curve and then launching straight toward the heart of town. Which boy would say he lived in Laconia?
Which was good. Eight miles not ten would save an hour on the round trip. Plus a quarter of the effort. He folded the map and stuck it in his pocket. He set out walking.
He didn’t get far.
Chapter 15
Mark and Peter and Steven and Robert were together in the back parlor, watching the screens. They all showed Patty and Shorty still on their bed. Different angles, and different zooms. Some were wide shots, and some were close ups.
Their door was still open.
“But no shoes this time,” Steven said. “He’s still got them on.”
“We should have used a self-closing mechanism,” Robert said.
“How could we have known?” Peter said. “Normal people close their doors.”
“Relax,” Mark said. “They’re not going anywhere. Not right now. Bringing that suitcase back broke their hearts. Anyway, now they believe in the mechanic again.”
“We need that door shut pretty soon. We need to start warming them up. Their emotional state is important. Pacing is crucial now.”
“Then think of something.”
Peter turned back to the screens.
* * *
—
Reacher got a mile beyond the old edge-of-town gas station, around a long New England curve through woods as deep as a fairytale setting. Then behind him he heard tires on the blacktop. He heard them slow to a walk. He heard them keep pace, ten yards back.
He stopped and turned around.
He saw a dark sedan. Medium in size and crisp in appearance. But poverty spec. There was paint where chrome might have been, and plain hubs, and mouse-fur upholstery. There was a sprung antenna on the trunk lid. An unmarked squad car. In it was Jim Shaw, of the Laconia Police Department. Chief of detectives. The guy from the police station lobby, the day before, with Brenda Amos. The redheaded Irish guy. In action he looked brisk and confident. He was alone at the wheel. He let his window down. Reacher walked closer, but stopped six feet away.
He said, “Can I help you?”
Shaw said, “Brenda told me you were headed this way.”
“You going to offer me a ride?”
“If I do it will be back to town.”
“How so?”
“The house-to-house turned up a woman who lives in the alley. She works in a cocktail bar in Manchester. Which is half owned by the folks the kid’s father works for. We asked a lot of pointed questions and eventually she told us exactly what happened last night. From beginning to end. Soup to nuts. Everything except a physical description of her savior. She claims she was so stressed her mind has gone blank.”
“That can happen, I guess,” Reacher said.
“She’s lying. Why wouldn’t she? She’s protecting someone who did her a favor. But we have other evidence. She was saved real good, believe me. The kid looks like he was run over by a freight train. Therefore we’re not looking for a small guy. We’re looking for a big guy. Probably right-handed. Probably woke up this morning with damage to his knuckles. Got to be something. A hit like that leaves a mark, believe me.”
“I scraped my hand on a wall,” Reacher said.
“Brenda told me.”
“Just one of those things.”
“A smarter man than me might start putting it all together. The woman from the cocktail bar gets home in the middle of the night, at an exactly predictable time, because of no nighttime traffic, and the kid is waiting there for her, so she yells for help, which wakes a guy up, within a certain narrow radius, who then gets out of bed and goes to check, and who ends up dragging the kid away and smacking him around.”
“You told me she already said all that. Soup to nuts. You don’t need to put it together.”
“The interesting part is the narrow radius. How close would the guy need to be, for the sound to travel clearly, and for him to get there as fast as he did? Pretty close, we think. The woman said she didn’t yell real loud. The kid was trying to get his hand over her mouth at the time. It was definitely not a scream. So the guy asleep had to be close by. He was on the scene more or less immediately. Maximum one block, we think.”
“I’m sure there are many variables involved,” Reacher said. “Maybe it’s all down to how well people hear and how fast they get dressed. Maybe there’s a link between the two. You could conduct a series