woman nodded, like she'd seen it all, which she probably had.
"I'm sure she'll be thrilled," she said.
Then Reacher walked back to the motel strip, remembering all the jailhouse duty he'd pulled early in his career, wishing he could put his hand on his heart and say he'd acted a whole lot better than the woman he'd just met.
He walked almost all the way back to the highway, until the prices ducked under thirty bucks. Picked a place and woke the night clerk and bought the key to a room near the end of the row. It was worn and faded and crusted with the kind of dirt that shows the staff isn't all the way committed to excellence. The bedding was limp and the air smelled dank and hot, like they saved power by turning the air conditioning off when the room wasn't rented. But it was serviceable. One advantage of being ex-military was almost any place was serviceable. There was always somewhere worse to compare it with.
* * *
He slept restlessly until seven in the morning and showered in tepid water and went out for breakfast at the doughnut shop halfway back to the courthouse. It was open early and advertised Texas-sized doughnuts. They were larger than normal, and more expensive. He ate two with three cups of coffee. Then he went looking for clothes. Since he ended his brief flirtation with owning a house he had gone back to his preferred system of buying cheap items and junking them instead of laundering them. It worked well for him. It kept the permanence monkey off his back, literally.
He found a cheap store that had already been open an hour. It sold a little bit of everything, from bales of cheap toilet paper to work boots. He found a rack of chinos with the brand labels cut out. Maybe they were flawed. Maybe they were stolen. He found the right size and paired them with a khaki shirt. It was thin and cut loose like something from Hawaii, but it was plain, and it cost less than a Texas-sized doughnut. He found white underwear. The store had no fitting rooms. It wasn't that kind of a place. He talked the clerk into letting him use the staff bathroom. He put on the new gear and transferred his stuff from pocket to pocket. He still had the eight shell cases from Carmen's Lorcin, rattling around like loose change. He weighed them in his hand and then dropped them in his new pants pocket.
He balled up the old clothes and stuffed them in the bathroom trash. Went back out to the register and paid thirty bucks in cash. He might get three days out of it. Ten bucks a day, just for clothes, made no sense at all until you figured a washing machine cost four hundred and a dryer another three and the basement to put them in implied a house which cost at least a hundred grand to buy and then tens of thousands a year in taxes and maintenance and insurance and associated bullshit. Then ten bucks a day for clothes suddenly made all the sense in the world.
He waited on the sidewalk until eight o'clock, leaning against a wall under an awning to stay out of the sun. He figured the bailiffs would change shifts at eight. That would be normal. And sure enough at five minutes past he saw the heavy woman drive herself out of the lot in the dusty four-cylinder Chevrolet. She made a left and drove right past him. He crossed the street and walked down the side of the courthouse again. If the night shift won't help you, maybe the day shift will. Night workers are always tougher. Less regular contact with the public, less immediate supervision, makes them think they're king of the castle.
But the day worker was just as bad. He was a man, a little younger, a little thinner, but otherwise the exact equivalent of his opposite number. The conversation was just the same. Can I see her? No. When, then? Saturday. Is she O.K.? As well as can be expected. It sounded like something you would hear in front of a hospital, from a cautious spokesperson. The guy confirmed that only lawyers were allowed unrestricted access to the prisoners. So Reacher came back up the steps and went out looking for a lawyer.
* * *
It was clear that the events of the previous night had left the red house