Lee Child: Worth Dying For

Reacher asked, ‘Seth Duncan?’

The bony man didn’t answer.

Reacher said, ‘I have a message for you, pal.’

Duncan said, ‘Who from?’

‘The National Association of Marriage Counselors.’

‘Is there such a thing?’

‘Probably.’

‘What’s the message?’

‘It’s more of a question.’

‘OK, what’s the question?’

‘The question is, how do you like it?’ Reacher hit him, a straight right to the nose, a big vicious blow, his knuckles driving through cartilage and bone and crushing it all flat. Duncan went over backward and landed on the table. He bounced once and plates broke and glasses tipped over and knives skittered away and fell to the floor.

Duncan made no attempt to get up.

Reacher walked away, down the corridor, past the lectern, back to the lot.

The key the red-headed guy had given him was marked with a big figure six, so Reacher parked next to the sixth cabin and went inside and found a miniature version of the lounge, a purely circular space except for a straight section boxed off for a bathroom and a closet. The ceiling was domed and washed with light. The bed was against the wall, on a platform that had been custom built to fit the curve. There was a tub-shaped armchair and a small round table next to it, with an old-fashioned glass television on a larger table nearby. There was an old-fashioned telephone next to the bed. It had a rotary dial. The bathroom was small but adequate, with a shower head over a tub, and the closet was about the same size as the bathroom.

Everything he needed, and nothing he didn’t.

He undressed and left his clothes on the bed and took a shower. He ran the water as hot as he could stand and let it play over his neck, his shoulders, his arms, his ribs. He raised one arm, then the other, then both of them together. They moved, but they moved like a newly constructed machine in need of some further development. The good news was that his knuckles didn’t hurt at all.

Seth Duncan’s doctor was more than two hundred miles away in Denver, Colorado. A first-class medical man, no question, but obviously impractical for emergency services. And the nearest ER was an hour away. And no one in his right mind would go near the local quack. So Duncan had a friend drive him to his uncle Jasper Duncan’s place. Because his uncle Jasper Duncan was the kind of guy who could handle odd things at odd hours. He lived five miles south of the motel crossroads, in the northernmost of the three old houses that stood all alone at the end of their long shared driveway. The house was a warren, filled with all kinds of things saved against the day they might be useful. Uncle Jasper himself was more than sixty years old, built like the bole of an oak, a man of various arcane skills, a reservoir of folk wisdom and backwoods knowledge.

Jasper sat Seth Duncan in a kitchen chair and took a look at the injury. Then he went away and rooted around and came back with a syringe and some local anaesthetic. It was a veterinary product, designed for hogs, but mammals were mammals, and it worked. When the site was properly numb, Jasper used a strong thumb and a strong forefinger to set the bone and then went away again and rooted around and came back with an old aluminium facial splint. It was the kind of thing he could be counted on to have at hand. He worked at it and reshaped it to fit and taped it over his nephew’s nose. He stopped up the nostrils with wads of gauze and used warm water to sponge away the blood.

Then he got on the phone and called his neighbours.

Next to him lived his brother Jonas Duncan, and next to Jonas lived their brother Jacob Duncan, who was Seth Duncan’s father. Five minutes later all four men were sitting around Jasper’s kitchen table, and a council of war had started.

Jacob Duncan said, ‘First things first, son. Who was the guy?’

Seth Duncan said, ‘I never saw him before.’

Jonas said, ‘No, first things first, where the hell was your boy Brett?’

‘The guy jumped him in the parking lot. Brett was escorting him out. The guy kicked him in the balls and then kicked him in the head. Just left him lying there.’

‘Is he OK?’

‘He’s got a concussion. Doesn’t know what day it is. Useless piece of shit. I want him replaced.’

‘Plenty more where he came from,’ Jonas said.

Jasper asked, ‘So who was this guy?’

‘He was a big man in a brown coat. With a watch cap on his head. That’s all I saw. That’s all I remember. He just came in and hit me.’

‘Why would he?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Didn’t he say anything?’

‘Just some bullshit. But Brett said he was driving the doctor’s car.’

‘He doesn’t know what day it is but he remembers what car the guy was in?’

‘I guess concussions are unpredictable.’

‘And you’re sure it wasn’t the doctor who hit you?’

‘I told you, I never saw the guy before. I know the doctor. And the damn doctor wouldn’t hit me, anyway. He wouldn’t dare.’

Jacob Duncan said, ‘What aren’t you telling us, son?’

‘I have a bad headache.’

‘I’m sure you do. But you know that’s not what I mean.’

‘I don’t want to talk.’

‘But you know you have to. We can’t let a thing like this go by.’

Seth Duncan looked left, looked right. He said, ‘OK, I had a dispute with Eleanor tonight. Before I went out. No big deal. But I had to slap her.’

‘How hard?’

‘I might have made her nose bleed.’

‘How bad?’

‘You know she’s delicate.’

The kitchen went quiet for a moment. Jonas Duncan said, ‘So let’s try to piece it together. Your wife called the doctor.’

‘She’s been told not to do that.’

‘But maybe she did anyway. Because she’s delicate. And maybe the doctor wasn’t home. Maybe he was in the motel lounge, like he usually is, halfway through a bottle of Jim Beam, like he usually is. Maybe Eleanor reached him there.’

‘He’s been told to stay away from her.’

‘But maybe he didn’t obey. Sometimes doctors have strange notions. And perhaps he was too drunk to drive. He usually is. Because of the bourbon. So perhaps he asked someone else to drive him. Because of his level of concern.’

‘Who else?’

‘Another guy in the lounge.’

‘Nobody would dare do that.’

‘Nobody who lives here, I agree. Nobody who knows not to. But a stranger might do it. And it’s a motel, after all. That’s what motels are for. Strangers, passing through.’

‘OK, so then what?’

‘Maybe the stranger didn’t like what he saw at your house, and he came to find you.’

‘Eleanor gave me up?’

‘She must have. How else would the guy have known where to look? He can’t know his way around, if he’s a stranger.’

Jacob Duncan asked, ‘What exactly did he say to you?’

‘Some bullshit about marriage counselling.’

Jonas Duncan nodded and said, ‘There you go. That’s how it played out. We’ve got a passer-by full of moral outrage. A guest in the motel.’

Seth Duncan said, ‘I want him hurt bad.’

His father said, ‘He will be, son. He’ll be hurt bad and sent on his way. Who have we got?’

Jasper said, ‘Not Brett, I guess.’

Jonas said, ‘Plenty more where he came from.’

Jacob Duncan said, ‘Send two of them. Have them call me for orders before they deploy.’

REACHER DRESSED AGAIN AFTER HIS SHOWER, COAT AND ALL because the room was cold, and then he turned the lights off and sat in the tub armchair and waited. He didn’t expect Seth Duncan to call the cops. Apparently the cops were a county department, sixty miles away. No local ties. No local loyalties. And calling the cops would require a story, and a story would unravel straight to a confession about beating his wife. No smug guy would head down that route.