61 Hours

The white man said, ‘The Mexicans owe us two cartons of smokes.’

The black man didn’t react in any way at all. Why would he? White and brown had nothing to do with him.

The white man said, ‘The Mexicans say you owe them two cartons of smokes.’

No reaction.

‘So we’ll collect direct from you. What goes around comes around.’

Which was a technically acceptable proposition. A prison was an economy. Cigarettes were currency. Like dollar bills earned selling a car in New York could be used for buying a TV in Los Angeles. But economic cooperation implied the existence of laws and treaties and detente, and all three were in short supply between black and white.

Then the white man said, ‘We’ll collect in the form of ass. Something tender. The youngest and sweetest you got. Two nights, and then you’ll get her back.’

In Janet Salter’s house the four women cops were handing over. The day watch was going off duty, and the night watch was coming on. One of the night watch came out of the kitchen and took up her post in the hallway. The other headed for the library. The day watch climbed the stairs. Janet Salter herself said she was headed for the parlour. Reacher guessed she wanted to spend some time on her own. Being protected around the clock was socially exhausting for all parties concerned. But she invited him in with her.

The parlour was different from the library in no significant way at all. Similar furniture, similar decor, similar shelves, thousands more books. The window gave a view across the porch to the front. It had almost stopped snowing. The cop in the car on the street had gotten out from time to time to scrape his windows. There was a loaf of snow a foot high on the roof and the hood and the trunk, but the glass was clear. The cop was still awake and alert. Reacher could see his head turning. He was checking ahead, in the mirror, half left, half right. Not bad, for what must have been the twelfth hour of twelve. The good half of the Bolton PD made for a decent unit.

Janet Salter was wearing a cardigan sweater. It was long on her and the pockets were bagged. By, it turned out, a rag and a can of oil. She took them out and put them on a side table. The rag was white and the can was a small old green thing with Singer printed on it.

She said, ‘Go get the book I showed you.’

The night watch cop in the library turned around when Reacher came in. She was a small neat round-shouldered person made wider by her equipment belt. Her eyes flicked up, flicked down, flicked away. No threat. She turned back to the window. Behind her Reacher took the fake book off the shelf and hefted it under his arm. He carried it back to the parlour. Janet Salter closed the door behind him. He opened the leather box on the floor and lifted out the first revolver.

The Smith & Wesson Military and Police model had been first produced in 1899 and last modified three years later in 1902. The average height of American men in 1902 had been five feet seven inches, and their hands had been proportionately sized. Reacher was six feet five inches tall and had hands the size of supermarket chickens, so the gun was small for him. But his trigger finger fit through the guard, which was all that mattered. He pressed the thumb catch and swung the cylinder out. It was empty. He locked it back in and dry fired. Everything worked. But he felt the microscopic grind and scrape of steel that had been greased in the factory many decades earlier and never touched since. So he went to work with the rag and the can and tried again five minutes later and was much happier with the result. He repeated the process on the second gun. He capped the oil and folded the rag. Asked, ‘Where is the ammunition?’

Janet Salter said, ‘Upstairs in my medicine cabinet.’

‘Not a logical place, given that the guns were in the library.’

‘I thought I might have time, if it came to it.’

‘Lots of dead people thought that.’

‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

‘This is a serious business.’

She didn’t answer. Just got up and left the room. Reacher heard the creak of the stairs. She came back with a crisp new box of a hundred Federal.38 Specials. Semi-wadcutters with hollow points. A good choice. She had been well advised by somebody. The 158-grain load was not the most powerful in the world, but the mushrooming effect of the hollow points would more than make up for it.

Reacher loaded six rounds into the first gun and kept the second empty. He said, ‘Look away and then look back and point your finger straight at me.’

Janet Salter said, ‘What?’

‘Just do it. Like I’m talking in class.’

‘I wasn’t that kind of teacher.’

‘Pretend you were.’

So she did. She made a good job of it. Maybe undergraduate students at Oxford University hadn’t been exactly what the world imagined. Her finger ended up pointing straight between his eyes.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now do it again, but point at my chest.’

She did it again. Ended up pointing straight at his centre mass.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘That’s how to shoot. The gun barrel is your finger. Don’t try to aim. Don’t even think about it. Just do it, instinctively. Point at the chest, because that’s the biggest target. Even if you don’t kill him, you’ll ruin his day.’

Janet Salter said nothing. Reacher handed her the empty gun.

‘Try the trigger,’ he said.

She did. The hammer rose, the cylinder turned, the hammer fell. Nice and easy. She said, ‘I suppose there will be a certain amount of recoil.’

Reacher nodded. ‘Unless the laws of physics changed overnight.’

‘Will it be bad?’

Reacher shook his head. ‘The.38 Special is a fairly friendly round. For the shooter, I mean. Not much bang, not much kick.’

She tried the trigger again. The hammer rose, the cylinder turned, the hammer fell.

‘Now do it over and over,’ he said.

She did. Four, five, six times.

She said, ‘It’s tiring.’

‘It won’t be if it comes to it. And that’s what you’ve got to do. Put six rounds in the guy. Don’t stop until the gun is empty.’

‘This is awful,’ she said.

‘It won’t be if it comes to it. It’ll be you or him. You’ll be surprised how fast that changes your perspective.’

She passed the gun back to him. He asked her, ‘Where are you going to keep it?’

‘In the book, I guess.’

‘Wrong answer. You’re going to keep it in your pocket. At night you’re going to keep it under your pillow.’ He loaded six rounds into it. Locked the cylinder in place and passed it back. He said, ‘Don’t touch the trigger until you’re ready to kill the guy.’

‘I won’t be able to.’

‘I think you will.’

She asked, ‘Are you going to keep the other one?’

He nodded. ‘I’ll be sure to turn it in before I leave.’

Five to eight in the evening.

Thirty-two hours to go.

The prison siren started to wail.

Chapter Nineteen

THE SIREN WAS FIVE MILES AWAY TO THE NORTH, BUT ITS SOUND came through the frigid night very clearly. It was somewhere between loud and distant, somewhere between mournful and urgent, somewhere between everyday and alien. It shrieked and howled, it rose and fell, it screamed and whispered. It rolled across the flat land and down the silent snowy streets and shattered the crystal air it passed through.

The cops in the house reacted instantly. They had rehearsed, probably physically, certainly mentally. They had prepared themselves for the tough choice. The woman from the hallway ducked her head into the parlour. Conflict was all over her face. There was the sound of footsteps from the floor above. The day watch was scrambling. The woman from the library ran straight for her parka on the hat rack. Outside on the street the nearest cop car was already turning around. Broken slabs of snow were sliding off its roof and its hood and its trunk. The car from the mouth of the road was backing up fast. There were running feet on the stairs.