Better off Dead (Jack Reacher #26)(12)

“I don’t have any luggage. And I could have carried on riding with the guy. He asked me to. But I don’t like turning around. I like to keep moving forward. So I got out.”

“OK. First things first. No luggage? Really?”

“Why would I need luggage? What would I put in it?”

“I’m going to take a wild shot in the dark here and say, I don’t know, you’re on a cross-country road trip, so…clothes? Nightwear? Toiletries? Personal items?”

“I’m wearing my clothes. They have toiletries at hotels. And my personal items are in my pocket.”

“You have one set of clothes?”

“How many does a person need?”

“I don’t know. More than one. What do you do when they need to be washed?”

“Throw them away and buy more.”

“Isn’t that wasteful? And impractical?”

“No.”

“Why not take them home? Clean them? Re-use them?”

“Laundry’s not my thing. Nor are laundry rooms. Or houses.”

“So you’re homeless, in other words?”

    “Call it what you like. The reality is, I have no use for a home. Not at the moment. Maybe I’ll get one, someday. Maybe I’ll get a dog. Maybe I’ll settle down. But not yet. Not for a long time.”

“So you do what? Just roam around the country?”

“That’s the general idea.”

“How? Do you even have a car?”

“Never felt the need.”

“You prefer hitching rides?”

“I don’t mind it. Sometimes I take the bus.”

“You take the bus? Really?”

I didn’t reply.

“OK. Back to the guy who was driving you this morning. Why his sudden one-eighty?”

“He wanted to buy some old British sports car. He’d been to Texas to buy a different one. But he backed out. The seller tried to rip him off. Something about numbers that didn’t match. I don’t know why that’s a big deal. I’m not much of a car guy. So he was driving home again. To someplace in western Arizona. He wanted to let off steam. So he wanted an audience. So he picked me up. Outside a motel near El Paso.”

“Wait a minute. We’re nowhere near the regular route west from El Paso.”

“The radio said I-10 was snarled up. Some kind of multicar accident. So he took a bunch of smaller roads. Cut across the southwest corner of New Mexico. Made it all the way past the Arizona state line. Then his phone rang. It was his wife. She had a lead on another of these old cars. In Oklahoma this time.”

“But you wanted to keep heading west. Why? What’s out there for you?”

“The Pacific Ocean.”

    “I don’t follow.”

“Call it a whim. I was in Nashville, Tennessee. There’s a band I like. I caught them at a couple of clubs, then when I was on my way out of the city this weird bird flew by. For a moment I thought it was a pelican. It wasn’t, but it made me think of Alcatraz. Which made me think of the ocean.”

“And you thought the ocean was somewhere up this road?”

“No. I got bored of waiting for another ride. I started to walk. And I saw a giant stone structure at the side of the highway with an arrow pointing this way. An obelisk. Or a monument. It was covered with carvings and fancy patterns. And it made me curious. I thought, if the sign’s that elaborate, what will the town be like?”

“See for yourself,” she said. “We’re nearly there.”





Chapter 8


We had been climbing gradually since we left The Tree and just at that moment we crested the hill and the town came into view. It was spread out below us, maybe half a mile away. I could see clusters of buildings with pale stucco walls and terra-cotta roofs. It was hard to make sense of the layout. It looked like the place was made up of two rough ovals. They partially overlapped, like a Venn diagram drawn by a kid with a shaky hand. The buildings in the segment to the left were lower. Mainly single level. Their walls looked a little rougher. They were scattered around a little more randomly. The ones in the other part were taller. Straighter. More evenly laid out. The section in the center had buildings that were taller still. I could see arches and curves and courtyards. Maybe it was the municipal district. Maybe the bars and restaurants were around there, too. If the place ran to that kind of thing.

On the far side of the town a row of tall metal ribs rose out of the ground and extended east and west as far as the eye could see. They looked solid. Permanent. Unwelcoming. They were set close together and their tips were pointed and sharp. I guessed the land beyond them belonged to Mexico. It looked pretty much the same as the land on the US side. The incline picked up again and there was a slope a few hundred yards long that was undeveloped, like a kind of no-man’s-land. Then at the top of the rise the buildings began again. I could see another set of pale stucco walls and terra-cotta roofs stretching far into the distance.

    “What do you think?” Fenton said.

“I think I’m missing something.”

Dendoncker had just ordered Fenton killed. He had at least three others on his payroll. Fenton had talked about him like he was the second coming of Al Capone, only with added craziness. That meant he must be based someplace that could sustain a decent level of crime. Protection. Drugs. Prostitution. The usual staples, most likely. But this town looked like nothing more than a sleepy backwater. The kind of place you would come to get over insomnia. I’d be surprised if they’d ever even had a shoplifting problem.