Lee Child - 61 Hours

The empty lot was guarded by two police cruisers. Their red lights were turning. Their beams danced crazily and rhythmically across surfaces far, then near, then far, then near. Each car held a lone cop. Reacher didn’t know either of them. They were just sitting there. There were no crowds to hold back. It was way too late and way too cold for rubberneckers.

Peterson’s car was all the way on the left side of the lot. It was still idling. Its driver’s window was still down. The short vertical nudge bars on its front bumper were pressed up hard against a blank brick wall. Which was the side of the next building along.

Holland parked at the kerb and climbed out. Reacher followed him and zipped his coat and pulled his hat down over his ears. The side street they were on ran north to south and they were out of the wind. It was cold, but not impossible. They walked together into the lot. No danger of messing up any evidence on the ground. No danger of obscuring tyre tracks or footprints. There weren’t any. The rutted snow was like corrugated iron, but harder. And it was glazed and slippery. They struggled on and approached Peterson’s car from the rear. Its exhaust pipes were burbling patiently. The whole vehicle was just sitting there, like a faithful servant waiting for its master’s next command.

Sheets of ice creaked under their feet as Reacher and Holland walked to the driver’s door. They looked in through the open window. Peterson’s feet were in the driver’s foot well, and his body was twisted at the waist. He had fallen sideways. His gun was still in its holster. His head was flung back, his neck bent, one cheek pressed down on the upholstery, as if he was staring at an item of great interest on the inside panel of the passenger door.

Reacher tracked back around the trunk, his knees passing through the small white cloud of exhaust, and back along the far flank of the car, to the front passenger door. He put his gloved hand on the handle and opened it up. Crouched down. Peterson stared at him through sightless eyes. He had a third eye in the centre of his forehead. An entry wound, perfectly placed, just like the lawyer on the two-lane to the east. Nine millimetre, almost certainly. Fairly close range. There were faint burns on the skin, and faint powder tattoos. About five feet, probably.

There was no exit wound. The bullet was still inside Peterson’s head, crushed and deformed and tumbled. Unusual, for a nine-millimetre at close range. But not impossible. Clearly Peterson’s skull had been thick.

There was no doubt he was dead. Reacher knew enough about ballistics and human biology and he had seen enough dead people to be absolutely sure. But still he checked. He took off his glove and put warm twinned fingers on the cold skin behind Peterson’s ear. No pulse. Nothing at all, except the waxy feel of a corpse, part soft, part hard, both solid and insubstantial, already completely alien to a living touch.

Reacher put his glove back on.

The car’s transmission was controlled by a lever on the steering column. It was still in Drive. The heater was set at seventy degrees. The radio volume was turned down very low. There were regular gasps of quiet static and occasional murmuring voices, all of them unintelligible.

‘OK,’ Reacher said.

‘Seen enough?’ Holland asked.

‘Yes.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why didn’t he drive straight home?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘He was looking for the shooter,’ Holland said.

‘You all are.’

‘But that wasn’t his job tonight. So he was freelancing. You know why?’

‘No.’

‘He was trying to impress you.’

‘Me?’

‘You were practically mentoring him. You were helping him. Maybe you were even pushing him.’

‘Was I?’

‘You told him what to do about the dead lawyer. All those photographs? You told him what to do about the dead biker. You discussed things. He was going to be the next chief. He wanted to be a good one. He was ready to listen to anybody.’

‘I didn’t tell him to go searching for the shooter all alone in the middle of the night.’

‘He wanted to break the case.’

‘You all do.’

‘He wanted your respect.’

‘Or yours,’ Reacher said. ‘Maybe he was trying to live up to the bullshit you put on the radio tonight. About the meth? You made him feel like a fraud.’

Silence for a beat.

Holland asked, ‘What happened here?’

Reacher said, ‘He saw someone in the lot. Almost certainly in a car or a truck. Too cold to be on foot. He drove in. A wide circle. He stopped, cheek to cheek. Pretty close. He turned down his radio and opened his window, ready to talk. But the guy just went ahead and shot him. He fell over and died and his foot slipped off the brake. The car drove itself into the wall.’

‘Same basic setup as the lawyer.’

‘Pretty much.’

‘Was it quick?’

‘Head shots usually are.’

They went quiet. Just stood and shivered in the freezing air. Holland said, ‘Should we look for a shell case?’

Reacher shook his head. ‘Same deal as the lawyer. The shell case ejected inside the shooter’s vehicle.’

Holland didn’t speak. Reacher could see the question in his face. Who was the guy? It was right there in his eyes.

An awkward question, with an unappealing answer.

Reacher said, ‘Now I see why you wanted me here. You wanted me to be the one to reach the conclusion. And say it out loud. Me, not you. An independent voice.’

Holland didn’t speak.

Reacher said, ‘OK, let’s not go there. Not just yet. Let’s think for a minute.’

They went back to the station house. Holland parked in the slot reserved for him and they walked between the garbage cans to the door. They went to the squad room, to the desk that Peterson had used. Holland said, ‘You should check his messages. Voice mail and e-mail. Something might have come in that led him there.’

Reacher said, ‘You’re clutching at straws.’

‘Allow me the privilege.’

‘Did he even come here first?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did he even have time?’

‘Probably not. But we should check the messages anyway. Because we need to be sure, with a thing like this.’

‘You should do the checking. It’s your department. I’m just a civilian.’

Holland said, ‘I don’t know how. I never learned. I’m not good with technology. I’m old school. Everyone knows that. I’m the past. Andrew was the future.’

So Reacher puzzled his way through the telephone console and the computer keyboard. No passwords were required. No PINs. Everything was set up for fast and casual access. There was only one voice mail message. It was from Kim Peterson, much earlier in the evening, just after six o’clock, just after Reacher and her husband had hustled back to Janet Salter’s house after watching the surveillance video from the prison.

Kim’s recorded voice was suspended somewhere between panicked and brave and resigned and querulous.

She had asked, ‘When are you coming home?’

Reacher moved on to e-mail. He opened the application. Two messages downloaded. The first was from the DEA in Washington D.C. An agent there was confirming his belief that there was no meth lab under the facility west of Bolton, South Dakota. Expensive satellite surveillance time proved it. Peterson was thanked for his interest and asked to get back in touch should new information come to light.

The second e-mail was a routine nightly round robin BOLO bulletin from the Highway Patrol. Statewide coordination. Be on the lookout. For, in this instance, a whole bunch of stuff, including any or all of three stolen cars and four stolen trucks taken that day from random locations around the state, a stolen snowplough taken from a highway maintenance depot east of Mitchell, a thing called an Isuzu N-series pump and a de-icing truck stolen by two absconded employees from a commercial airfield east of Rapid City, a stolen Ithaca shotgun from Pierre, four suspects believed to be at large in a 1979 Chevrolet Suburban after a messy and aborted burglary in Sioux Falls, and finally Peterson’s own contribution, a bartender fleeing a suspected Bolton homicide in a 2005 Ford pick-up truck.