Past Tense (Jack Reacher #23)(66)

“Take a seat,” she said. “I’ll bring them to you.”

He sat down at a study carrel, one of many pushed together in the center of the room. Three minutes later the woman brought him the records. Which was three months faster than Elizabeth Castle could have gotten him a property file. He decided if he ever saw her again he would point that out.

The records were in four large ledgers with maroon marbled covers, stained and faded by time. Each book was an inch and a half thick, and the edges were marbled too, in curling, feathery patterns. Inside, the pages were numbered, and lined, and faded, and brittle, and covered in neat fountain-pen handwriting, gone watery and pale with age.

He asked, “Should I be wearing white cotton gloves?”

“No,” the woman said. “That’s a myth. Generally does more harm than good.”

She walked back to her desk. He opened the first ledger. It continued from where the last ledger must have left off. The year Stan was thirteen. The first page of the new book jumped right in with the minutes of the next meeting. It was held in the back room of a downtown restaurant. Stan Reacher was not listed as present. Much time was taken up debating whether to change the club’s name. Currently it was The Society of Laconia Birdwatchers. A faction thought The Laconia Audubon Society would be better. More upscale and scientific. More professional, less amateur. Much discussion ensued but no recommendation was made.

Stan Reacher was not present at the next meeting, either. It seemed to have wasted a lot of time with a guy banging on about restating the club’s fundamental purpose, which in his opinion should be accurately maintaining a comprehensive register of competent binocular repairers. This, he felt, would bring maximum value to the members. Reacher was glad Stan hadn’t been present. He would have needed a lot more patience as a kid than he ever displayed as an adult.

He put the first ledger aside, and tried the second. It was an identical book. He opened it at random, in the middle. Where he found a handwritten essay about hummingbird migration. It was labeled as a Report on Proceedings, and it was written, very neatly, by someone named A. B. Smith. It was like a scholarly article, recapping the work of others, before venturing a new opinion at the end. About how a baby hummingbird could be born in North America, and then fly alone two thousand miles and land on a spot the size of a pocket handkerchief. Mr. or Ms. Smith figured it must have been born with a fixed instinct, directly inherited from the parent, mysteriously transmitted at a cellular level by a mechanism as yet unknown. DNA, Reacher thought. Twenty years in the future. He knew the end of the movie.

He tried the third book. He opened it at random, and leafed ahead, and a minute later he found the meeting where his father was elected secretary. Right there. Stan Reacher, nem con. Which was short for the Latin nemine contradicente , which meant no one spoke against, which meant no one else wanted the job. Easy to see why. But Stan slowly got control. The meetings got faster. There was more talk of birds than names or binocular repairs. The fountain-pen writing was neat. But not Stan’s. Not even a juvenile version. He must have delegated the clerical duties. Like later in life. Why the Corps invented clerks, he would say. But the content sounded like him. The secretary ruled immediately that it was an inappropriate subject for discussion. The secretary set a two-minute time limit on discussion of the motion . In other words, shut up, and hurry up. Like later in life. Why the Corps invented captains.

Reacher turned the pages. Another meeting, and another. And then another Report on Proceedings. There were maps and pictures and diagrams, done in colored pencils. There were columns of text, done in ink. The title, carefully lettered, was An Historic Sighting Over Ryantown, New Hampshire . The article was respectfully submitted by S. Reacher and W. Reacher.

The birdwatching boys. Both Reachers. Cousins, probably. Like old Mr. Mortimer said. Everyone had cousins in and out. Maybe their fathers were brothers. Living nearby. Or second cousins, or once removed, or whatever it was when it got complicated. Stan and, who? William, Walter, Warren, Wesley, Winston. Or Winthrop or Wilbert or Waylon.

The bird was a rough-legged hawk.

It was thought to be gone, but it came back. No doubt about it. There was no issue with the identification. There was a clue in the name. It was a hard bird to mistake. The question was why it came back.

The answer, according to S. and W. Reacher, was vermin. Settlements like Ryantown attracted rats and mice like magnets, where they were poisoned, so the hawks either got nothing to eat, or they died from consuming toxic flesh. Naturally the few survivors went elsewhere, not to return until years later, when the government started commandeering every kind of basic item for the war effort, including steel and rubber and aluminum, of course, and gasoline, but also all kinds of other things. Such as rat poison. The military needed it all. For unspecified reasons. None was available on the civilian market. Like so many things. The result was the rats and mice in Ryantown grew plump and healthy. So the hawks came hustling over from wherever they had weathered the chemical storm, and they got back to work. Respectfully submitted.

W. Reacher was not listed as present at the next meeting. Or the meeting before. Reacher flipped through the pages, forward and backward, and never saw the name. Not once. Not on the committee, not among the membership, not at events, not on days out.

Cousin W. was not a joiner.

Reacher closed the book.

The woman at the desk said, “Did you find what you needed?”