Текст книги "Make Me"

Автор книги: Lee Child

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Chapter 46

They pulled chairs close to the glass table and crowded around the screen to read. Michael McCann was signed up for two suicide boards. In both cases he posted under the name of Mike. He wrote flatly, laboriously, as if numbed, as if exhausted by his burdens. His spelling was good, and his grammar was formal. Not naturally, Reacher thought, but as if he had been told there was a special way to do it, out in the public domain. Like public speaking. You put on a shirt and tie.

The first board was the hook-up board. Michael was looking for a sympathetic companion. Not that he needed help. Not all of the time. More that he felt he could give it. At least some of the time. In many months he had brief conversations with two candidates, and then seemed to settle on a third, who went by the name of Exit. They began messaging often.

Meanwhile the second board was the how board, which sometimes strayed into other discussions. Michael contributed now and then, with measured words, and never with anger or haste. He defended his right to catch the bus. He showed up in a thread about how to take Nembutal. He was anxious for guidance. In its commercial form its taste was said to be bitter. Best to mask it with juice, or chase it with scotch, which enhanced its efficiency anyway. It was always wise to take an anti-emetic beforehand, like a sea-sickness pill. No one wanted to throw up and be left with a less-than-fatal dose on board. No one wanted to wake up twenty hours later, with it all to do again.

Michael also commented in a thread about the reliability of Nembutal suppliers. He had been ripped off more than once. The market was a jungle. All a con man needed was a good web site. No one could know exactly who he was. A guy in Thailand was supposed to be kosher. And then someone posted that MR had delivered, exactly as promised, genuine stuff that tested right. Another poster backed him up. MR were good people, he said. The real deal. Michael queried: MR? The first guy came back to the board and said: Mother’s Rest.

Then over on the hook-up board, a day later, Michael told Exit he had checked the Mother’s Rest web site, and he thought Exit should look at it too, because there was much to discuss, especially on level five.

No further details.

Reacher said, “What’s level five?”

The guy from Palo Alto said, “Think of the onion. Many layers. Deeper and deeper. The Web itself, and every site on it. The sign-in page is usually level two. Level four is usually the first page of merchandise. Therefore level five is likely to be special merchandise.”

On the board, Exit had replied, and said level five was interesting. But that was late in the sequence, and the discussion went no further. It was overtaken by Michael’s physical move to Oklahoma. To Exit’s place, near Tulsa. His suicide partner. To get ready. Reacher assumed the discussion was continued in person.

He said, “Can we take a look at the Mother’s Rest web site?”

The guy said, “We’d have to find it first.”

“You did OK before. You were six seconds under.”

“I knew where to look. This next one will be measured in minutes. If we’re lucky.”

“How many minutes? What’s the wager?”

“Twenty,” the guy said.

He typed commands and loaded up with search terms and keywords. He hit the go tab, and the clock in Reacher’s head started running. Everyone pushed back from the glass table, and stretched, and got comfortable, and got ready to wait.

Westwood said, “The two hundred deaths could be two hundred Nembutal customers. I’m not sure what to think about it. From a news perspective, I mean. Is it a scandal? It’s legal in Washington and Oregon.”

“Not the same thing,” the guy from Palo Alto said. “You need two doctors to sign off. You need to be about a hundred years old with a terminal disease. These guys wouldn’t qualify. And mostly they’re pissed about it.”

“Then it becomes an ethical debate. Do we respect a person’s choices, plain and simple, or do we feel obliged to judge his reasons?”

“Not his reasons,” Chang said. “That’s too intrusive. But I think we should judge his commitment. There’s a big difference between a short-term panic and a long-term need. Maybe commitment proves reasons. If you hang in there through all the hoops, it must really mean something to you.”

“Then perhaps this current system is a good thing. In its way. Inadvertently. There are plenty of hoops. They’re certainly earning it.”

Reacher said, “But what is Mother’s Rest earning? Two hundred Nembutal shipments at nine hundred bucks a pop is less than two hundred grand. Over the whole life of the project, presumably. Less the wholesale cost and the shipping. That’s a hobby. And you can’t pay guys like Merchenko out of hobby money. Something else is going on there. Has to be. Because … ”

He stopped talking.

Chang said, “Because what?”

“We think the guy was killed there.”

“What guy?”

“At the beginning. With the backhoe.”

“Keever?”

“Yeah, Keever. Why kill Keever over a hobby? There has to be more.”

“Level five could be special merchandise. Could be worth more.”

