Lee Child - Never Go Back

Of which there were many, mostly old. Which made sense. Reacher figured that back in his father’s day binoculars were bought simply because binoculars were bought. Every family had a pair. And an encyclopedia. No one used either. Or the clockwork eight-millimetre camera, if the family was a colonel’s or better. But they had to be provided. Part of a family man’s sacred duty. But now all those family men were dead, and their adult children’s houses were of finite capacity. So their stuff found itself stacked between the acoustic guitars and the college rings, still in the velvet-lined leather buckets it came in, and tagged with prices halfway between low and very.

They found a pair they liked, powerful but not too heavy, and adjustable enough to fit both their faces, and Baldacci paid, and they walked back to the car.

Turner said, ‘I think we should wait for dusk. Nothing will happen before then, anyway. Not if her mom has a new job. And we have a black car. Espin won’t even see it in the dark. But the street itself should be lit up enough for binoculars.’

‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘We should eat first, I guess. This could take hours. How long are you prepared to stay up there?’

‘As long as it takes. As many times as it takes.’

‘Thank you.’

‘In all of my dating history, I don’t know if this is the smartest thing I’ve ever done, or the dumbest.’

They ate in West Hollywood, well and slowly and expensively, on Peter Paul Lozano’s dime, and they let late afternoon turn into early evening, and as soon as the street lights were brighter than the sky they got back in the car and took Sunset Boulevard to the 101. Traffic was bad, as always, but the sky used the wasted minutes to get darker and darker, so that by the time they took the curving off-ramp the day had gone completely.

There was no official shoulder on the ramp, but there was more than a shoulder’s width of painted chevrons on the right side, to define the traffic lane through the curve, so they pulled over as if their dashboard was lit up like a Christmas tree. Turner had the new old binoculars out and ready, and they rolled forward until she figured they had as good a view as they were going to get. Reacher shut the motor down. They were about three hundred yards from the blue front door, and about forty feet above it. Just like the field manual. A straight line, with elevation. More than satisfactory. Not bad at all. The house was quiet. The blue door was closed. The old red coupé was still on the driveway. The FBI Malibu had gone from the street, but the Hummer was still there, as was the small white compact sixty feet from it. The rest of the automotive roster had changed a little. Day-shift workers were heading home, and night-shift workers were heading out.

They took turns with the binoculars. Reacher twisted around in the driver’s seat and rested his back on the door, and looked out beyond Turner next to him, through her open window. The optical image was dark and indistinct. No night-vision enhancement. But it was adequate. Behind him cars sped past, just feet away, a steady procession, all of them leaving the 101 and joining the 134. None of them stopped to help. They just rocked the old truck with their slipstreams, and sped onward, oblivious.

Romeo called Juliet and said, ‘They were just in West Hollywood. They bought something in a pawn shop, on Baldacci’s card, and then they ate at a very expensive restaurant, on Lozano’s.’

Juliet said, ‘What would they want from a pawn shop?’

‘Doesn’t matter. The point is they were in West Hollywood, whiling away the hours, apparently aimlessly, which one assumes they wouldn’t do if there were things still on their agenda, like determining Ms Dayton’s current location, for instance. So I think we should assume they have it now.’

‘How did they get it?’

‘Doesn’t matter how. What matters is what they’re going to do next. Possibly they were in West Hollywood just hiding out until dark. In which case they’re probably back at the house by now, about to begin a lengthy period of surveillance.’

‘Our boys aren’t there any more.’

‘Then get them back. Tell them to look at the neighbourhood with a military eye and work out where a skilled team would be watching from. There can’t be more than a handful of suitable vantage points. They won’t be hunkered down in a neighbour’s back yard, for instance. They’re probably fairly distant. The field manual calls for a line of sight plus elevation. Upstairs in an empty building, perhaps, or a water tower, or a parking garage. Tell our boys to compile a list of possibilities, and then tell them to split up and investigate. More efficient that way. We need this done tonight.’

‘You can buy guns in a pawn shop.’

‘But they didn’t. There’s a waiting period. California has laws. And they only spent thirty dollars.’

‘On the credit card. There could have been a side deal in cash. Lozano and Baldacci had plenty with them on the plane.’

‘An illegal purchase? Then they wouldn’t have stuck around to eat. Not in the same neighbourhood. They’d have been too nervous. They’d have gone somewhere else. That’s my sense. So assume they’re still unarmed.’

‘I hope you’re right about that,’ Juliet said. ‘It would make things easier.’

Turner spent thirty minutes with the binoculars, and then she passed them back to Reacher, blinking and rubbing her eyes. He widened them out to fit, and adjusted the focus, which took a big turn of the wheel. Either he was half blind, or she was.

She said, ‘I want to call Sergeant Leach again. I want to know she’s OK.’

He said, ‘Give her my best.’ He half listened to Turner’s end of the conversation while he watched what was happening three hundred yards away. Which was nothing much. The Hummer stayed where it was, and the small white compact stayed where it was. No one went in or out through the blue front door. Sergeant Leach was apparently OK. As was her cooperative friend Margaret Vega. At that point, at least. So far. The conversation was short. Turner said nothing explicit, but between the lines Leach seemed to be agreeing with her that the die was cast, and the only available options were win big or go home.

The blue door stayed closed. Most of the time Reacher kept the binoculars trained hard on it, but then for maybe four seconds out of every twenty he started a fragmented exploration of the neighbourhood. He traced his way back down the street, and out through the elbow where they had come in, with the bakery truck outside the grocery, and the dumped bike, and the car with no wheels. Then came the main drag, which was Vineland Avenue, about as far south of the freeway as the law office was north.

He went back to the blue door, which stayed closed.

And then he traced his way down the street again, but went the other way at the far end, right instead of left, and he found an identical elbow, like a mirror image. The same kind of zoning, and the same kinds of issues. And then the main drag again, still Vineland, but a further quarter mile south. Which made the neighbourhood not quite a rectangle. It was taller on the right than the left. Like a pennant. Some way above its top right corner was the freeway, and then the law office, and some way below its bottom right corner was an old coach diner, all lit up and shiny.

Reacher knew which way he would walk.

He went back to the blue door, which stayed closed.

It stayed closed until a minute before eight o’clock. And then it opened, and she came out again, just the same as before. Same long-limbed stride, almost graceful, same hair, same shirt, same jacket, same shoes. Presumably no socks or laces, and possibly the same wry expression, but it was dark, and the optics had limits.