Lee Child - A Wanted Man

‘Does it matter exactly which route they take? They’re heading basically south. We should assume they have a destination in mind. They’re not going to stay in Iowa.’

Reacher said, ‘I don’t agree.’

‘Why not?’

‘Daylight is coming. Town and county cops will be back on duty by seven or eight in the morning. And those guys must be assuming their plate number is everywhere by now. Plus descriptions, of them and the car. They won’t risk much more. They can’t. So they’ll hole up before dawn. Somewhere right here in Iowa.’

‘They could get into Missouri before the break of day.’

‘But they won’t. They’ll assume the Missouri troopers will be waiting right on the line. Troopers like to do that. Like a welcome and a warning. With the new day’s BOLOs taped right on their dashboards.’

‘They can’t stay in Iowa either,’ Sorenson said. ‘They can’t really stay anywhere. If they assume their plate number is everywhere, they’ll assume we’re calling motel keepers too.’

‘They won’t be using a motel. I think they have a specific place to go. A place of their own. Because their choice of exit off the Interstate was not random. I wouldn’t have taken it. No sane person would have taken it. It was just a no-name back road. But they knew it well. They knew where they were going. They knew the gas station was there, and they knew this motel was here, too. No way of knowing either thing unless they’ve been here before.’

‘You could be right.’

‘Equally I could be wrong.’

‘Which is it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Will they hole up all day?’

‘I would.’

‘That’s risky. They’d be sitting ducks.’

‘Sitting ducks, yes. But not really risky. Ninety minutes after peeling out of here they’ll be somewhere inside an empty five-thousand-square-mile box. You planning to go door-to-door, hoping for the best?’

‘How would you do it?’

‘Have you made a decision about my personal situation?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Then you may never know how I would do it.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Just a guy,’ Reacher said.

‘What kind of guy?’

‘Why did you call me back?’

‘To try and find out what kind of guy you are.’

‘And what’s your conclusion so far?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m an innocent passerby. That’s all. That’s the kind of guy I am.’

‘Everyone always says they’re innocent.’

‘And sometimes they’re telling the truth.’

‘Stay right there,’ Sorenson said. ‘I’ll be with you in less than an hour.’

Sorenson drove on, somewhere between ninety and a hundred, one eye on the road ahead, the other on her GPS map. She was getting close to the no-name turn. And she could see the nasal guy’s point. No sane person would have taken it . The landscape ahead looked infinitely dark and infinitely empty. No lights of any kind, no features, no items of interest.

They knew where they were going .

Then her phone rang yet again. It was Perry, her SAC. Stony, her boss. He said, ‘I found out a little more about the victim.’

‘That’s good,’ Sorenson said. ‘The guy the State Department sent out wouldn’t say a word.’

‘Mr Lester? I went over his head. Not that State had much to conceal. Turns out the victim was a trade attaché. A salesman, basically. A dealmaker. That’s all, really. His job was to oil the wheels for American exporters.’

‘Where did he serve?’

‘I wasn’t told. But they let slip he was an Arabic speaker. Draw your own conclusions.’

‘Why was he in Nebraska?’

‘No one knows.’

‘Business or pleasure?’

‘Not business, as far as I can tell. He was on leave between postings.’

‘You know that two counterterrorism guys came up from Kansas City?’

‘Yes, I heard that. Might mean something. Might not. Those guys are always looking for reasons to freak out. They have a big budget to justify.’

Sorenson said nothing.

Perry said, ‘We have a budget to justify too. I hear you made contact with the driver.’

Sorenson said, ‘He claims he was a hitchhiker. He claims they dumped him at gunpoint. I’ll be meeting with him inside an hour.’

‘Good. Arrest him on sight. Homicide, kidnapping, grand theft auto, breaking the speed limit, anything else you can think of. Bring him back here immediately, in handcuffs.’

SHERIFF VICTOR GOODMAN did the obvious, cautious thing, which was to drive the route between the old pumping station and the farm where the eyewitness lived, which was eleven miles to the north and west of town. On the way out there he drove slowly and paid careful attention to the right-hand shoulder of the road. There was ice here and there. Overall the land was pretty flat, but at a detailed level there were humps and bumps and bad cambers and ragged edges. According to a deputy who knew the guy, the eyewitness drove a well-used Ford Ranger pick-up truck. It was too old for ABS, and assuming it was unloaded it would be light and skittery at the back end. Skids and slides were possible, even likely, because it was late and the guy was probably hurrying. And a skid or a slide at speed could put the guy fifty feet into a field, easily, and maybe even tip him over, if the tyres caught a rut or a furrow. So Goodman used the beam on his windshield pillar, near and far, back and forth, slowing to a walk on the curves, making sure.

He found nothing.

The house the guy lived in was a modest affair. Eighty years previously it might have anchored an independent one-man fifty-acre spread. Now it was a leftover, after two or three rounds of farm consolidations, these days either rented to or provided for a labourer. It had a sagging ridgeline and milky glass in the windows. It was dark and still. Goodman got out of his cruiser and pounded on the door and yelled and hollered.

Then he waited, and three minutes later a dishevelled woman came to the door, in night clothes. The common law wife. No, the guy was not home yet. No, he didn’t make a habit of staying out all night. Yes, he always called if he was going to be late. No, she had no idea where he was.

So Goodman got back in his car and drove the same road back to the pumping station, slowly and carefully, using his pillar spot all the way, this time paying close attention to the other shoulder, and watching the first fifty feet of brittle stubble beyond it.

He saw nothing.

So then he drove other routes, in descending order of likelihood. His county was not geographically complicated. The central crossroads created four quadrants, northwest, northeast, southeast, and southwest, each one of them to some varying extent filled in with random ribbons of development. It was conceivable the guy had chosen to thread his way home through an arbitrary and indirect route. Conceivable, but unlikely. Gas was expensive and there was no reason to add unnecessary miles. There was no reason to think the guy had a second lady friend willing to receive a late-night visit. But Goodman was a thorough man, so he checked.

But he found no old Ford Ranger pick-up trucks parked anywhere in the northwestern quadrant. Or in the northeastern quadrant. Or in the southwestern.

The southeastern quadrant was the least likely of all. To get there the guy would have had to turn his back on home, and why would he do that well after midnight? And the southeastern quadrant was mostly commercial, anyway. The two-lane county road leading south was lined on both sides by small strip malls. The road leading east was the same. There were seed merchants and dry goods stores and groceries and gun shops and pawn shops. There was a bank. There was a pharmacy, and a John Deere dealership. All of those establishments closed at five o’clock each afternoon. There was angled street parking in front of the stores, uniformly unoccupied at night, and larger lots behind, mostly empty, and old barns used for storage, all locked up tight.