Reacher glanced at the screen. Still searching. Seven minutes gone. He said, “I’m trying to imagine what could be so special. To be worth Merchenko money.”

The guy from Palo Alto said, “They all have my sympathy.”

Reacher said, “Mine too. I take the point about burning down the building with hibachi grills. But otherwise we should let them do what they want. They didn’t ask to be born. It’s like taking a sweater back to the store.”

Chang said, “Except it shouldn’t be either too easy or too difficult. Which somehow obliges the rest of us to set the bar. Is that fair on any of us?”

Westwood said, “This is exactly what I was afraid of. It’s an ethical debate. I could have written it in my office. On standby for a slow month. There was no need to spend travel money. I’m going to get my butt kicked for this.”

Twelve minutes gone.

They got drinks, not exactly served, but collected from the kitchen. Which was very retro. It looked vaguely like some of the places Reacher could remember as a kid. Family quarters on a dozen bases all around the world, different weather outside the window, same cabinets in the kitchen. Some mothers made a big show of scrubbing them down with disinfectant, immediately on the first morning, but Reacher’s mother was French and believed in acquired immunity. Which had worked, generally. Although his brother had gotten sick once. More likely a restaurant. He was starting to date.

Chang said, “You OK?”

He said, “I’m fine.”

Eighteen minutes gone.

They went back to the den, and the clock ticked on. Nineteen minutes. The guy from Palo Alto said, “We didn’t agree the stakes. For the wager.”

Reacher said, “What did we say the first time?”

“We didn’t.”

Twenty minutes gone.

Reacher said, “We don’t want to outstay our welcome.”

The guy said, “The program will get there. I’m a better geek than they are.”

“What’s the longest search you’ve ever run?”

“Nineteen hours.”

“What did you find?”

“The president’s schedule on an assassin site.”

“Of the United States?”

“The very same. And the schedule was current when I started the search.”

“Did you call it in?”

“That was a dilemma. I’m not a public resource. And as a matter of fact there was no more information to be had. A site that took me nineteen hours to find would have so many mirrors and decoys the servers might as well be on Venus or Mars. But the Secret Service wouldn’t have taken that on trust. They’d have torn my stuff apart for their own guys to look at. They’d have tied me up for a year, talking and consulting. So no, I didn’t call it in.”

“And nothing happened.”

“Thankfully.”

Twenty-seven minutes.

Still searching.

Then the search stopped.

The screen changed to a list of links.

Chapter 47

The list of links showed one direct URL for the Mother’s Rest web site, and four sub-pages, and one external reference, which the guy from Palo Alto wanted to check first, because he said it was unusual. He managed to retrieve an isolated chat-room comment made by a poster named Blood. It said I hear Mother’s Rest has good stuff. It was on a secure board the guy didn’t recognize. The context wasn’t clear. But it wasn’t a suicide board. It belonged to some other community. An enthusiast site, by the feel of it.

No other data.

Dead end.

The guy from Palo Alto said, “We’ll go straight to the mothership. No pun intended.”

He didn’t use the trackball. It wasn’t that kind of software. It was all typed commands. The guy seemed to like it that way. Old school. He was a veteran. And he was fast. His bone-white fingers pattered up and down. Almost a blur.

The screen re-drew into a full color, full service web site.

There was a photograph.

The photograph was of a road running dead straight ahead, through an infinite sea of wheat, forever, until it disappeared in a golden haze on the horizon, at that point as narrow as a needle. It was the old wagon train trail. The road west out of Mother’s Rest.

And it was an allegory, obviously. At the top of the page was written: Take The Journey With Us. At the bottom was written: Mother’s Rest. At Last.

The first sub-page link was an About Us piece. They were a community dedicated to providing end of life choices. The very best goods, services, care, and concern were solemnly promised. Trust was guaranteed. Discretion was a given.

The second sub-page link was the sign-in page. For community members. User name and password. Probably hard to break. But no need, because the third link bypassed it altogether, and led straight down to level four.

The first page of merchandise.

There were three items on offer. First was a non-sterile oral Nembutal solution in a 50ml bottle, going for $200. Second was an injectable Nembutal solution in a 100ml bottle for $387. Third was a sterile oral Nembutal solution in a 100ml bottle for $450. Safely lethal doses were quoted as 30ml through a needle, or 200ml by mouth. Time to a deep sleep was quoted as less than a minute, and time to death was quoted as less than twenty. Reacher figured the injectable solution was a hard sell. If a guy was into needles, he could OD on heroin at a tenth of the price. He figured the sterile oral would be the best seller. Nine hundred bucks for a peaceful exit. Sterile sounded clean, somehow. The holy grail. But the non-sterile was better value. Only eight hundred, at the risk of getting stomach flu the day after you were dead.

