61 Hours
‘Not a hope. I’m sorry, major. But we’re talking ancient history here. You might as well ask me what Neanderthal Man had for lunch a million years ago last Thursday.’
By ten to eight Janet Salter’s house had gone absolutely silent. Some kind of drumbeat of dread had passed between one inhabitant and the next. The cop in the hallway had gotten up off the bottom stair and was standing behind the door. The cop in the library had stepped closer to the window. Peterson was watching the street. Janet Salter was straightening books on the parlour shelves. She was butting their spines into line. Small, nervous, exact movements with the knuckles of her right hand.
Reacher was lounging in a chair. Eyes closed. Nothing could happen before the siren sounded.
The clock ticked on.
Five to eight in the evening.
Eight hours to go.
Chapter Thirty-One
THE CLOCK IN REACHER’S HEAD HIT EIGHT EXACTLY. NOTHING happened. The world outside stayed icy and quiet. Nothing to hear except the sound of the wind, and the brush and rattle of frozen evergreens, and the creaking and stirring of tree limbs, and the primeval tectonic shudders as the earth itself got colder.
One minute past eight.
Nothing happened.
Two minutes past eight.
Nothing happened.
No sound.
No siren.
No one came.
Peterson glanced at Reacher. Reacher shrugged. Janet Salter looked out the window. No action on the street. The cop in the hallway moved. Reacher heard the boards creak under her feet.
Three minutes past eight.
Nothing happened.
Four minutes past.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Nothing happened.
No sound, no siren.
Nothing at all.
At a quarter past eight they gave it up and stopped worrying. Peterson was certain the head count could not have been delayed. Prisons ran on strict routines. If the cells weren’t locked for the night at eight exactly, there would be entries to be made in operational logs, and reports to be filed in triplicate, and supervisors called upon to explain. Way too much trouble for any reason short of a riot in progress, and if a riot was in progress the siren would have sounded anyway. Therefore the bid had failed. Or the lawyer had been blowing smoke.
All clear.
‘You sure?’ Reacher asked.
‘Absolutely,’ Peterson said.
‘So prove it. Put your money where your mouth is.’
‘How?’
‘Go home.’
And Peterson did. He spun it out until twenty past, and then he put his coat on and crunched down the driveway and climbed in his car and drove away. Janet Salter stopped straightening books and started reading one instead. The cop in the hallway went back to her perch on the bottom stair. The cop in the library stepped back from the glass. Reacher sat in the kitchen and tried to decide whether to disturb Janet Salter by asking permission, or whether just to go ahead and make more coffee himself. He knew how to work a percolator. His mother had had one, even though she was French. In the end he went ahead and fired it up unbidden. He listened to it gulp and hiss and when it quieted down he poured himself a mug. He raised it in a mock salute to his reflection in the window and took a sip.
***
At eight thirty the phone rang in the hallway. The cop got up from the bottom stair and answered it. It was for Reacher. The voice from Virginia. The cop put two forked fingers under her eyes and then pointed them at the door. You watch the front, and I’ll give you some privacy. Reacher nodded and sat down and picked up the phone.
The voice said, ‘Forty tons of surplus aircrew requirements left over from World War Two.’
‘That’s vague.’
‘Tell me about it. My guy did his best for me, but that’s all he knows.’
‘What kind of surpluses did they have after World War Two?’
‘Are you kidding? All kinds of things. The atom bomb changed everything. They went from having lots of planes carrying small bombs to a few planes carrying big bombs. They could have had forty spare tons of pilots’ underwear alone. Plus they changed from prop planes to jets. They got helmets. It could be forty tons of those old-style leather hats.’
‘I wish I had one of those right now.’
‘Quit whining.’
‘What’s the temperature here?’
A pause. ‘Minus fourteen degrees.’
‘Feels worse.’
‘It’s going to get worse. The Weather Channel radar looks horrible.’
‘Thanks for sharing.’
‘Hey, you asked.’
‘Hats and underwear?’
‘Got to be something to do with a generational change of equipment or a reduced number of aircrew. Or both.’
‘Anything on the size or architecture of the place itself?’
‘That stuff disappeared a long time ago.’
‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘Thanks.’
‘My guy talked. From Fort Hood. Like you said he would.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘I owe you.’
‘No, we’re even.’
‘No, I do. It’s my first major score.’
‘Really? How long have you been in the job?’
‘Two weeks.’
‘I had no idea. You sound like you’ve been there for ever.’
‘I’m not sure that’s a compliment.’
‘It was meant as one,’ Reacher said. ‘Then I thank you.’
‘You should be out celebrating.’
‘I sent my people out.’
‘Good move. Give them all the credit. They’ll appreciate it, but the brass will always know who really did the work. You’ll win both ways around.’
‘Is that how you did it?’
‘Always. I made out that I did nothing much. A lot of the time that was true, of course.’
‘Not what your file suggests.’
‘You still looking at that old thing?’
‘It’s a saga.’
‘Not fair. This is a very asymmetrical relationship in terms of information.’
‘Dude, life sucks.’
‘What did you just call me?’
‘I was trying to sound blond and Californian.’
‘I see.’
‘Do you?’
‘You’re not blond or Californian.’
‘Is that OK?’
‘Brunette could work for me. Brown eyes?’
‘You got it.’
‘Long hair, right?’
‘Longer than it should be.’
‘Excellent.’
‘You want to revisit the A-cup thing too?’
‘Got to be honest. I’m just not hearing it.’
She laughed. ‘OK, I confess. You’re right.’
‘Height?’
‘Five feet seven.’
‘Pale or dark?’
‘Neither, really. But I tan well.’
‘You want to see South Dakota in the winter?’
She laughed again. ‘I prefer the beach.’
‘Me too. Where are you from?’
‘Montana. A small town you never heard of.’
‘Try me. I’ve been to Montana.’
‘Hungry Horse?’
‘Never heard of it.’
‘Told you,’ she said. ‘It’s near Whitefish.’
‘You like the army?’
‘Did you?’
‘You’ve got my file,’ Reacher said.
‘And half the time I’m thinking, man, if you hated it that bad, you should have just gotten out while the getting was good.’
‘I never hated it. Not for a minute. I just wanted to fix what was wrong with it.’
‘Above your pay grade.’
‘I learned that, eventually.’ Reacher looked around the hallway. The closed door, the dark panelling, the oil paintings, the Persian carpet. The rare woods, the wax, the polish, the patina. He had all the information he was ever going to get from or through the 110th. No real reason to keep on talking.
The voice asked, ‘What are you doing in South Dakota anyway?’
He said, ‘I was on a bus that crashed. I got hung up here.’
‘Life is a gamble.’
‘But the deck is stacked. No bus that I was on ever crashed in a warm place.’
‘You behaving yourself up there?’
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘These files get tagged if an outside agency asks to take a look. You know, the FBI or a local police department or something. And yours is tagged to hell and back. Folks have been all over you for the last twelve years.’
‘Anything from here in the last two days?’
‘A transcript went out to someone called Thomas Holland at the Bolton PD.’