, stopping, turning around, hassling with Puller, showing ID, arguing, yelling, getting frustrated.

Getting delayed.

Then they would be coming back south, as fast as they could. They would have seen his tight turn on the dirt, and they would be planning on chasing him all the way back to town.

Three minutes, he figured.

Maybe three minutes and ten seconds.

He waited.

And then he saw them, right on time, far away on the main drag, hustling left to right, north to south, doing about a hundred again. An impressive sight. The big stately sedan was really picking up its skirts. Its paint was winking in the watery sun. It was planted firmly on the blacktop, squatting at the rear, straddling the centre line. Reacher ran back past Goodman’s car and peered out from the barn’s other corner. He got a rear view of the blue Crown Vic blasting south. After ten seconds it was a tiny dot. After twenty seconds it was gone altogether.

He breathed out and walked back to the car. He got back in and closed the door. He sat slumped in the seat with his hands on his knees.

Silence. Nothing but the faithful idle of the engine, and clicks and ticks as stressed components cooled back down.

Sorenson said, ‘You’re not such a terrible driver.’

He said, ‘Thank you.’

‘What now?’

‘We wait.’

‘Where?’

‘I guess this place is as good as any.’

She unzipped her black leather bag and took out Goodman’s phone. She clipped it in its dashboard cradle. It chimed once to tell them it was charging.

Then it started to ring.

She leaned over and checked the window.

‘My tech team,’ she said.

FIFTY-THREE

SORENSON TOUCHED THE green button and Reacher heard telephone sounds over the speakers again, weirdly clear and detailed, like before. Sorenson said, ‘You have something for me?’

A man’s voice said, ‘Yeah, we have some preliminary results.’

The voice was tired, and a little breathless. Reacher thought the guy was walking and talking at the same time. Probably stumbling out to the fresh air and the bright sunlight, after long and unpleasant hours in a white-tiled basement room. Breathing deep, blinking, yawning and stretching. Reacher could picture the scene. A pair of institutional doors, a short flight of concrete steps, a parking lot. Maybe planters and benches. Back in the day the guy would have been pausing at that point, to light a welcome cigarette.

Sorenson said, ‘Go ahead.’

The guy said, ‘You want me to be honest?’

‘You usually are.’

‘Then I can’t promise you the incineration was post mortem. It might have been. Or it might not have been. There’s something that might have been damage to what might have been a rib. If I squint a bit I could see it as a gunshot wound to the chest. Which might have been enough. It’s in what would have been the general area of the heart. But I wouldn’t say so in court. The other side would laugh me out of the room. There’s far too much heat damage for conclusions about external injuries.’

‘Gut feeling?’

‘Right now my gut feeling is I want to retrain as a hairdresser. This thing was about the worst I’ve ever seen.’

Sorenson was quiet for a long moment.

Then she said, ‘Anything else?’

‘I started from the beginning, with the pelvic girdle. That’s the only way to confirm gender with a case like this. And it was totally clear. The pelvic bones had been reasonably well protected by a thick layer of fat.’

Reacher looked up. Delfuenso wasn’t fat. She was thin.

Sorenson said, ‘And?’

‘It’s beyond a reasonable doubt the corpse was male.’

Sorenson ran through the details with her guy. Like a crash course in forensic anthropology. Reacher remembered some of the words and some of the principles from the classroom. He had studied such things once, partly as a professional requirement, and partly out of interest. There were four things to look for with pelvises. First was the iliac spread. The ilia were the big bones shaped like butterfly wings, and female ilia were flared wider, and shaped more like a cradle, like cupped hands, with the anterior spines farther apart, whereas male ilia were narrower and tighter and much more straight up and down, more like a guy on a riverbank describing a foot-long trout.

Then second, the hole in the ischium was small and triangular in females, and large and round in males. And third, the angle across the pubic arch was always greater than ninety degrees in females, and rounded, and always less than ninety degrees in males, and sharp.

And the fourth was the clincher, of course: the space between the ischia was big enough in females for a baby’s head to fit through. Not so with males. Not even close.

Pelvises didn’t lie. They couldn’t be confused one for the other. Even a million-year-old pelvis dug out of the ground in pieces was quite clearly either male or female. Short of being ground to powder, a pelvis determined gender, no question, no doubt at all, end of story, thank you and goodnight. That was what Reacher had learned in the classroom, and that was what the voice on the phone confirmed.

Sorenson said, ‘So it wasn’t Delfuenso.’

The voice on the phone said, ‘Correct. And I’m happy for you. But that’s all I can reliably tell you. It was a male human being. Anything more than that would be pure guesswork.’

Sorenson clicked off the call and turned to Reacher and said, ‘You knew, didn’t you?’