Delivery was thirty bucks, with a tracking number, and payment of the whole balance was required prior to dispatch, through Western Union or MoneyGram. Checks or money orders were not accepted. The Nembutal would arrive in a plain package. It should not be refrigerated, but kept tightly sealed and stored in a cool dry place.

Next came a button that said: Click Here To Order.

Chang said, “Reacher was right. This page doesn’t pay Merchenko.”

Westwood said, “We should take a look at level five.”

It took some time to get there. Like dial-up used to be. Although Reacher was sure things were happening lightning-fast behind the scenes. The guy’s code, battling the site’s defenses, one warrior against a horde, millions of feints and penetrations every second, burrowing in, driving down through the layers.

The page came up.

Michael McCann’s friend Exit had called it interesting. And it was, Reacher supposed. Depending on what a person needed. It offered a concierge service. Members were invited to travel to Mother’s Rest, by train from Chicago or Oklahoma City. They would be met at the station by a representative, and they would spend the night in a luxury motel. Then came transfer by luxury sedan, to the Mother’s Rest HQ. There they would find a private annex, with a suite inside designed to resemble a luxury hotel, with a calming bedroom ambience. There they could get comfortable, and at a time of their choosing an assistant would administer a Nembutal drink, and then withdraw. Or, if preferred, for those concerned about gulping a bitter liquid, the assistant would administer a regular sleeping pill, and then press a button, and an old 1970s small-block Chevy V-8 would start up outside, distant and inaudible, but its sweet rich exhaust would be piped to the room, to do its gentle work.

Members were invited to inquire as to the cost of the service.

It would be substantial, Reacher thought. He pictured the guy from the train, in his suit and his collared shirt, with his fine leather bag, and the woman, in her white dress, fit for a garden party in Monte Carlo. Both rich. Both sick, possibly. Both headed for a dignified end. He saw them in his mind, different people, different days, but the same physical gesture. At room 203’s dusty window. Standing with their arms held wide, their hands still on the drapes, staring out at the morning, as if in wonder.

Their last morning.

Chang said, “Michael and his friend. Is this what they did?”

Westwood said, “This is my story. Right here. I’ll ask if this is the future. It could be, a hundred years from now. Chaos, overpopulation, no water. There could be one of these on every street corner. Like Starbucks. But I’ll have to see it for myself. Having spent the travel money.”

“Maybe,” Reacher said. “After we check it.”

“What’s to check? We know what’s there. Veterinary Nembutal goes out by parcel service, and high-end clients come in by train. And who can seriously say either thing is wrong? I could ask if the Deep Web somehow predicts what’s coming next. Maybe it has to. It’s human desire, after all. Nothing more. Unfiltered and unregulated. Somehow organic. The book rights for this one are in the philosophy section. Because this is how these things happen. We’ve seen these things happen. A hundred years from now this could be normal.”

“Keever didn’t think it was normal yet. He could have shrugged his shoulders. He could have changed his name to Wittgenstein and gotten out of the way of progress. But he saw something wrong.”

“Do you?”

“I’m not sure. But Keever was sure.”

“What could be wrong?”

“I don’t see how Michael and his friend can have afforded the concierge service. Not if they saved up all their lives. So where the hell are they?”

The guy from Palo Alto said, “Are we done?”

Chang said, “We are, and thank you very much.”

Reacher said, “You’re the man. You’re down there among them. They can’t see you, but you can see them.”

Westwood said, “Send me an invoice.”

The guy said, “I’ll get you a car,” and he pressed his phone.

People got up, and Reacher took a step toward the door, and another, and then the floor on the left slammed upward at a crazy angle, just canted itself to forty-five degrees, some immense force, instantaneous, and he thought earthquake and it tipped him over and smashed him into the door frame, across the chest and the neck, like a blow from a two-by-four, followed by a clatter to the floor, and a desperate glance around, for Chang, and whatever else was coming next.

Not an earthquake.

He sat up.

Everyone else squatted down.

He said, “I’m OK.”

Chang said, “You fell over.”

“Maybe a board was loose.”

“The boards are fine.”

“Maybe there’s a warp.”

“Do you have a headache?”

“Yes.”

“You’re going to the emergency room.”

“Bullshit.”

