The Sentinel (Jack Reacher #25)(31)

‘I need to take this.’ Rutherford checked the number on the screen. ‘It’s my lawyer.’

He moved ten feet away and talked on the phone for less than a minute.

‘Assholes!’ he said when he returned. ‘Remember I told you I had subpoenaed my work laptop? Obviously my boss knows he’s screwed if I get my hands on it because the town is now saying I can have it, sure. But not for eight weeks. And then only if I pay fourteen thousand dollars for them to redact confidential information now that I’m no longer a town employee.’

‘Can they do that?’ Reacher said.

‘My lawyer says they can. She says they’ve got me over a barrel.’

‘Is there any other way to get the laptop? Any legal-eagle tricks she can pull?’

‘Short of breaking in and taking it, no.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Agree, I guess. I need that computer. I’ve got the money. I can wait. And they say revenge is a dish best served cold, right?’

The retired couple had left by the time Reacher and Rutherford stepped into the diner and no other customers were in the place. They took the same booth as the previous night, with the turquoise Chevy and the view of both doors, and a couple of minutes later a waitress emerged from the kitchen carrying two mugs and a pot of coffee. It was the woman who’d helped Reacher with the online telephone directory.

‘You found him, then,’ she said, and nodded at Rutherford as she poured Reacher’s drink.

‘I did,’ Reacher said. ‘Now I’m looking for someone else.’

‘Who is it this time?’

‘Holly. Your co-worker. Does she have a shift today?’

‘This is her shift.’ The waitress scowled. ‘It’s supposed to be, anyway. But she’s not here. She called in sick. Again. Which is why I’m here covering for her. Again. Instead of going shopping in Nashville with my daughter like I planned.’

‘Is Holly out sick often?’

‘She’s off work often. And she says she’s sick.’

‘But you don’t believe her?’

‘I’m not saying that. I guess it depends on your definition of sick. I do believe she’s often not in a position to work. Poor girl. Or stupid girl. Take your pick.’

‘You think there’s something else going on? The bottle, maybe?’

‘Not the bottle. Try the fist.’

‘She has an abusive husband? Or boyfriend?’

‘Not according to her. She says she’s single, and I’m not calling her a liar. But the makeup around her eyes? That surely is. She must put it on with a trowel, some days. And the long-sleeved shirts she wears when it’s a hundred degrees plus? They don’t back her position. No, sir. She’s either hooked up with some kind of an asshole or she’s the clumsiest person this side of a circus clown. Now, what can I get for you?’

Reacher ordered a double stack of pancakes with extra bacon, then added two slices of apple pie while Rutherford struggled to choose between waffles and crepes. He finally came down in favour of waffles and as the waitress scribbled on her pad Reacher asked if the place had any newspapers. He saw Rutherford smirk. ‘What?’ he said when the waitress was out of earshot. ‘Don’t you like to keep up with the news?’

‘I do like the news.’ Rutherford pulled out his phone. ‘That’s the point. News. Not history.’

The waitress sauntered back and dropped a pile of local and national papers on the table.

‘She should put them all in the recycling,’ Rutherford said. ‘There’s nothing in any of these you couldn’t already have read on here.’ He held up his phone. ‘In much more detail. Oh. Wait.’ He picked up a local paper from the top of the heap. ‘I’d missed that detail. Weird.’

‘What is?’

‘A journalist got murdered. I’d seen it in the headlines online but I hadn’t noticed her name. It’s there, look.’ He put the paper down and pointed to the story just above the fold. ‘It jumped out because she had contacted me a couple of times. It feels odd when the victim is someone you knew of. Even if you didn’t know them, exactly.’ He read more of the story and his face lost all its colour. ‘Oh, God. This is gross. It says she was kidnapped and kept alive, probably for days. And she was tortured. Then her body was cut up and dumped in three different places.’

‘Let me see.’ Reacher took the paper and read the story.

Rutherford picked up his phone, hit some keys, and dragged his finger up and down the screen. ‘I can’t find any more about it. There’s a picture, but only of her before she disappeared.’

‘You said she contacted you.’ Reacher put the paper down. ‘About what?’

Rutherford shrugged. ‘The first time was a few weeks ago. She sent me an email. She was researching a story. Something to do with property records, I think. It was around the time the warehouse with all the town’s archives in it burned down. All the records and documents going back to the Civil War, everything destroyed. She wanted to know if there were any digital records, so I guess she came to me because I was the IT manager.’

‘Could you help her?’

‘I remember thinking she might be in luck. The town had just finished a huge project to digitize all its public documents and put them online. It was almost ready to go live but I gave her the email address for the woman running the project anyway in case she could get an early peek. Then a couple of days after the ransomware attack she left me a voicemail message. She wanted to know if there was some other way to view the records now the database was locked. Obviously there wasn’t and I had bigger problems on my hands so I didn’t follow up.’