Lee Child - Worth Dying For

‘How far?’

‘Two hundred and eighty steps.’

‘Wow. That would do it. Where was this?’

‘That’s outside of your professional interest.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘That’s outside of your professional interest, too.’

‘Recent event, yes?’

‘Feels like yesterday,’ Reacher said. ‘Now go get the needle.’

It was a long needle. The doctor went away and came back with a stainless steel syringe that looked big enough for a horse. He made Reacher take his shirt off again and sit forward with his elbow on the table. He eased the sharp point deep into the joint, from the back. Reacher felt it pushing and popping through all kinds of tendons and muscles. The doctor pressed the plunger, slow and steady. Reacher felt the fluid flood the joint. Felt the joint loosen and relax, in real time, immediately, like healing insanely accelerated. Then the doctor did the other shoulder. Same procedure. Same result.

‘Wonderful,’ Reacher said.

The doctor asked, ‘What did you want to talk about?’

‘A time long ago,’ Reacher said. ‘When your wife was a kid.’

REACHER DRESSED AGAIN AND ALL THREE OF THEM TOOK MUGS OF fresh coffee to the living room, which was a narrow rectangular space with furniture arranged in an L-shape along two walls, and a huge flat screen television on a third wall. Under the screen was a rack loaded with audio-visual components all interconnected with thick wires. Flanking the screen were two serious loudspeakers. Set into the fourth wall was an undraped picture window that gave a great view of a thousand acres of absolutely nothing at all. Dormant lawn, the post-and-rail fence, then dirt all the way to the horizon. No hills, no dales, no trees, no streams. But no trucks or patrols, either. No activity of any kind. Reacher took an armchair where he could see the door and the view both at the same time. The doctor sat on a sofa. His wife sat next to him. She didn’t look enthusiastic about talking.

Reacher asked her, ‘How old were you when Dorothy’s kid went missing?’

She said, ‘I was fourteen.’

‘Six years older than Seth Duncan.’

‘About.’

‘Not quite in his generation.’

‘No.’

‘Do you remember when he first showed up?’

‘Not really. I was ten or eleven. There was some talk. I’m probably remembering the talk, rather than the event.’

‘What did people say?’

‘What could they say? No one knew anything. There was no information. People assumed he was a relative. Maybe orphaned. Maybe there had been a car wreck in another state.’

‘And the Duncans never explained?’

‘Why would they? It was nobody’s business but theirs.’

‘What happened when Dorothy’s little girl went missing?’

‘It was awful. Almost like a betrayal. It changed people. A thing like that, OK, it puts a scare in you, but it’s supposed to have a happy ending. It’s supposed to turn out right. But it didn’t.’

‘Dorothy thought the Duncans did it.’

‘I know.’

‘She said you stood by her.’

‘I did.’

‘Why?’

‘Why not?’

Reacher said, ‘You were fourteen. She was what? Thirty? Thirty-five? More than twice your age. So it wasn’t about solidarity between two women or two mothers or two neighbours. Not in the normal sense. It was because you knew something, wasn’t it?’

‘Why are you asking?’

‘Call it professional interest.’

‘It was a quarter of a century ago.’

‘It was yesterday, as far as Dorothy is concerned.’

‘You’re not from here.’

‘I know,’ Reacher said. ‘I’m on my way to Virginia.’

‘So go there.’

‘I can’t. Not yet. Not if I think the Duncans did it and got away with it.’

‘Why does it matter to you?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t explain it. But it does.’

‘The Duncans get away with plenty, believe me. Every single day.’

‘But I don’t care about that other stuff. I don’t care who gets their harvest hauled or when or how much they pay for it. You all can take care of that for yourselves. It’s not rocket science.’

The doctor’s wife said, ‘I was the Duncans’ babysitter that year.’

‘And?’

‘They didn’t really need one. They rarely went out. Or actually they went out a lot, but then they came right back. Like a trick or a subterfuge. Then they would be real slow about driving me home. It was like they were paying me to be there with them. With all four of them, I mean, not just with Seth.’

‘How often did you work for them?’

‘About six times.’

‘And what happened?’

‘In what way?’

‘Anything bad?’

She looked straight at him. ‘You mean, was I interfered with?’

He asked, ‘Were you?’

‘No.’

‘Did you feel in any danger?’

‘A little.’

‘Was there any inappropriate behaviour at all?’

‘Not really.’

‘So what was it made you stand by Dorothy when the kid went missing?’

‘Just a feeling.’

‘What kind of a feeling?’

‘I was fourteen, OK? I didn’t really understand anything. But I knew I felt uncomfortable.’

‘Did you know why?’

‘It dawned on me slowly.’

‘What was it?’

‘They were disappointed that I wasn’t younger. They made me feel I was too old for them. It creeped me out.’

‘You felt too old for them at fourteen?’

‘Yes. And I wasn’t, you know, very mature. I was a small girl.’

‘What did you feel would have happened if you had been younger?’

‘I really don’t want to think about it.’

‘And you told the cops about how you felt?’

‘Sure. We all told them everything. The cops were great. It was twenty-five years ago, but they were very modern. They took us very seriously, even the kids. They listened to everybody. They told us we could say anything, big or small, important or not, truth or rumour. So it all came out.’

‘But nothing was proved.’

The doctor’s wife shook her head. ‘The Duncans were clean as a whistle. Pure as the driven snow. I’m surprised they didn’t get the Nobel prize.’

‘But still you stood by Dorothy.’

‘I knew what I felt.’

‘Did you think the investigation was OK?’

‘I was fourteen. What did I know? I saw dogs and guys in FBI jackets. It was like a television show. So yes, I thought it was OK.’

‘And now? Looking back?’

‘They never found her bike.’

The doctor’s wife said that most farm kids started driving their parents’ beat-up pick-up trucks around the age of fifteen, or even a little earlier, if they were tall enough. Younger or shorter than that, they rode bikes. Big old Schwinn cruisers, baseball cards in the spokes, tassels on the handlebars. It was a big county. Walking was too slow. The eight-year-old Margaret had ridden away from the house Reacher had seen, down the track Reacher had seen, all knees and elbows and excitement, on a pink bicycle bigger than she was. Neither she nor the bike was ever seen again.

The doctor’s wife said, ‘I kept on expecting them to find the bike. You know, maybe on the side of a road somewhere. In the tall grass. Just lying there. That’s what happens on the television shows. Like a clue. With a footprint, or maybe the guy had dropped a piece of paper or something. But it didn’t happen that way. Everything was a dead end.’

‘So what was your bottom line at the time?’ Reacher asked. ‘On the Duncans? Guilty or not guilty?’

‘Not guilty,’ the woman said. ‘Because facts are facts, aren’t they?’

‘Yet you still stood by Dorothy.’

‘Partly because of the way I felt. Feelings are different than facts. And partly because of the aftermath. It was horrible for her. The Duncans were very self-righteous. And people were starting to wake up to the power they had over them. It was like the thought police. First Dorothy was supposed to apologize, which she wouldn’t, and then she was supposed to just shut up and carry on like nothing had ever happened. She couldn’t even grieve, because somehow that would have been like accusing the Duncans all over again. The whole county was uneasy about it. It was like Dorothy was supposed to take one for the team. Like one of those old legends, where she had to sacrifice her child to the monster, for the good of the village.’