“You forgot Keever’s name. You had to say the guy who was killed with the backhoe. That’s classic aphasia. You forgot a word and you worked around it. That’s not good. And before that you tripped near the bookstore. And you keep drifting off. Like daydreaming, or talking to yourself.”

“Do I?”

“Like it’s all spacey in there.”

“How is it normally?”

“You’re going to the emergency room.”

“Bullshit. Don’t need it.”

“For me, Reacher.”

“Waste of time. We should go direct to the hotel.”

“I’m sure you’re right. But do it for me.”

“I’ve never done it before.”

“There’s a first time for everything. I hope not just this.”

Reacher said nothing.

“For me, Reacher.”

The guy from Palo Alto said, “Go to the emergency room, man.”

Reacher looked at Westwood and said, “Help me out here.”

Westwood said, “Emergency room.”

The guy from Palo Alto said, “Tell them you’re a coder. No waiting time. Some of those companies make big donations.”

They did as the guy said, and claimed a status Reacher did not have. And was never likely to have. Right down there in terms of probability, with quilter, or scrapbooker, or tenor in the choir. But it got him seen in ninety seconds, and ninety seconds after that he was on his way for a CT scan of his head. Which he said was bullshit, don’t need it, waste of time, but Chang hung in there, and they fired up the machine, which was nothing much, a kind of electric buzz, just X-rays, and then a wait for a doctor to look at the file. Which Reacher said was bullshit, waste of time, the same things over again, and Chang hung in again, and eventually a guy showed up with a file in his hand and a look in his eye. Chang and Westwood stayed in the room.

Reacher said, “The CT in CT scan stands for computed tomography.”

The guy with the file said, “I know.”

“I know what day of the week it is and I know who the president is. I know what I had for breakfast. Both times. I’m proving there’s nothing wrong with me.”

“You have a head injury.”

“That’s not possible.”

“You have a head. It can be injured. You have a cerebral contusion, in Latin contusio cerebri, in fact technically two, both coup and contre-coup, caused, quite clearly, by blunt trauma to the right side of the head.”

Reacher said, “Is that the good news or the bad news?”

The guy said, “If you’d taken that punch on the upper arm, you’d expect one hell of a bruise. Which is exactly what you got. Not on the outside. Not enough flesh. The bruise is on the inside. On your brain. With a twin across the hall, because your brain bounced from side to side in your skull like a goldfish in a test tube. What we call coup and contre-coup.”

Reacher said, “Symptoms?”

“Will vary with the severity of the injury and the individual, but to some degree will include headache, confusion, sleepiness, dizziness, loss of consciousness, nausea, vomiting, seizures, and difficulties with coordination, movement, memory, vision, speech, hearing, managing emotion, and thinking.”

“That’s a lot of symptoms.”

“It’s the brain.”

“What about mine in particular? Which symptoms will I get?”

“I can’t say.”

“You have my paperwork right there. An actual picture.”

“It can’t be interpreted exactly.”

“Case closed, right there. You’re only guessing. I’ve been hit in the head before. This is no different. No big deal.”

“It’s a head injury.”

“What’s the next part of your speech?”

“I think the scan justifies admission overnight for observation.”

“That ain’t going to happen.”

“It should.”

“If the guy hit me in the arm you’d tell me I’d be OK in a couple of days. The bruise would go down. You’d send me home. You can do the same thing with my head. It happened yesterday, so tomorrow will be a couple of days. I’ll be fine. If it is what you say it is anyway. You could have gotten that file mixed up with somebody else.”

“The brain is not the same thing as an arm.”

“I agree. An arm is not protected by a thick layer of bone.”

The guy said, “You’re a grown-up. This is not a psychiatric facility. I can’t keep you here against your will. Just sign yourself out at the desk.”

And then he turned around and headed out, ready for the next in line. Maybe a coder, maybe not. The door swung shut behind him.

Reacher said, “It’s a bruise. It’s getting better.”

Chang said, “Thank you for having it checked. Let’s go find the hotel.”

“Should have gone direct.”

“Reacher, you fell over.”

He walked carefully, all the way to the cab line.

Chapter 48

People said that on a map San Francisco looked like a thumb sticking up south to north, shielding the Bay from the Pacific, but Reacher thought it curved more like a raised middle finger. Although why the city should be mad at the ocean, he didn’t know. The fog, maybe. But either way, the hotel Westwood had chosen was at the tip, where either the thumbnail or the fingernail would be. Right on the waterfront. It was dark, so the view was a void, apart from the Golden Gate Bridge, which was all lit up, on the left, and then further out on the right was the distant twinkle of Sausalito and Tiburon.

