Past Tense (Jack Reacher #23)(84)

“What happened then?”

“He joined the Marines.”

“What would I be looking for?”

“Something unsolved.”

“When do you need it by?”

“I’ll call you back as soon as I can. I want to hear about Carrington.”

—

They passed the wandering turn that led away through the orchards to Ryantown. They stayed on the back road, heading north. Reacher watched the phone. The bars went out, one by one. For a moment the screen said it was searching, and then it gave up and said no service. Up ahead were miles of fields, and then more woods, far in the distance. A left to right wall. Burke drove on toward it. He said he thought the motel entrance was about five miles in. On the left side. He remembered the signs. There was one each way. They said Motel, in plastic letters painted gold. They were mounted on gnarled old posts.

Five minutes later they drove into the trees. The air felt cooler. Sunlight sparkled through the leaves. Reacher checked the speedometer. They were doing forty. About five miles would take about seven or eight minutes. He counted time in his head. The trees grew thicker. Like a tunnel. No more sunbeams. The light turned green and soft.

Burke took his foot off the gas at seven minutes exactly in Reacher’s head. Burke said he was pretty sure the turn was coming up. Ahead on the left. Pretty soon. He remembered. But they saw no signs. No plastic letters, no gold paint. Just a pair of twisted old posts, leaning over a little, and the mouth of a track. Left and right of it on the main drag were unbroken walls of trees, both up ahead and far behind.

“I’m pretty sure this was it,” Burke said.

Reacher hitched up and pulled his map from his pocket. The one he had bought at the old edge-of-town gas station. He unfolded it and found the back road. He checked the scale and moved his finger. He showed Burke. He said, “This is the only turn for miles around.”

Burke said, “Maybe someone stole their signs.”

“Or they went out of business.”

“I doubt it. They were very committed. They had a business plan. I heard something about them, as a matter of fact. From the county office. They were extremely ambitious. But they got off to a bad start, as it turned out. They got in a fight about a permit.”

“Who did?”

“The people developing the property. They said any motel keeper depends on opening on time at the start of the season. They said the county was unreasonably slow with the permit. The county said the developer had started work without permission. They got in a fight.”

“When was this?”

“About a year and a half ago. Which is why they were upset about their timetable. They wanted to open the following spring. Which is also why they can’t be out of business yet. Their plan showed a two-year reserve.”

A patrol car responded to the county offices because a customer was causing a disturbance. He claimed a building permit was slow coming through. He claimed he was renovating a motel somewhere out of town.

He gave his name as Mark Reacher.

Reacher said, “I really need to go take a look at this place.”

Burked turned in, over broken blacktop that was missing altogether in whole table-sized patches. The light was greener still. Branches dipped in close, from both sides, some of them limp and broken, still fresh, as if a large vehicle had brushed by not long ago.

They found the large vehicle thirty yards later. It was stopped up ahead, tight against the trees on both sides, blocking the track completely.

It was a tow truck. Huge. Red paint, gold stripes.

“We just saw this thing,” Reacher said. “And I also saw it yesterday.”

A yard behind its giant rear tires was a wire, laid side to side across the road. It was fat and rubbery. It was the kind of thing they had at gas stations.

Reacher wound his window down. There was no noise from the truck’s engine. There were no fumes from its exhaust. Burke stopped the Subaru six feet before the wire. Reacher opened his door. He got out and walked forward. He stepped over the wire. Burke followed him. Reacher made sure Burke stepped over the wire too. He didn’t like wires on roads. Nothing good ever came of them. Best case surveillance, worst case explosions.

The truck had a long sloping haunch at the back, with a short sturdy crane and a giant tow hook. It had lockers with gleaming chrome doors. Reacher squeezed down the driver’s side, leading with his left shoulder, keeping his left elbow high, keeping the twigs away from his face. He slid past the owner’s name, which was Karel, proudly painted a foot high in gold letters. He made it level with the cab. He stepped up on the bottom rung of the ladder and tried the driver’s door. It was locked. He stepped down again and forced his way around the hood to the front of the truck. Ahead of him the track ran on through the woods. The surface remained the same. Worn blacktop, missing in places, randomly covered in grit, gravel, dirt, and leaf mold. There were tire tracks here and there, some of them ancient, some of them recent. Twenty yards farther on there was a hole in the trees. Like a natural recess. It had brand new tire tracks. Two tight V shapes. Like a car had backed in to turn around. Which made some kind of sense. Because the tow truck driver didn’t seem to be around anymore. Possibly a car had driven down to pick him up. It would have stopped nose to nose with the truck, and then backed up and turned and driven away forward.

Reacher looked ahead.