Reacher said, ‘I suspected.’

‘Why?’

‘Nothing else made sense after Lucy was taken. I figured Delfuenso might still be a captive somewhere, maybe freaking out, maybe refusing to cooperate, and the only way to shut her up was go get her kid.’

‘To calm her down?’

‘Or to threaten her with.’

‘So now we have two of them in danger.’

‘Or maybe we don’t,’ Reacher said. ‘Maybe we have two of them as safe as houses. Because there are other potential conclusions, too. But they could be wrong conclusions. They could be embarrassingly grand pronouncements.’

‘Which one died? King or McQueen? Or was it someone we never heard of yet?’

‘It was King, I think. He was a little fat, especially around the middle. And he would fit the theory.’

‘Which is what?’

‘Something McQueen said when we pulled off the Interstate for gas.’

‘You told me this already. He said you should have trusted him.’

‘Before that. I was dubious about coming off there and he got a little impatient and said he was in charge.’

‘Maybe he was. One or the other had to be. I doubt it was a democracy.’

‘But there’s a sound in those specific words, don’t you think? In charge? You have special agents in charge. We had officers in charge of this and that. A charge is something you’re given. You’re entrusted with it. It’s authority that devolves down an official hierarchy.’

‘That’s very subjective.’

‘I think a regular bad guy would have said I’m the boss here. Something like that.’

‘So what are you saying? You think McQueen is ex-military? Or ex-law enforcement?’

Reacher didn’t answer that. He said, ‘And then he said the thing about trusting him. As if he was worthy of trust, somehow as of right. And then he shot at me and missed.’

‘Probably not either military or law enforcement, then. Lousy marksman.’

‘Maybe he was a great marksman.’

‘But he was in the room with you. It was what, about eight feet? How can he be a great marksman and miss from eight feet?’

‘Maybe he missed on purpose.’

Sorenson said nothing.

Reacher said, ‘I didn’t really think much of it at the time. I was just happy to be alive. But it was a hell of a high shot. It was a foot over my head. Maybe more. I remember saying it would have missed the motel keeper if he’d been standing on his own shoulders. It was exaggerated. It must have been about ten degrees above the horizontal. More than eleven-point-something, to be precise.’

‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’

‘I’m serious. There’s more. He moved his position so he was blocking my view of the car.’

‘So?’

‘So he was blocking their view of me. As if he needed them to think he was doing one thing, when really he was doing another thing.’

‘He missed. That’s all. People do, sometimes.’

‘I think it was deliberate.’

‘He killed the guy in the pumping station, Reacher. He killed his own partner, apparently. He burned him to death. Why would he miss you deliberately? What makes you special?’

‘Only one way to find out,’ Reacher said.

‘Which is what?’

‘Tell me your phone number.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m going to need it.’

‘I left my phone in Delfuenso’s house, remember?’

‘You’re about to go get it back. And your car. And your reputation. You’re about to be a hero.’

FIFTY-FOUR

REACHER AND SORENSON swapped places in Goodman’s car and Sorenson drove back to town, sedately, never more than fifty miles an hour. They passed Sin City, and they passed the empty bean fields, and they passed the quarter-mile of old machinery, and more bean fields, and they turned right at the crossroads and drove a hundred yards and parked next to the old pumping station. Sorenson fiddled with Goodman’s phone and brought up the list of recent calls and voice mails. She found Dawson’s cell number. She dialled it and the guy answered almost instantly.

He said, ‘Sheriff Goodman?’

Sorenson said, ‘No, this is Sorenson out of Omaha. Long story with the sheriff’s phone. But I have the man you’re looking for. He’s in my custody. You can come pick him up any time you like.’

‘Where are you?’

‘At the old pumping station.’

‘We’ll be there in two minutes.’

Ninety seconds later Reacher opened his door and said, ‘OK, I’m ready for my close-up.’ He got out into the cold and crossed the sidewalk and faced the old pumping station’s concrete wall and put his fingertips on the rough surface. He shuffled his feet a yard apart and leaned forward and took his weight on his hands. Assume the position. Sorenson stood six feet behind him and pulled her gun and held it two-handed, trained on the centre of his back.

‘Looking good,’ she said.

‘Not feeling good,’ he said.

‘Best of luck,’ she said. ‘It’s been fun hanging out with you.’

‘We’re not done yet. I hope to see you again.’

They held their poses. The concrete was cold. Then Reacher heard tyres on the pavement. He heard a car come to a stop, and he heard doors open. He turned his head. The blue Crown Vic. Dawson and Mitchell. They came out fast, coats billowing, guns drawn, triumph on their faces. They talked with Sorenson briefly. Congratulations, appreciation, thanks. They said they would take over from there. Reacher turned his face back to the wall. He heard Sorenson walk away. He heard Goodman’s car start up. He heard it drive off down the street.

