“The track through the trees was more than two miles long. You’d be carrying the suitcase. It’s bigger than you are. We can’t leave it here. And then all we got anyway is a back road. With no traffic. We planned it that way, remember? We could wait there all day for a ride. Especially with a big suitcase. That kind of thing puts people off. They don’t stop. Maybe their trunk is already full.”
“OK, maybe the mechanic will fix it. Or at least he could give us a ride to town. In his truck. With the big suitcase. We could figure something out from there.”
“Another fifty bucks will surely make a dent.”
“It’s worse than that,” Shorty said. “Fifty bucks is a drop in the ocean. We could stay here all week, compared to what the mechanic will cost. Those guys get a call-out charge, can you believe that? Which is basically like getting paid for still being alive. It’s not like that when you grow potatoes, let me tell you. Which mechanics eat, by the way. They love potatoes. French fries, hash browns, twice baked with cheese and bacon. What if I asked them to pay me just to think about growing them a potato?”
Patty got up suddenly, bouncing the bed, and she said, “I’m going out for some air.”
She crossed to the door and turned the handle and pulled. Nothing happened. It was jammed again. She checked the lock.
She said, “This is what happened in the night.”
Shorty got off the bed and stepped over.
He turned the handle.
The door opened.
He said, “Maybe you’re turning the handle wrong.”
She said, “How many ways are there to turn a handle?”
He closed the door and stood back.
She stepped up and tried again. She used the same grip as before, the same turn, the same pull.
The door swung open.
She said, “Weird.”
* * *
—
The sun was shining on downtown Laconia, a little low in the sky, like the first days of fall, but it was still as warm as summer. Reacher got to the coffee shop across the light at ten past eleven, five minutes ahead of schedule, and he got a seat at a small iron table in the corner of the garden, where he could see the sidewalk coming down from the city office door. He wasn’t sure what kind of a person he expected Carter Carrington to be. Although there were a number of clues. One, Elizabeth Castle found it absurd to imagine the guy as her boyfriend. Two, she had taken pains to point out he wasn’t even her regular friend. Three, the guy was banished to a back office. Four, he was kept away from customers. Five, he was enthusiastic about census methodology.
The signs were not good.
The garden had a side gate also, for the parking lot. People came and went. Reacher ordered regular black coffee, in a go-cup, not because he was planning on rushing away, but because he didn’t like the look of the table service alternatives, which were about the size and weight of chamber pots. Poor cups for coffee, in his opinion, but other people must have been satisfied, because the garden was filling up. Pretty soon there were only three spare seats. One of which was opposite Reacher, inevitably. A fact of his life. People didn’t find him approachable.
First in from the direction of the city office was a woman about forty, bustling, competent, probably in charge of some big department. She said hey and hi to a couple of customers, routine co-worker courtesies, and she dumped her bag on an empty seat, not the one opposite Reacher, and then she went in to the counter to get whatever it was she wanted. Reacher watched the sidewalk. In the distance he saw a guy come out of the city office, and start walking down the block. Even far away it was clear he was tall and well dressed. His suit was fine, and his shirt was white, and his tie was neat. He had fair hair, short, but a little unruly. Like he tried his best with it. He was tan and he looked fit and strong and full of vigor and energy. He had presence. Against the old brick he looked like a movie star on a film set.
Except he walked with a limp. Very slight, left leg.
The woman who had been to the counter came back with a cup and a plate, and she sat where she had saved