Past Tense (Jack Reacher #23)(67)

“It was a rough-legged hawk,” Reacher said. “In Ryantown, New Hampshire.”

“Really?”

She sounded astonished.

“Because of no more rat poison,” he said. “A new abundance of prey. I think it’s plausible. As an integrated theory.”

“No, I mean it’s amazing because someone else looked at that exact same thing about a year ago. I remember. It was about two boys, right? A long time in the past. They recorded the hawk and wrote an explanation. It was reprinted in an old magazine a month or so afterward.”

She pattered at her keyboard.

She said, “Actually it was more than a year ago. It was an ornithologist from the university. He had seen the historic magazine reprint, but because it came from a handwritten manuscript, he wanted to see the original. To be sure of the accuracy. We talked a little bit. He said he knew one of the participants.”

“One of the boys?”

“I think he said he was related to both of them.”

“How old was this guy?”

“Not old. Obviously the boys were from a previous generation. Uncles or great-uncles or something. The stories were clearly passed down.”

“He had stories?”

“Some of them were pretty interesting.”

“Which university?”

“New Hampshire,” she said. “Down in Durham.”

“Can you give me his name and number?”

“Not without a good reason.”

“We might be related too. One of those boys was my father.”

The woman wrote out the name and the number. Reacher folded the paper and put it in his back pants pocket, next to Brenda Amos’s business card. He said, “Can I put the books away for you?”

“My job,” she said.

He thanked her and went back up the stair to the lobby. He stood for a moment. He was all done in town. He had nothing more to see. On a whim he crossed to the main staircase, which was inside a wide tower, just like it would be in a castle. He went up as far as the second-floor windows, for a last look around. It was a good vantage point. He saw the Subaru in the distance, small and dull, still parked, patiently waiting, about sixty yards away. He crossed the hall and in the opposite direction he saw the air conditioning truck. Still there, with its icy letters, and their snowy caps.

Plus three guys standing next to it. Sixty yards away. Tiny in the distance. Up close, maybe not so much. Every single passerby was smaller. They were wearing some kind of one-piece jump suits. Hard to make out. He needed binoculars. Like the guy in the committee meeting. The jump suits looked tight. Short in the arms. Did HVAC guys need to be big? Probably not. Probably better to be small, for attics and crawl spaces.

They looked impatient.

Reacher crossed to the left-hand window.

Trees, bushes, a quiet street beyond.

With a cop on the sidewalk, just shy of the four-way.

The cop was alone and on foot. He was crouching. In a particular way. He was in the unmistakable stance of an armed man holding himself back from a corner. Until ordered to advance. Which implied a degree of coordination. With who?

He crossed to the right-hand window.

A mirror image. Trees, flowers, a quiet street, and a cop holding ready to roll his shoulder around the corner and take aim.

He went back to the center window with the view of the truck. There were streets beyond it, left and right, radiating away. Plenty of parked cars. Some base models. Cheapskate buyers, or police unmarked. The three guys were probably surrounded. But not by an overwhelming force. Solo guys on the left and right flanks implied no more than two more anyplace. Four people, max. A very light force.

He crossed back to the left-hand window. The cop was inching toward the corner. No doubt his earpiece was counting him down. He crossed to the right-hand window. Same story. Still a mirror image. Synchronized. Seconds to go. It was a very bad plan. No way could Amos have been involved. Or Shaw either. He had looked smart enough. This was some uniform captain’s mistake.

On the right the cop rolled around the corner.

Reacher hustled across the hall.

Same thing on the left.

A very bad plan.

He crossed back to the center window just in time to see the air conditioning guys do the one and only thing they needed to do. They clambered through a flower bed and stepped into the library gardens. They turned the physical situation inside out. Like peeling off a T-shirt. Now everyone else was behind them. In front of them and all around them was a risk of collateral damage so great it was prohibitive. Like a smart move in chess. Mate in two.

They kept on walking. Slow. Always aware of the geometry around them. Not their first rodeo. Behind them the police response was halfway competent. The cops on foot sprinted back the way they had come, down the quiet side streets, to retake the flanks. Way back two more cops were running up. Then fanning out. Not entering the gardens. Staying on the street. Establishing a cordon. One cop per side of the square. Because common sense said the three guys would have to come out sometime.

But for the moment they kept on walking straight. By then they were about halfway to the library. Going slow. Just strolling. Which made sense. Because their next obvious move was to reverse direction at high speed and turn the situation inside out all over again. If they did it soon, they could make it back to their van more or less completely unopposed. The cops weren’t ready yet. Then they could get the hell out of Dodge. Could three squad cars stop them? Probably not.