Then there was silence. Just breathing from behind him, and the sound of cold air moving across the land.

Then either Dawson or Mitchell said, ‘Turn around.’

Which Reacher was glad to do. His fingertips were numb and his shoulders were starting to hurt. He pushed off the wall and rocked upright and turned around. Both guys had their guns on him. They looked the same as they had through the diner window. Early forties, blue suits, white shirts, blue ties, still ragged, still tired, still flushed. Maybe a little more tired and a little more flushed than before, due to their recent exertions. Of which the worst part had probably been dealing with Puller. Fast driving was no big deal. Dealing with morons was. What was the phrase? Like teaching Hindu to a beagle.

The one who was a little taller and a little thinner than the other said, ‘My name is Dawson. My partner’s name is Mitchell. We’d like you to get in the car.’

Reacher said, ‘You understand I never met King or McQueen before last night?’

‘Yes, sir. You were hitching rides. We accept that completely. No hard feelings about the evasive manoeuvres in the stolen cop car just now, either. And Mr Lester is prepared to overlook his injuries.’

‘What injuries?’

Mitchell said, ‘You hurt his leg. His feelings too, probably.’

‘So we’re all good?’

‘Peachy.’

‘Then why are you arresting me?’

Dawson said, ‘We’re not arresting you. Not technically.’

‘You’re arresting me untechnically, then?’

‘Recent legislation gives us various powers. We’re authorized to use all of them.’

‘Without telling me what they are?’

‘You’re required to cooperate with us in matters of national security. And we’re required to think primarily of your own personal safety.’

‘Safety from what?’

‘You’re tangled up with things you don’t understand.’

‘So really you’re doing me a favour?’

Dawson said, ‘That’s exactly what we’re doing.’

Reacher got in their car. In the back. Loose, not handcuffed, not restrained in any way except for the seat belt they made him wear. They said it was Bureau policy to follow best practices for driver and passenger safety. He was pretty sure the rear doors wouldn’t open from the inside, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t planning on jumping out.

Mitchell drove, east to the crossroads and then south into the hinterland. Dawson sat quiet alongside him. Reacher watched out the window. He wanted to study the route they were taking. The county two-lane heading south was pretty much the same as it was heading north. There was no direct equivalent of Sin City, but otherwise the terrain was familiar. Fallow winter fields, some trees, a few old barns, an occasional grocery store, an untidy yard with used tractor tyres for sale. There was even a repeat of the sad quarter-mile of fourth-hand farm machinery, equally lame, equally rusted. There was clearly a glut on the pre-owned market.

‘Where are we going?’ Reacher asked, because he thought he should, sooner or later, strictly for the sake of appearances.

Dawson roused himself from a stupor and said, ‘You’ll see.’

What Reacher saw was the rest of Nebraska and a good part of Kansas. Almost three hundred miles in total, the first half of that distance due south from where they had started, just shy of Nebraska’s east-west Interstate, all the way down to Kansas’s own east-west Interstate. They stopped and got very late lunches at a McDonald’s just over the state line. Dawson insisted on drive-through. The same way Sorenson had wanted to eat in Iowa. Reacher figured the FBI had an official policy. Probably a recommendation from a committee. Don’t let your prisoner starve, but don’t let him get out of the car, either. He ordered the same meal as the last time, twin cheeseburgers and apple pies and a twenty-ounce cup of coffee. He was a creature of habit where McDonald’s was concerned. The meal was passed in through Mitchell’s window and then passed over Mitchell’s shoulder to him and he ate it quite comfortably on the back seat. There was even a cup holder there. Cop cars had gotten a lot more civilized since his day. That was for sure.

He slumbered through the rest of the two-lane mileage. Slumber was his word for a not-quite-asleep, not-quite-awake state of semiconsciousness he liked a lot. Even if he hadn’t, it would have been hard to resist. He was tired, the car was warm, the seat was comfortable, the ride was soft. And neither Dawson nor Mitchell was talking. Neither one said a single word. There was no big three-way conversation. Not that Reacher wanted one. Silence was golden, in his opinion.

Then they turned east on the Interstate, towards Kansas City, Missouri. Reacher knew his American history. Kansas City was first settled by Americans in 1831. It was first incorporated in 1853. It was called the City of Fountains, or the Paris of the Plains. It had a decent baseball team. World Champions in 1985. George Brett, Frank White, Bret Saberhagen.

Its area code was 816.

Its population was counted several different ways. Local boosters liked to bump it up by ranging far and wide.

But most agreed its metro area was home to about a million and a half people.