Past Tense (Jack Reacher #23)(22)

“All of us,” Peter said. “We all checked the room and we all signed off on it.”

“Then we all made a bad mistake. Now they’re agitated. Way too soon. We need to pace this better.”

“He thinks it was the painter. She’ll believe him eventually. She doesn’t want to worry. She wants to be happy. She’ll talk herself around. They’ll calm down.”

“You think?”

“Why would we lie about the room? There’s no possible reason for it.”

Mark said, “Bring me a quad-bike.”





Chapter 10


Reacher walked back to the fancy county office with the census scans and the million-dollar cubicles, and he found the same surly guy on duty at the desk. Once again Reacher asked for two censuses, the first when Stan was two, and the second when he was twelve, but this time for the rest of the county that lay outside of Laconia’s technical city limit.

The guy said, “We can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“You’re asking for a donut shape. With a hole in the middle, which is Laconia, which you already saw. Am I right?”

“You got it in one.”

“That’s not how the extracts are done. There are no donut shapes. You can have an area, or a bigger area, or a bigger-still area. Which would be the city, the county, and the state. But the bigger area always includes the smaller area all over again. And the bigger-still area includes both of them all over again. Which is logical, if you think about it. There are no holes in the middle. The city is in the county, and the county is in the state.”

“Understood,” Reacher said. “Thank you for the explanation. I’ll take the whole county.”

“Are you still a resident?”

“You agreed I was this morning. And here I am again. Clearly I didn’t leave town with all my worldly possessions. I would say my status as a resident is more secure than ever.”

“Cubicle four,” the guy said.

—

Patty and Shorty heard an engine start up in the distance, deafening like a motorcycle, and they got up and walked to the corner to take a look. They saw Peter riding a quad-bike back to the house. Now only eight were neatly parked.

“First turn of the key,” Shorty said. “I hope they’re all like that.”

“Way too noisy,” Patty said, disappointed. “We can’t do it. They would know.”

Peter parked at the distant house. He killed the engine and silence came back. He got off and went inside. Patty and Shorty went back to their lawn chairs.

Shorty said, “The land is pretty flat around here.”

“Does that help us?”

“We could push the quad-bike. With the engine off. With the suitcase balanced on it. We could use it like a furniture dolly.”

“Could we?”

“They can’t be that heavy. You see people wheeling motorbikes all the time. We wouldn’t even have to keep it upright, and there are two of us. I bet we could do it dead easy.”

“Two miles there and two miles back? Which would leave the suitcase by the side of the road, and us back here. So then we would have another two miles to walk. Altogether six, four of them pushing a quad-bike. It would take a good long time.”

“I figure about three hours,” Shorty said.

“Depends how fast we could push. We don’t know yet.”

“OK, call it four hours. We should time it to finish at dawn. Maybe we might see a farmer heading to market. There has to be traffic sometimes. So we should start in the middle of the night. Which is good. They’ll be asleep.”

“It’s a possibility,” Patty said. “I suppose.”

They heard the distant quad-bike start up again, fifty yards away, then closer. It sounded like it was passing the barn and coming straight toward them.

They stood up.

The engine got loud and the machine roared around the corner, with Mark riding it, scattering dirt. There was a cardboard carton strapped to the rack on the back. Mark braked to a stop, and tapped the gear change into neutral, and shut the motor down. He smiled his master-of-the-universe smile.

“Good news,” he said. “The phone is back on. The mechanic will be here first thing in the morning. We were too late to get him today. But he knows what the problem is. He’s seen it before. Apparently there’s an electronic chip close to where the heater hoses go through the back of the dashboard. The chip fries when the water in the hoses gets too hot. He’s bringing a replacement chip he got from a wrecker’s yard. He wants five dollars for it. Plus fifty for labor.”

“That’s great,” Shorty said.

Patty said nothing.

Mark said, “And I’m afraid I want another fifty for the room.”

There was silence for a second.

Mark said, “Guys, I would love to tell you just forget it, but the bank would kick my ass. This is a business, I’m afraid. We have to take it seriously. And from your point of view it’s not so terrible. A hundred for the motel and fifty-some to fix your car, and you’re out of here for less than two hundred dollars all in. Could have been a whole lot worse.”

“Come take a look at this,” Patty said.

Mark climbed off the quad-bike and Patty led the way inside the room. She pointed down into the void under the vanity.