Past Tense (Jack Reacher #23)(34)

Fifteen minutes later Detective Brenda Amos stepped into the room. She was writing in her notebook. At her shoulder was a man in a suit. His posture and his manner said he was showing her around. Therefore he was the bed and breakfast’s manager. Or its owner. Reacher half lip-read and half heard him say, “This gentleman is the only guest still on the premises.”

Amos glanced up from her notebook, routinely, and glanced away again. Then she looked back. A classic slow-motion double take, like something out of an old-time television show. She stared. She blinked.

She said to the man in the suit, “I’ll talk to him now.”

“May I bring you coffee?”

“Yes, please,” Reacher called out to him. “A pot for two.”

The guy nodded politely, after a fractional delay. To bring coffee to a police detective was one thing. To a guest was another. Beneath his station. But on the other hand, the customer was always right. He backed out of the room and Amos came all the way in. She sat down at Reacher’s table, in the empty seat across from him.

She said, “As a matter of fact I already had coffee this morning.”

“It doesn’t have to be a once-a-day thing,” he said. “There’s no law that says you ever have to stop.”

“Also as a matter of fact I think Dunkin’ is spiking it with LSD today.”

“How so?”

“Or else as a matter of fact this is the biggest déjà vu in history.”

“OK, how so that?”

“You know what déjà vu literally means?”

“It literally means already seen. It’s French. My mother was French. She liked it when Americans used French phrases. It made her feel part of things.”

“Why are you telling me about your mother?”

“Why are you asking me about LSD?”

“What did we do yesterday?”

“Do?” he said.

“We dug up an old case from seventy-five years ago, in which a youth was found unconscious on the sidewalk of a downtown Laconia street. He was identified as a local twenty-year-old, already known to the police department as a loudmouth and a bully, but untouchable, because he was the son of the local rich guy. Remember?”

“Sure,” Reacher said.

“What happened when I got to work this morning?”

“I have no way of knowing.”

“I was told that a youth had just been found unconscious on the sidewalk of a downtown Laconia street. He had been identified as a local twenty-year-old, already known to the police department as a loudmouth and a bully, but untouchable, because he was the son of the local rich guy.”

“Seriously?”

“And I walk into the hotel across the street and here you are.”

“I guess that seems like a coincidence.”

“You think?”

“Not really. Clearly such crimes happen all the time.”

“Seventy-five years apart is all the time?”

“I’m sure there were many similar incidents in between. All rich bullies get a smack sooner or later. You could have picked any old case at random, and it could have been the same kind of match. And obviously I’m here, because I’m the guy who asked you about the non-random old case in question. So instead of a coincidence, it’s really a mathematical certainty, especially because you know I don’t live here, so where else would I be, except a hotel?”

“Directly across the street from the crime scene.”

“Are you going house to house for witnesses?”

“That’s what we do.”

“Did anyone see anything?”

“Did you?”

“I’m not a birdwatcher,” Reacher said. “More’s the pity. Migration has started. My dad would have been excited.”

“Did you hear anything?”

“What time?”

“The kid was still unconscious at seven. Assuming his assailant was a human being and not an eighteen-wheel truck, call it no earlier than five o’clock.”

“I was asleep at five o’clock,” Reacher said. “Didn’t hear a thing.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Something woke me up the night before. But that was three o’clock, and a different hotel.”

“What was it?”

“It woke me up but it didn’t happen again. I couldn’t get a fix on it.”

“The kid also has a broken arm,” Amos said.

“That can happen,” Reacher said.

A waitress came in with two pots of coffee and two fresh cups. Reacher poured, but Amos didn’t. She closed her notebook. He asked her, “How is this investigation viewed inside the department?”

She said, “We have low expectations.”

“Are tears not being shed?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Who was the kid?”

“The kid is a lout and a bully and a predator. The kind who gets the best of everything, including victims and lawyers.”

“Doesn’t sound all that complicated to me.”

“We’re worried about what happens next.”

“You think he’s going to get up a posse?”

“The problem is his father already has a posse.”