They checked in and washed up and met in the restaurant for dinner. It was a pretty room, with plenty of crisp white linen. There were couples and foursomes in there. They were the only threesome. Trysts and deals were going on all around them. Westwood got the internet on his phone and said, “Forty thousand suicides every year in America. One every thirteen minutes. Statistically we’re more likely to kill ourselves than each other. Who knew?”

Chang said, “If five of them every nine days use the Mother’s Rest concierge service, that’s a couple hundred a year. Like Keever’s note. We already saw two.”

Reacher said, “What would you pay for that?”

“I wouldn’t, I hope.”

“If it’s nine hundred bucks to do it yourself in bed, then what would be reasonable? Five times as much? Say five grand?”

“Maybe. For the pampering. Like going to the spa instead of filing your nails at home.”

“That would be a million dollars a year. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.”

“But?”

“Their proposed hit list this week alone was Keever, McCann, you, me, and the Lair family. Seven people. Which is not a problem, apparently, because they rent a Ukrainian tough guy to do the heavy lifting. That’s a big reaction for a million bucks.”

“People get killed for a dollar.”

“On the street in a panic. Not as a strategic imperative. I think there’s more in this than a million bucks. But I don’t see how. Folks wouldn’t pay ten or twenty grand. Or more. Would they? They could buy their own 1970s Chevy. They could buy a garden shed and drill a hole.”

“This is not necessarily a rational decision. And it’s totally based on not buying your own Chevy. That’s the point. Full service.”

“So what would they pay?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to picture it. Imagine you’re a rich guy, and you want out. One final luxury. Discreet people in the background, making sure it all goes OK. Care and concern, and hands to hold. It’s a major event in your life, obviously. You might pay what you paid for your car. Which is probably a Mercedes or a BMW. Fifty grand, maybe. Or even eighty. Or more. I mean, why not? You can’t take it with you.”

Westwood said, “When are we going there?”

Reacher said, “When we’ve made a plan. It’s a tactical challenge. Like approaching a small island across an open sea. It’s as flat as a pool table there. The grain elevators are the tallest things in the county. I’m sure they have all kinds of ladders and catwalks. For maintenance. They’ll post lookouts. They’ll see us coming ten minutes away. And if we come by train, they’ll be lined up on the ramp, just waiting for us.”

“We could drive in by night.”

“They would see the headlights a hundred miles away.”

“We could switch them off.”

“We wouldn’t see our way. It’s pitch black at night. It’s the countryside.”

“The roads are straight.”

“Plus at the moment we’re unarmed.”

Westwood said nothing.

After dinner Westwood went to his room and Reacher and Chang took a stroll outside, on the Embarcadero. Near the water. The night was cool. Literally half of the Phoenix temperature. Chang had nothing but her T-shirt. She walked pressed up hard against him, for warmth. It made them clumsy, like a three-legged creature.

Reacher said, “Are you holding me upright?”

She said, “How do you feel now?”

“Still got a headache.”

“I don’t want to go back to Mother’s Rest until you feel better.”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry.”

“I wouldn’t go back there at all if it wasn’t for Keever. Who am I to judge? They’re meeting a need. Maybe Westwood is right. Maybe we’ll all be doing it in a hundred years.”

Reacher said nothing.

She said, “What?”

“I was going to say I would save the money and choose the shotgun. But that would be tough on whoever found me. There would be a lot of mess. Same with the handgun. Same with hanging myself, or jumping off the roof. Stepping in front of a train isn’t fair to the engineer. Even drinking the Kool-Aid in a motel room isn’t fair to the maid. Maybe that’s why people choose the concierge service. Easier on the folks they leave behind. That’s worth a premium, I guess. But I still don’t see how it adds up to Merchenko money.”

“I don’t see how we get back there. It’s like they have a ten-mile-high razor-wire fence. Except laid down flat.”

“We should start out in Oklahoma City.”

“You want to take the train?”

“I want to keep our options open. We’ll figure out the fine print later. Tell Westwood to book the flights.”

Reacher woke very early the next morning, before Chang, and he slid out of bed and shut himself in the bathroom. He had given up on his previous theory. Forever. It had been proven categorically wrong. Repeatedly. There was no ceiling. There was no upper limit. There was no reason why it should ever stop.

Which was good to know.

