Lee Child: Nothing to Lose

The woman cop buzzed her window back up and craned her neck and glanced behind her and K-turned across the road. She was slightly built under a crisp tan shirt. Probably less than five feet six, probably less than a hundred and twenty pounds, probably less than thirty-five years old. No jewelry, no wedding band. She had a Motorola radio on her collar and a tall gold badge bar pinned over her left breast. According to the badge her name was Vaughan. And according to the badge she was a pretty good cop. She seemed to have won a bunch of awards and commendations. She was good-looking, but different from regular women. She had seen stuff they hadn’t. Reacher was familiar with the concept. He had served with plenty of women, back in the MPs.

He asked, “Why did Despair run me out?”

The woman called Vaughan turned out the dome light. Now she was front-lit by red instrument lights from the dash and the pink and purple glow from the GPS screen and white scatter from the headlight beams on the road.

“Look at yourself,” she said.

“What about me?”

“What do you see?”

“Just a guy.”

“A blue-collar guy in work clothes, fit, strong, healthy, and hungry.”

“So?”

“How far did you get?”

“I saw the gas station and the restaurant. And the town court.”

“Then you didn’t see the full picture,” Vaughan said. She drove slow, about thirty miles an hour, as if she had plenty more to say. She had one hand on the wheel, with her elbow propped on the door. Her other hand lay easy in her lap. Five miles at thirty miles an hour was going to take ten minutes. Reacher wondered what she had to tell him, that less than ten minutes wouldn’t cover.

He said, “I’m more green-collar than blue.”

“Green?”

“I was in the army. Military cop.”

“When?”

“Ten years ago.”

“You working now?”

“No.”

“Well, then.”

“Well what?”

“You were a threat.”

“How?”

“West of downtown Despair is the biggest metal recycling plant in Colorado.”

“I saw the smog.”

“There’s nothing else in Despair’s economy. The metal plant is the whole ballgame.”

“A company town,” Reacher said.

Vaughan nodded at the wheel. “The guy who owns the plant owns every brick of every building. Half the population works for him full time. The other half works for him part time. The full-time people are happy enough. The part-time people are insecure. They don’t like competition from outsiders. They don’t like people showing up, looking for casual labor, willing to work for less.”

“I wasn’t willing to work at all.”

“You tell them that?”

“They didn’t ask.”

“They wouldn’t have believed you anyway. Standing around every morning waiting for a nod from the foreman does things to people. It’s kind of feudal. The whole place is feudal. The money the owner pays out in wages comes right back at him, in rents. Mortgages too. He owns the bank. No relief on Sundays, either. There’s one church and he’s the lay preacher. You want to work, you have to show up in a pew from time to time.”

“Is that fair?”

“He likes to dominate. He’ll use anything.”

“So why don’t people move on?”

“Some have. Those who haven’t never will.”

“Doesn’t this guy want people coming in to work for less?”

“He likes the people he owns, not strangers.”

“So why were those guys worried?”

“People always worry. Company towns are weird.”

“And the town judge toes their line?”

“It’s an elected position. And the vagrancy ordinance is for real. Most towns have one. We do, for sure, in Hope. No way around it, if someone complains.”

“But nobody complained in Hope. I stayed there last night.”

“We’re not a company town.”

Vaughan slowed. Hope’s first built-up block was ahead in the distance. Reacher recognized it. A mom-and-pop hardware store. That morning an old guy had been putting stepladders and wheelbarrows out on the sidewalk, building a display. Now the store was all closed up and dark.

He asked, “How big is the Hope PD?”

Vaughan said, “Me and two others and a watch commander.”

“You got sworn deputies?”

“Four of them. We don’t use them often. Traffic control, maybe, if we’ve got construction going on. Why?”

“Are they armed?”

“No. In Colorado, deputies are civilian peace officers. Why?”

“How many deputies does the Despair PD have?”

“Four, I think.”

“I met them.”

“And?”

“Theoretically, what would the Hope PD do if someone showed up and got in a dispute with one of your deputies and busted his jaw?”

“We’d throw that someone’s sorry ass in jail, real quick.”

“Why?”

“You know why. Zero tolerance for assaults on peace officers, plus an obligation to look after our own, plus pride and self-respect.”

“Suppose there was a self-defense issue?”

“Civilian versus a peace officer, we’d need some kind of amazing reasonable doubt. You’d have felt the same in the MPs.”

“That’s for damn sure.”

“So why did you ask?”

Reacher didn’t answer directly. Instead he said, “I’m not a Stoic, really. Zeno preached the passive acceptance of fate. I’m not like that. I’m not very passive. I take challenges personally.”

“So?”

“I don’t like to be told where I can go and where I can’t.”

“Stubborn?”

“It annoys me.”

Vaughan slowed some more and pulled in at the curb. Put the transmission in Park and turned in her seat.

“My advice?” she said. “Get over it and move on. Despair isn’t worth it.”

Reacher said nothing.

“Go get a meal and a room for the night,” Vaughan said. “I’m sure you’re hungry.”

Reacher nodded.

“Thanks for the ride,” he said. “And it was a pleasure to meet you.”

He opened the door and slid out to the sidewalk. Hope’s version of Main Street was called First Street. He knew there was a diner a block away on Second Street. He had eaten breakfast there. He set out walking toward it and heard Vaughan ’s Crown Vic move away behind him. He heard the civilized purr of its motor and the soft hiss of its tires on the asphalt. Then he turned a corner and didn’t hear it anymore.

An hour later he was still in the diner. He had eaten soup, steak, fries, beans, apple pie, and ice cream. Now he was drinking coffee. It was a better brew than at the restaurant in Despair. And it had been served in a mug that was cylindrical in shape. Still too thick at the rim, but much closer to the ideal.

He was thinking about Despair, and he was wondering why getting him out of town had been more important than keeping him there and busting him for the assault on the deputy.

The diner in Hope had a bottomless cup policy for its coffee and Reacher abused it mercilessly. He drank most of a Bunn flask all on his own. His waitress became fascinated by the spectacle. She didn’t need to be asked for refills. She came back every time he was ready, sometimes before he was ready, as if she was willing him to break some kind of a world record for consumption. He left her a double tip, just in case the owner fined her for her generosity.

It was full dark when he left the diner. Nine o’clock in the evening. He figured it would stay dark for another ten hours. Sunrise was probably around seven, in that latitude at that time of year. He walked three blocks to where he had seen a small grocery. In a city it would have been called a bodega and in the suburbs it would have been franchised, but in Hope it was still what it had probably always been, a cramped and dusty family-run enterprise selling the things people needed when they needed them.