Lee Child - 61 Hours

Reacher said nothing.

Peterson asked, ‘What do you think?’

‘Only one way to find out.’

‘Which is what?’

‘Reconnaissance.’

‘You want us to go over there?’

‘No, I’ll go,’ Reacher said. ‘I need to see the place anyway. To find out what it is.’

‘You have people working on that.’

‘No substitute for a live eyeball.’

‘You’re just going to show up there?’

‘I’ll say I’m from the army. A biannual inspection of our property.’

‘On your own?’

‘Why not?’

‘Won’t work. They’ll want to see ID.’

‘They won’t. These are not regular citizens.’

Peterson asked, ‘When would you go?’

‘As soon as possible,’ Reacher said. ‘No point in the dark. Let’s say first light tomorrow.’

Peterson said the department had a spare unmarked car. Reacher could use it. First light would depend on the weather, but it would be somewhere between seven and eight o’clock. So Peterson said, ‘I’ll drive you home now. You should get some rest.’

Reacher shook his head. ‘You should drive me to Janet Salter’s instead. She has rooms to spare. She told me she volunteered them after the bus crash. Then she told me she knew about the crisis plan at the prison. It was like a coded message. She wants someone there who won’t leave if the siren sounds. Imagine how that would feel.’

Peterson thought about it for a second, and nodded. Started to say something, and stopped. ‘I was going to say I’ll bring your bags over. But you don’t have any.’

‘Tell Kim I got new clothes. Tell her you saw me in them. I think she was a little worried. And tell her I’ll look after her dad’s parka. And tell her thanks again for her hospitality.’

It was still snowing but the roads between the police station and Janet Salter’s house were still passable. They had been ploughed at least once during the day. The plough blades had thrown up steep banks either side, so that the wheel ruts were now four small trenches inside one giant trench. Sound was absorbed. The world was silent. The flakes came down invisible until they hit the headlight beams. They settled vertically and implacably ahead of the creeping car.

The way the ploughs had narrowed the roads meant that Peterson couldn’t turn into Janet Salter’s street. The parked cop car filled its whole width. The car’s red lights turned lazily and made the falling flakes pink, like garnets, or blood spatter. Reacher climbed out of Peterson’s ride and zipped up and squeezed awkwardly between the parked cruiser’s trunk and the snow bank behind it. The cop in the cruiser paid no attention. Reacher trudged alone down the centre of the street. The tracks from the change of watch that morning were long gone, smoothed over and obscured. The air was bitter. A cold day was slipping away, and a savage night was moving in to replace it.

Reacher climbed up on Janet Salter’s porch and pulled the bell wire. Pictured the cop inside getting up off her perch on the bottom stair and stepping across the Persian rug. The door opened. The cops had swapped their positions. This was the one from the library window. She was tall and had fair hair pulled back in an athletic ponytail. Her hand was resting on her gun. She was alert, but not tense. Professionally cautious, but happy about the tiny break in routine.

Reacher hung his borrowed coat on the hat stand and headed for the library. Janet Salter was in the same armchair as before. She wasn’t reading. She was just sitting there. The other woman cop was behind her. The one that had been in the hallway earlier. The small, dark one. She was staring out the window. The drapes were wide open.

Janet Salter said, ‘You had to rush off before you finished your coffee. Would you like me to make some more?’

‘Always,’ Reacher said. He followed her to the kitchen and watched her fill the antique percolator. The faucets over the sink were just as old. But nothing in the room was decrepit or dowdy. Good stuff was good stuff, however long ago it had been installed.

She said, ‘I understand you’ll stay here tonight.’

He said, ‘Only if it’s convenient.’

‘Were you not comfortable at the Peterson place?’

‘I was fine. But I don’t like to impose too long.’

‘One night was too long?’

‘They have enough on their plate.’

‘You travel light.’

‘What you see is what you get.’

‘Mr Peterson told me.’

‘Told you, or warned you?’

‘Is it a phobia? Or a philia? Or a consciously existential decision?’

‘I’m not sure I ever inquired that deeply.’

‘A phobia would be a fear, of course, possibly of commitment or entanglement. A philia would imply love, possibly of freedom or opportunity. Although technically a philia shades towards issues of abnormal appetite, in your case possibly for secrecy. We must ask of people who fly beneath the radar, why, exactly? Is radar in itself unacceptable, or is the terrain down there uniquely attractive?’

‘Maybe it’s the third thing,’ Reacher said. ‘Existential.’

‘Your disavowal of possessions is a little extreme. History tells us that asceticism has powerful attractions, but even so most ascetics owned clothes, at least. Shirts, anyway, even if they were only made of hair.’

‘Are you making fun of me?’

‘You could afford to carry a small bag, I think. It wouldn’t change who you are.’

‘I’m afraid it would. Unless it was empty, which would be pointless. To fill a small bag means selecting, and choosing, and evaluating. There’s no logical end to that process. Pretty soon I would have a big bag, and then two or three. A month later I’d be like the rest of you.’

‘And that horrifies you?’

‘No, I think to be like everyone else would be comfortable and reassuring. But some things just can’t be done. I was born different.’

‘That’s your answer? You were born different?’

‘I think it’s clear we’re not all born the same.’

Janet Salter poured the coffee, this time straight into tall china mugs, as if she thought silver trays and ceremony were inappropriate for an ascetic, and as if she had noticed his earlier discomfort with the undersized cup.

She said, ‘Well, whatever your precise diagnosis might be, I’m glad to have you here. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.’

Five to six in the evening.

Thirty-four hours to go.

After the coffee was finished Janet Salter started to make dinner. Reacher offered to eat out, but she said it was as easy to cook for six as five, which told him the two cops on night watch would be getting up and forming a foursome for most of the evening. Which was reassuring.

With her permission he used the food preparation time to inspect the house. He wasn’t interested in the first floor or the second floor. He wanted to see the basement. South Dakota had tornadoes, and he was pretty sure a house of any quality would have been planned with an underground safety zone. He went down a flight of stairs from a small back hallway off the kitchen and found a satisfactory situation. The prairie topsoil had been too deep for the excavation to reach bedrock, so the whole space was basically a huge six-sided wooden box built from massive baulks of timber banded with iron. The walls and floor were thick to provide stability, and the ceiling was thick to prevent the rest of the house from crashing through after a direct hit. There was a thicket of floor-to-ceiling posts throughout the space, not more than six feet apart, each one hewn and smoothed from the trunk of a tree. Four of them were panelled with wallboard, to form a furnace room. The furnace was a stained green appliance. It was fed by a thin fuel line, presumably from an oil tank buried outside in the yard. It had a pump and a complicated matrix of wide iron pipes that led out and up through the ceiling. An old installation. Maybe the first in town. But it was working fine. The burner was roaring and the pump was whirring and the pipes were hissing. It was keeping the whole basement warm.