Past Tense (Jack Reacher #23)(91)

She went quiet.

Then she breathed out.

“Not what I thought it was,” she said. “No one left town. Not yet. Carrington is still here.”

“I need you to do something for me,” Reacher said.

He could still hear the paper. She was reading it.

“More ancient history?” she said.

“Current events,” he said. “A professor at the university told me that thirty years ago an old man named Reacher came home to New Hampshire after many years on foreign shores. As far as I know he has been domiciled here ever since. As far as I know he lives with the granddaughter of a relative. I need you to check around the county. I need you to see if you can find him. Maybe he’s registered to vote. Maybe he still has a driver’s license.”

“I work for the city, not the county.”

“You found out all about the Reverend Burke. He doesn’t live in the city.”

He could still hear the paper.

“I called in favors,” she said. “What is the old man’s first name?”

“Stan.”

“That’s your father.”

“I know.”

“You told me he was deceased.”

“I was at the funeral.”

“The professor is confused.”

“Probably.”

“What else could he be?”

“The funeral was thirty years ago. Which was also when the guy showed up in New Hampshire after a lifetime away.”

“What?”

“It was a closed casket. Maybe it was full of rocks. The Marine Corps and the CIA worked together from time to time. I’m sure all kinds of secret squirrelly shit was going on.”

“That’s crazy.”

“You never heard of a thing like that?”

“It’s like a Hollywood movie.”

“Based on a true story.”

“One in a million. I’m sure most CIA stories were very boring. I’m damn sure most Marine Corps stories were.”

“Agreed,” Reacher said. “One in a million. But that’s my point. The odds are better than zero. Which is why I want you to check. Call it due diligence on my part. I would be failing in my duty. You’re about to re-open a cold case with no statute of limitations, with a one-in-a-million possibility your main suspect is still alive, living in your jurisdiction, and is related to me. I figured I should clarify things beforehand. In case I need to call him. Hey, pops, get a lawyer, you’re about to be arrested. That kind of thing.”

“That’s crazy,” Amos said again.

“The odds are better than zero,” Reacher said again.

“Wait,” she said again.

He could still hear the paper.

She said, “This is a weird coincidence.”

“What is?”

“Our new software. Mostly it counts who enters and who leaves, using license plate recognition technology. But apparently it’s running a couple extra layers underneath. It’s looking for outstanding warrants, and tickets, and then it’s running a page for general remarks.”

“And?”

“The van we saw this morning was illegal.”

“Which van?”

“The Persian carpet cleaners.”

“Illegal how?”

“It should have been showing dealer plates.”

“Why?”

“Because its current owner is a dealer.”

“Not a carpet cleaner?”

“They went out of business. The van was repossessed.”

—

Patty and Shorty went back to the bathroom, but gave up on it pretty soon. The smashed tile and the powdered wall board made half of it uninhabitable. They drifted back to the bed again and sat side by side, facing away from the window. They didn’t care if the blind was up or down. They didn’t care who was watching. They whispered to each other, short and quiet, nodding and shrugging and shaking their heads, using hand signals, discussing things as fast and as privately as they could. They had revised their basic assumptions. They had refined their mental model. Some things were clearer. Some things were not. They knew more, but understood less. Clearly the six men who had looked in the window were the opposition team. Their task was to win a game of tag. In thirty square miles of forest. Presumably in the dark. Presumably with three of the assholes out in the woods with them, as referees, or umpires, or marshals, for a total of nine quad-bikes, with the fourth and final asshole stuck in the house, watching the cameras and listening to the microphones and doing whatever the hell else they did in there. That was their current prediction.

Thirty square miles. Six men. In the dark. Yet they were confident of success. They couldn’t afford to fail. The quad-bikes would help. Much faster than running. But still. Thirty square miles was ten thousand football fields. All empty, except a random six, and each of those with just one man.

In the dark.

They didn’t get it.

Then Shorty whispered, “Maybe they have night vision goggles.”

Which sparked a cascade of gloomy thoughts. They could ride around and around, in an endless giant circle, a mile or two out, one by one, like an endless pinwheel, one or other of them passing any given spot every few minutes. Meanwhile Patty and Shorty would be coming in from the side, at a right angle, like crossing a one-way street. They would be slow. They might be visible for five whole minutes, side to side, beginning to end. Would the pinwheel spin slower than that?