Lee Child - Make Me

“What would an FBI agent say?”

“We were taught to think ahead. To what the defense attorneys would say.”

Reacher unfolded the bookmark. It was blank on one side.

It wasn’t blank on the other side.

The other side had two lines of handwriting.

At the top was the same 323 telephone number. Science editor Westwood himself, in Los Angeles, California.

At the bottom was written: Mother’s Rest — Maloney .

Reacher asked, “Now what would an FBI agent say?”

Chang said, “Now she would tell the defense attorneys to bite her. Keever is due to call Westwood for corroboration of or information about something to do with the town we were just in. I think that’s clear. Plus now we have a name. There could be people up there named Maloney. After all, we just met the Moynahans.”

“But why was the bookmark at the front of the article?”

“He hasn’t read it yet.”

“Which is why he hasn’t called Westwood yet. Let’s keep an open mind about the client. Let’s just call him passionate. A guy like that, he’s on the phone all the time. He’s telling the same story, to whoever will listen. Mother’s Rest, two hundred deaths, if you don’t believe me call this reporter in LA, and he gives out the hard-won phone number, and every single time Keever jots it all down, over and over again, because that’s the kind of guy he is, which is why we’ve already found that number twice without really trying. So maybe at first this is a nuisance client. Which I’m sure you get.”

“From time to time.”

“But there’s some little thing in what the guy is saying that sets Keever thinking. But he’s still skeptical, so he tries a little test. And this is Oklahoma City, right? He’s likely got to go all the way to the train station to get newspapers from other cities. But he does. He gets the LA Times one Sunday. He wants to see if this expert witness has any kind of credibility. Is he a serious writer, or is he something from a supermarket paper? Keever wants to decide for himself. How long ago was wheat first grown?”

“Depends where,” Chang said. “Thousands of years, anyway.”

“So it turns out Westwood is probably pretty good. He’s done the brain, and now he’s going back thousands of years. This is a smart guy. But Keever doesn’t know that yet. Because he hasn’t read the piece. Which suggests that whatever the client said was intriguing, but somehow not very urgent. Keever didn’t hop right to it.”

“It feels plenty urgent now.”

“Exactly. We need to know what changed.”

It wasn’t a Neighborhood Watch kind of a place, but even so they saw no sense in lingering. They went out through the mud room and pulled the door behind them. They walked around to the driveway and got in the car.

Reacher said, “We should talk to Westwood again.”

“Keever didn’t call him yet,” Chang said. “He has nothing to tell us.”

“Maybe someone else called him. He can tell us about that.”

“Who else?”

“We don’t know yet.”

Chang didn’t answer. She took out her phone, and dialed it, and hit an extra button, and laid it on the armrest between the front seats.

“It’s on speaker,” she said.

Reacher heard the ring tone.

He heard the call answered.

“Hello?” Westwood said.

Reacher said, “Sir, my name is Jack Reacher, and right now I’m working with my colleague Michelle Chang, who spoke to you not long ago.”

“I remember. We agreed her other colleague never called me. Keever, was it? I thought we established that.”

“Yes, we accept that. But now we have a pretty clear indication he was intending to call you at some point in the future. Maybe next on the list, or maybe somewhere down the line.”

Westwood paused a faint distant beat, and said, “Where is this guy now?”

Reacher said, “He’s missing.”

“How? Where is he?”

Reacher said nothing.

Westwood said, “Dumb questions, I suppose.”

“The how part could be crucial. The where part was fairly dumb. If we knew where he was, he wouldn’t be missing.”

“You should look at the calls he already made, surely. Not the calls he was possibly going to make. At some point in the future.”

“Our information is limited.”

“To what?

“We have to work this thing backward, Mr. Westwood. We think he was about to rely on you for some kind of expert insight or opinion. We need to know what kind of a thing you could have helped him with.”

“I’m a journalist. I’m not an expert on anything.”

“But you’re informed.”

“Anyone who reads my stuff is as informed as I am.”

“I think most readers imagine outtakes get left on the cutting room floor. They assume you know more than was printed. Maybe there was stuff you couldn’t print for legal reasons. And so on. And they assume you like this stuff anyway. And they respect your senior title.”

“Possibly,” Westwood said. “But we’re talking about a conversation that never took place.”

“No, we’re thinking about Keever’s client now. So far we’re picturing a passionate person with time on his hands. We have evidence that he called Keever repeatedly. We get the feeling he’s that type of guy. And clearly there’s an issue he feels strongly about. I said I bet he’s called everyone from the White House downward. And I bet he has. Hundreds of people. Including you. Why wouldn’t he? You’re the science editor of a big newspaper. Maybe you wrote something that had a bearing on his issue. I think maybe he found your number on the internet not to pass on to Keever, not originally, but to talk to you direct. I think he has some weird-ass scientific beef, and he thinks you would understand it. So I think maybe he called you. I think maybe you’ve spoken to him.”

There was a short pause, thousands of miles away, and then Westwood’s voice came back, a little strangled, as if he was fighting a smile. He said, “I work for the LA Times . In Los Angeles. Which is in California. And my number can be found on the internet. All of which on balance is a good thing, but it means I get strange calls all the time. All day and all night. I’ve heard every weird-ass scientific beef there is. People call to talk about aliens and flying saucers and birth and suicide and radiation and mind control, and that’s only the last month alone.”

“Do these calls go in the database?”

“They’re most of the database. Ask any reporter.”

“Can you search by subject?”

“We get lazy about details. These guys ramble on. We use categories, mostly. This type of crank, that type of crank. Sooner or later I block their calls. When they outstay their welcome. I have to sleep sometimes.”

“Try Mother’s Rest.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the name of a town. Two words. Like your mom sitting down in a chair. Capital letters.”

“Why is it called that?”

“I don’t know,” Reacher said.

They heard keyboard keys clicking, loud on the speakerphone. The database search, presumably. By subject.

Westwood said, “Nothing there.”

“You sure?”

“It’s a fairly distinctive name.”

Reacher said nothing.

Westwood said, “Hey, I’m not saying your guy’s client didn’t call me. He probably did. We all know people like that. I’m saying, how would I know which one he was?”

They drove out of Keever’s dead-end street, and out of his development, and past an outlet mall, to the highway entrance. Five hours to the right was Mother’s Rest, and ten minutes to the left was downtown Oklahoma City, with steakhouses and barbecue, and decent hotels.

But Chang said, “No, we have to go back.”