Lee Child - 61 Hours

‘Thank you,’ Reacher said. ‘You’re very kind.’ He shrugged the coat off again and she took it from him and hung it on a hook on the hallway wall, just inside the entrance, next to where Peterson was hanging his own police-issue parka. Then they all headed for the kitchen. It ran left to right across most of the width of the house. There was all the usual kind of kitchen stuff in it, plus a beat-up table and six chairs, and a family-room area with a battered sofa and two armchairs and a television set. The wood stove was at the far end of the room. It was roaring like a locomotive. Beyond it was a closed door.

‘That’s the den,’ Kim said. ‘Go straight in.’

Reacher assumed he was being dismissed for the night, so he turned to say thanks once again, but found that Peterson was following right behind him. Kim said, ‘He wants to talk to you. I can tell, because he isn’t talking to me.’

The man who had been told to kill the witness and the lawyer set about cleaning the gun he had been given for the job. It was a Glock 17, not old, not new, well proved, well maintained. He stripped it, brushed it out, oiled it, and reassembled it. The cheeks of the grip were stippled, and there was some accumulated grime in the microscopic valleys. He worked it out with a Q-tip soaked in solvent. The maker’s name was embossed near the heel, an overcomplicated and rather amateur graphic featuring a large letter G surrounding the rest of the word. It was easy to see the G merely as an outline, and therefore to overlook it. At first glance the name appeared to be LOCK. There was dirt over the whole thing. The man soaked the Q-tip again and started work and had it clean a minute later.

Peterson’s den was a small, dark, square, masculine space. It was in the back corner of the house and had two outside walls with two windows. The drapes were made of thick plaid material and were drawn back, open. The other two walls had three doors in them. The door back to the family room, plus maybe a closet and a small bathroom. The remainder of the wall space was lined with yard-sale cabinets and an old wooden desk with a small refrigerator on it. On top of the refrigerator was an old-fashioned alarm clock with a loud tick and two metal bells. Out in the body of the room there was a low-slung leather chair that looked Scandinavian, and a two-seat sofa that had been pulled out and made up into a narrow bed.

Reacher sat down on the bed. Peterson took two bottles of beer from the refrigerator and twisted the tops off and pitched the caps into a trash basket and handed one of the bottles to Reacher. Then he lowered himself into the leather chair.

He said, ‘We have a situation here.’

Reacher said, ‘I know.’

‘How much do you know?’

‘I know you’re pussyfooting around a bunch of meth-using bikers. Like you’re scared of them.’

‘We’re not scared of them.’

‘So why pussyfoot around?’

‘We’ll get to that. What else do you know?’

‘I know you’ve got a pretty big police station.’

‘OK.’

‘Which implies a pretty big police department.’

‘Sixty officers.’

‘And you were working at full capacity all day and all evening, even to the point where the off-duty chief and the off-duty deputy chief had to respond to a citizen’s call at ten o’clock in the evening. Which seems to be because most of your guys are on roadblock duty. Basically you’ve got your whole town locked down.’

‘Because?’

‘Because you’re worried about someone coming in from the outside.’

Peterson took a long pull on his beer and asked, ‘Was the bus crash for real?’

Reacher said, ‘I’m not your guy.’

‘We know you’re not. You had no control. But maybe the driver is our guy.’

Reacher shook his head. ‘Too elaborate, surely. Could have gone wrong a thousand different ways.’

‘Was he really fighting the skid?’

‘As opposed to what?’

‘Causing it, maybe.’

‘Wouldn’t he have just killed the engine and faked a breakdown? Nearer the cloverleaf?’

‘Too obvious.’

‘I was asleep. But what I saw after I woke up looked real to me. I don’t think he’s your guy.’

‘But he could be.’

‘Anything’s possible. But if it was me, I would have come in as a prison visitor. Chief Holland told me you get plenty of them. Heads on beds, six nights a week.’

‘We know them all pretty well. Not too many short sentences out there. The faces don’t change. And we watch them. Anyone we don’t know, we call the prison to check they’re on the list. And they’re mostly women and children anyway. We’re expecting a man.’

Reacher shrugged. Took a pull from his bottle. The beer was Miller. Next to him the refrigerator started humming. Warm air had gotten in when Peterson had opened the door. Now the machinery was fighting it.

Peterson said, ‘The prison took two years to build. There were hundreds of construction workers. They built a camp for them, five miles west of us. Public land. There was an old army facility there. They added more huts and trailers. It was like a little village. Then they left.’

‘When?’

‘A year ago.’

‘And?’

‘The bikers moved in. They took the place over.’

‘How many?’

‘There are more than a hundred now.’

‘And?’

‘They’re selling methamphetamine. Lots of it. East and west, because of the highway. It’s a big business.’

‘So bust them.’

‘We’re trying to. It isn’t easy. We have no probable cause for a search out there. Which isn’t normally a problem. A meth lab in a trailer, life expectancy is usually a day or two. They blow up. All you need to do is follow the fire department. All kinds of volatile chemicals. But these guys are very careful. No accidents yet.’

‘But?’

‘We caught a break. A big-time guy out of Chicago came west to negotiate a bulk purchase. He met with their top boy right here in Bolton. Neutral ground, and civilized. He bought a sample out the back of a pick-up truck in the restaurant parking lot, right where we had dinner.’

‘And?’

‘We have a witness who saw the whole transaction. The Chicago guy got away, but we grabbed the dope and the money and busted the biker. He’s in the county lock-up right now, awaiting trial.’

‘Their top boy? Didn’t that give you probable cause to search his place?’

‘His truck is registered in Kentucky. His driver’s licence is from Alabama. He claims that he drove up here. He says he doesn’t live here. We had nothing to link him to. We can’t get a warrant based on the fact that he dresses like some other guys we’ve seen. Judges don’t work that way. They want more.’

‘So what’s the plan?’

‘We’re going to roll him. We’ll offer him a plea bargain and he’ll give us what we need to clean out the whole mess.’

‘Has he agreed?’

‘Not yet. He’s waiting us out. Waiting to see if the witness forgets stuff. Or dies.’

‘Who’s the witness?’

‘A nice old lady, here in town. She’s seventy-plus. Used to be a teacher and a librarian. Perfect credibility.’

‘Is she likely to forget stuff or die?’

‘Of course she is. That’s how these people do it. They scare the witnesses. Or kill them.’

‘Which is why you’re worried about strangers coming to town. You think they’re coming for her.’

Peterson nodded. Said nothing.

Reacher took a long pull on his bottle and asked, ‘Why assume it will be a stranger? Couldn’t the bikers come over and take care of it for themselves?’

Peterson shook his head. ‘We’re all over any biker who shows up in town. As you saw tonight. Everyone watches for them. So it won’t be a biker. It would be self-defeating. Their whole strategy is to deny us probable cause.’