Lee Child - Worth Dying For

‘Why didn’t they like it?’

‘No one spelled it out. A place like this, a time like that, such things were not discussed. But something unpleasant was going on. Or nearly going on. Or in the air. My daughter was eight years old at the time. Same age as Seth. Almost the same birthday, as a matter of fact. She didn’t want to play there. She made that clear.’

‘What was going on?’

‘I told you, no one said.’

‘But you knew,’ Reacher said. ‘Didn’t you? You had a daughter. Maybe you couldn’t prove anything, but you knew.’

‘Have you got kids?’

‘None that I know about. But I was a cop of sorts for thirteen years. And I’ve been human all my life. Sometimes people just know things.’

The woman nodded. Sixty years old, blunt and square, her face flushed from the heat and the food. She said, ‘I suppose today they would call it inappropriate touching.’

‘On Seth’s part?’

She nodded again. ‘And his father’s, and both his uncles’.’

‘That’s awful.’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘What did you do?’

‘My daughter never went there again.’

‘Did you talk to people?’

‘Not at first,’ she said. ‘Then it all came out in a rush. Everyone was talking to everyone else. Nobody’s girl wanted to go there.’

‘Did anyone talk to Seth’s mother?’

‘Seth didn’t have a mother.’

Reacher said, ‘Why not? Had she left?’

‘No.’

‘Had she died?’

‘She never existed.’

‘She must have.’

‘Biologically, I suppose. But Jacob Duncan was never married. He was never seen with a woman. No woman was ever seen with any of them. Their own mother had passed on years before. It was just old man Duncan and the three of them. Then the three of them on their own. Then all of a sudden Jacob was bringing a little boy to kindergarten.’

‘Didn’t anyone ask where the kid came from?’

‘People talked a little, but they didn’t ask. Too polite. Too inhibited. I suppose we all thought Seth was a relative. You know, maybe orphaned or something.’

‘So what happened next? You all stopped your kids from going there to play, and that’s what caused the trouble?’

‘That’s how it started. There was a lot of talk and whispers. The Duncans were all alone in their little compound. They were shunned. They resented it.’

‘So they retaliated?’

‘Not at first.’

‘So when?’

‘After a little girl went missing.’

Roberto Cassano and Angelo Mancini got back in their rented Impala and fired up the engine. The car had a bolt-on navigation system, a couple of extra dollars a day, but it was useless. The screen came up with nothing more than a few thin red lines, like doodles on a pad. None of the roads had names. Just numbers, or else nothing at all. Most of the map was blank. And it was either inaccurate or incomplete, anyway. The crossroads wasn’t even marked. Just like Vegas, to be honest. Vegas was growing so fast no GPS company could keep up with it. So Cassano and Mancini were used to navigating the old-fashioned way, which was to scribble down turn-by-turn directions freely given by a source who was anxious to be accurate, in order to avoid a worse beating than he was getting along with the initial questions. And the motel guy had been more anxious than most, right after the first two smacks. He was no kind of hero. That was for sure.

‘Left out of the lot,’ Mancini read out loud.

Cassano turned left out of the lot.

Dorothy the housekeeper made a third pot of coffee. She rinsed the percolator and filled it again and set it going. She said, ‘Seth Duncan had a hard time in school. He got bullied. Eight-year-old boys can be very tribal. I guess they felt they had permission to go after him, because of the whispers at home. And none of the girls stuck with him. They wouldn’t go to his house, and they wouldn’t even talk to him. That’s how children are. That’s how it was. All except one girl. Her parents had raised her to be decent and compassionate. She wouldn’t go to his house, but she still talked to him. Then one day that little girl just disappeared.’

Reacher said, ‘And?’

‘It’s a horrible thing, when that happens. You have no idea. There’s a kind of crazy period at first, when everyone is mad and worried but can’t bring themselves to believe the worst. You know, a couple of hours, maybe three or four, you think she’s playing somewhere, maybe out picking flowers, she’s lost track of the time, she’ll be home soon, right as rain. No one had cell phones back then, of course. Some people didn’t even have regular phones. Then you think the girl has gotten lost, and everyone starts driving around, looking for her. Then it goes dark, and then you call the cops.’

Reacher asked, ‘What did the cops do?’

‘Everything they could. They did a fine job. They went house to house, they used flashlights, they used loudhailers to tell everyone to search their barns and outbuildings, they drove around all night, then at first light they got dogs and called in the State Police and the State Police called in the National Guard and they got a helicopter.’

‘Nothing?’

The woman nodded.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Then I told them about the Duncans.’

‘You did?’

‘Someone had to. As soon as I spoke up, others joined in. We were all pointing our fingers. The State Police took us very seriously. I guess they couldn’t afford not to. They took the Duncans to a barracks over near Lincoln and questioned them for days. They searched their houses. They got help from the FBI. All kinds of laboratory people were there.’

‘Did they find anything?’

‘Not a trace.’

‘Nothing at all?’

‘Every test was negative. They said the child hadn’t been there.’

‘So what happened next?’

‘Nothing. It all fizzled out. The Duncans came home. The little girl was never seen again. The case was never solved. The Duncans were very bitter. They asked me to apologize, for naming names, but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t give it up. My husband, neither. Some folks were on our side, like the doctor’s wife. But most weren’t, really. They saw which way the wind was blowing. The Duncans withdrew into themselves. Then they started punishing us. Like revenge. We didn’t get our crop hauled that year. We lost it all. My husband killed himself. He sat right in that chair where you’re sitting and he put his shotgun under his chin.’

‘I’m sorry.’

The woman said nothing.

Reacher asked, ‘Who was the girl?’

No reply.

‘Yours, right?’

‘Yes,’ the woman said. ‘It was my daughter. She was eight years old. She’ll always be eight years old.’

She started to cry, and then her phone started to ring.

THE PHONE WAS A CLUNKY OLD NOKIA. IT WAS ON THE KITCHEN counter. It hopped and buzzed and trilled the old Nokia tune that Reacher had heard a thousand times before, in bars, on buses, on the street. Dorothy snatched it up and answered. She said hello and then she listened, to what sounded like a fast slurred message of some kind, maybe a warning, and then she clicked off and dropped the phone like it was scalding hot.

‘That was Mr Vincent,’ she said. ‘Over at the motel.’

Reacher said, ‘And?’

‘Two men were there. They’re coming here. Right now.’

‘Who?’

‘We don’t know. Men we’ve never seen before.’ She opened the kitchen door and glanced down a hallway towards the front of the house. There was silence for a second and then Reacher heard the distant hiss of tyres on blacktop, the moan of a slowing engine, the sound of brakes, and then the crunch of a wheel on gravel, then another, then two more together, as a car turned in and bumped on to the track.