Lee Child - 61 Hours

‘I don’t like to impose.’

‘Didn’t they offer?’

‘I don’t particularly like them, OK?’

Reacher said nothing.

Knox asked, ‘Where did they put you?’

‘With the cop who came to the bus.’

‘So why are you here? Didn’t the cop give you breakfast?’

Reacher didn’t answer. Just said: ‘Any news?’

‘The tow trucks got here this morning. They pulled the bus off the highway. We’re leasing a replacement out of Minneapolis. Should be here soon after the storm passes.’

‘Not so bad.’

‘Except that it will come with its own driver. Which means I’ll be a passenger all the way back to Seattle. Which means I won’t get paid, effective four o’clock yesterday afternoon.’

‘Not so good.’

‘They should do something about that damn bridge.’

‘Have you seen anything of the passengers?’

‘They’re scattered here and there. One of them has her arm in a sling and one of them has a cast on her wrist. But generally they’re not bitching too much. I don’t think any of them has called a lawyer yet. Actually some of them are looking on the bright side, like this whole thing is a magical mystery tour.’

‘Not so bad,’ Reacher said again.

Knox didn’t answer. Just got up suddenly and took stuff off a nearby hook and jammed a hat on his head, and wound a muffler around his neck, and struggled into a heavy coat, all borrowed, judging by the sizes and the colours. He nodded once at Reacher, a slightly bad-tempered farewell, and then he walked to the door and stepped out into the snow.

A waitress came by and Reacher ordered the biggest breakfast on the menu.

Plus coffee.

Five to eleven in the morning. Forty-one hours to go.

The lawyer left his briefcase in his office but carried his overshoes in their grocery bag. He put them on in his building’s lobby and retraced his steps through the lot to his car. He buckled up, started the engine, heated the seat, turned on the wipers. He knew that the highway was still closed. But there were alternative routes. Long, straight South Dakota roads, stretching all the way to the horizon.

He fumbled his overshoes off and put a leather sole on the brake pedal and moved the shifter to Drive.

Reacher was halfway through a heaping plate of breakfast when Peterson came in. He was dressed in his full-on outdoors gear.

It was clear that Reacher was supposed to be impressed by how easily Peterson had found him. Which Reacher might or might not have been, depending on how many other places Peterson had tried first.

Peterson put his hand on the chair that Knox had used, and Reacher invited him to sit with a gesture from his loaded fork. Peterson sat down and said, ‘I’m sorry you didn’t get breakfast at the house.’

Reacher chewed and swallowed and said, ‘No problem. You’re being more than generous as it is.’

‘Kim suffers from loneliness, that’s all. It isn’t her favourite time of day, when the boys and I leave the house. She usually hides out in her room.’

Reacher said nothing.

Peterson asked, ‘Have you ever been lonely?’

Reacher said, ‘Sometimes.’

‘Kim would say you haven’t. Not unless you had sat on a back porch day after day in South Dakota and looked all around and seen nothing for a hundred miles in any direction.’

‘Isn’t she local?’

‘She is. But being used to something doesn’t mean you have to like it.’

‘I guess not.’

‘We checked the bars. We found one with a very clean floor.’

‘Where?’

‘North. Where the prison guards drink.’

‘Any cooperative witnesses?’

‘No, but the bartender is missing. Lit out in his truck yesterday.’

‘OK,’ Reacher said.

‘Thank you,’ Peterson said. ‘You’re welcome.’ Reacher speared half a slice of bacon and a half-circle of set egg yolk and ate it.

‘Any other thoughts?’ Peterson asked.

‘I know how the guy you put in jail is communicating.’

‘How?’

‘He made a friend on the inside. Or coerced somebody. Your guy is briefing the second guy, and the second guy is briefing his own lawyer. Like a parallel track. You’re bugging the wrong room.’

‘There are dozens of lawyer visits every day.’

‘Then you better start sifting through them.’

Peterson was quiet for a beat. ‘Anything else?’

Reacher nodded. ‘I need to find a clothing store. I more or less promised your wife. Cheap, and nothing fancy. You know somewhere like that?’

The clothing store that Peterson recommended was a long block west of the public square. It carried sturdy garments for sturdy farmers. There were summer and winter sections, without many obvious differences between the two. Some of the items were off-brand makes, and others had recognizable labels but visible defects. There was a limited choice of dull colours. Prices were low, even for footwear. Reacher started from the ground up with a pair of black waterproof boots. Then he started in on the garments. His rule when confronted with a choice was to take either olive green or blue. Olive green, because he had been in the army. Blue, because a girl had once told him it picked out his eyes. He went with olive green, because it almost matched his borrowed coat, which was tan. He chose pants with a flannel lining, a T-shirt, a flannel shirt, and a sweater made of thick cotton. He added white underwear and a pair of black gloves and a khaki watch cap. Total damage was a hundred and thirty bucks. The store owner took a hundred and twenty for cash. Four days of wear, probably, at the rate of thirty dollars a day. Which added up to more than ten grand a year, just for clothes. Insane, some would say. But Reacher liked the deal. He knew that most folks spent much less than ten grand a year on clothes. They had a small number of good items that they kept in closets and laundered in basements. But the closets and basements were surrounded by houses, and houses cost a whole lot more than ten grand a year, to buy or to rent, and to maintain and repair and insure.

So who was really nuts?

He dressed in a changing cubicle and dumped his old stuff in a trash barrel behind the counter. He jammed the hat on his head and tugged it down over his ears. He covered it with the borrowed parka’s hood. He zipped up. He put on the gloves. He stepped out to the sidewalk.

And was still cold.

The air was meat-locker chilled. He felt it in his gut, his ribs, his legs, his ass, his eyes, his face, his lungs. Like the worst of Korea, but in Korea he had been younger, and he had been there under orders, and he had been getting paid. This was different. The snow danced and swirled all around him. A freshening wind pushed at him. His nose started running. His vision blurred. He took breaks in doorways. He turned a ten-minute walk to the police station into a twenty-minute winter odyssey.

When he arrived, he found full-on mayhem.

Five minutes before noon.

Forty hours to go.

It sounded like half the phones in the place were ringing. The old guy behind the reception counter had one in each hand and was talking into both of them. Peterson was alone in the squad room, on his feet behind a desk, a phone trapped between his ear and his shoulder, the cord bucking and swaying as he moved. He was gesticulating with both hands, short, sharp, decisive motions, like a general moving troops, as if the town of Bolton was laid out in front of him on the desk top, like a map.

Reacher watched and listened. The situation made itself clear. No rocket science was involved. A major crime against a person had been committed and Peterson was moving people out to deal with it while making sure his existing obligations were adequately covered. The crime scene seemed to be on the right hand edge of the desk, which was presumably Bolton’s eastern limit. The existing obligations seemed to be slightly south and west of downtown, which was presumably where Janet Salter lived. The vulnerable witness. Peterson was putting more resources around her than at the scene, which indicated either proper caution or that the victim at the scene was already beyond help.