He stood in front of the mirror and twisted and turned and checked himself over. He had new bruises from falling down. The old bruise on his back where Hackett had hit him was vivid yellow and the size of a dinner plate. But he wasn’t pissing blood, and the ache was going away, and the stiffness was easing. The side of his head was still tender, and a little soft, but not exactly swollen. Not enough flesh, like the doctor had said. His headache was moderate. He wasn’t sleepy. He wasn’t dizzy. He stood on one leg and closed his eyes, and didn’t sway. He was conscious. No nausea. He hadn’t thrown up. No seizures. He walked a line of tiles, from the tub to the toilet, and back again with his eyes closed, and he didn’t stray. He touched his nose with his fingertip, and then rubbed his stomach while patting his head. No problems with coordination or movement, beyond his innate and inevitable slight clumsiness. He was no ballet dancer. Neat and deft and dexterous were adjectives that had never applied.

The door opened behind him and Chang stepped in. He saw her in the mirror. She looked soft and sleepy. She yawned and said, “Good morning.”

He said, “To you too.”

“What are you doing?”

“Checking my symptoms. The doctor gave me a hell of a list.”

“How far did you get?”

“I still have to do memory, vision, speech, hearing, managing emotion, and thinking.”

“You already passed managing emotion. I’ve been quite impressed. For a guy. Who was in the army. Now tell me three famous Oklahomans, since that’s where we’re going.”

“Mickey Mantle, obviously. Johnny Bench. Jim Thorpe. Bonus points for Woody Guthrie and Ralph Ellison.”

“Your memory is fine.” She retreated to the tub and held up two fingers. “How many?”

“Two.”

“Your vision is fine.”

“Not a very stringent test.”

“OK, stay where you are and tell me who made the bathtub.”

He looked. There was small faint writing near the overflow hole.

“American Standard,” he said, because he already knew.

“Your vision is fine,” she said again.

She whispered something very softly.

“On the plane?” he said. “I’m totally up for that.”

“Your hearing is fine. That’s for sure. What’s the longest word in the Gettysburg Address?”

“Which symptom is that?”

“Thinking.”

He thought. “There are three. All with eleven letters. Proposition, battlefield, and consecrated.”

“Now recite the first sentence. Like you were an actor on a stage.”

“Lincoln was coming down with smallpox at the time. Did you know that?”

“That’s not it.”

“I know. That was for extra credit on memory.”

“We already did memory. Remember? Now we’re doing speech. The first sentence.”

“The guy who founded Getty Oil was descended from the guy the town of Gettysburg was named for.”

“That’s not it either.”

“That was general knowledge.”

“Which is not even a symptom.”

“It relates to memory.”

“We did memory ages ago.”

He said, loud like an actor, “ ‘Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.’ ”

It sounded good in a bathroom. The marble gave it echo and resonance.

He said, louder, “ ‘Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.’ ”

She said, “Has your headache gone?”

He said, “More or less.”

“Which means it hasn’t yet.”

“It’s on its way out. It was never a big deal.”

“The doctor thought it was.”

“The medical profession has gotten very timid. Very cautious. No sense of adventure. I lived through the night. I didn’t need observation.”

Chang said, “I’m glad he was cautious.”

Reacher said nothing.

Then Westwood called on the room phone to say his travel people had booked seats on United, the only direct flight of the day. But no rush, because it left halfway through the morning. So they ordered room service coffee, to be delivered right away, and then room service breakfast, to be delivered in exactly one hour’s time.

Very early in San Francisco was a couple hours into the day in Mother’s Rest. Not the difference between city and country habits, but merely time zones. Mother’s Rest was ahead. The general store was doing business. The diner had a few last stragglers. The motel maid was hard at work. The one-eyed clerk was in the bathroom. The Cadillac driver was in his store, and Western Union and MoneyGram and FedEx were busy.

But the spare parts store was closed. For the irrigation systems. And the diner had no counter service. Those two guys were on a metal walkway on top of what they called Elevator Three, the old concrete giant, the biggest they had. With binoculars. And a simple system. There were two roads in, one from the east and one from the west, which was the wagon train trail, running crossways, almost directly below them. But there were no roads in from the north or the south. Just the railroad tracks. The system split the risk heavily in favor of the roads. The guys sat across from each other, one looking west, one looking east, and once every five minutes or so they would turn, and scan the railroad to the north and south, a leisurely sweep from close to far, just in case someone was walking in, or using some weird self-propelled machine, like an old Western movie. It became a ritual. A chance to stretch.