Never Go Back (18 page)

‘The Crown Vic?’ Reacher said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘So we need to get away from any logical extension of that bus route. Especially because that old guy in the truck could tell them exactly where he let us out. He won’t forget that stop in a hurry.’

‘He won’t talk to the cops. He hauled coal in West Virginia.’

‘He might talk to the guys in the dented car. They might scare him. Or they might give him money.’

‘OK, go south,’ Reacher said. ‘South is always good in the wintertime.’

She upped the speed a little more, and the tail pipes got louder. It was a fine car, Reacher thought. Maybe the best in the world for American roads. Which was logical, because it was an American car. He smiled suddenly and said, ‘Let’s turn the heater way up and put the top down.’

Turner said, ‘You’re actually enjoying this, aren’t you?’

‘Why wouldn’t I? It’s like a rock-and-roll song on the radio. A fast car, some money in my pocket, and a little company for once.’

So Turner put the heater dial all the way in the red, and she slowed to a stop at the side of the road, and they figured out the latches and the switches, and the top folded itself down into a well behind them. The night air flooded in, cold and fresh. They wriggled lower in their seats, and took off again. All the driving sensations were doubled. The speed, the lights, the noise. Reacher smiled and said, ‘This is the life.’

Turner said, ‘I might get used to it. But I would like a choice.’

‘You might get one.’

‘How? There’s nothing to work with.’

‘Not exactly nothing,’ Reacher said. ‘We have an apparent anomaly, and we have a definite piece of procedural information. Which together might suggest a preliminary conclusion.’

‘Like what?’

‘Weeks and Edwards were murdered in Afghanistan, but you weren’t murdered here, and I wasn’t, and Moorcroft wasn’t. And he could have been. A drive-by shooting in southeast D.C. would have been just as plausible as a beating. And I could have been, because who was ever going to notice? And you could have been. A training accident, or carelessness handling your weapon. But they chose not to go down that road. Therefore there’s a kind of timidity on the D.C. end. Which is suggestive, when you combine it with the other thing.’

‘Which is what?’

‘Would you know how to open a bank account in the Cayman Islands?’

‘I could find out.’

‘Exactly. You’d search on the computer, and you’d make some calls, and you’d get whatever it was you needed, and you’d get it done. But how long would it take?’

‘Maybe a week.’

‘But these guys did it in less than a day. In an hour, probably. Your account was open by ten in the morning. Which has to imply an existing relationship. They told the bank what they wanted, and it was done right away, immediately, with no questions asked. Which makes them premium clients, with a lot of money. But we know that anyway, because they were prepared to burn a hundred grand, just to nail you. Which is a big sum of money, but they didn’t care. They went right ahead and dumped it in your account, and there’s no guarantee they’ll ever get it back. It might be impounded as evidence. And even if it isn’t, I don’t see how they can turn around afterwards and say, oh by the way, that hundred grand was ours all along and we want it returned to us.’

‘So who are they?’ Turner asked.

‘They’re very correct people, running a scam that generates a lot of money, prepared to order all kinds of mayhem eight thousand miles away in Afghanistan, but wanting things clean and tidy on their own doorstep. On first-name terms with offshore bankers, able to get financial things done in an hour, not a week, able to search and manipulate ancient files in any branch of the service they want, with fairly efficient muscle watching their backs. They’re senior staff officers in D.C., almost certainly.’

Turner hung a left just after a town called Romney, on a small road that took them south but kept them in the hills. Safer that way, they thought. They didn’t want to get close to the I-79 corridor. Too heavily patrolled, even at night. Too many local PDs looking to boost their municipal revenues with speed traps. The only small-road negative was the complete lack of civilized infrastructure. No gas, no coffee. No diners. No motels. And they were hungry and thirsty and tired. And the car had a giant motor, with no kind of good miles-per-gallon figures. A lone road sign at the turn had promised some kind of a town, twenty miles ahead. About half an hour, at small-road speeds.

Turner said, ‘I’d kill for a shower and a meal.’

‘You’ll probably have to,’ Reacher said. ‘It won’t be the city that doesn’t sleep. More likely the one-horse crossroads that never wakes up.’

They never found out. They didn’t get there. Because a minute later they ran into another kind of small-road problem.

TWENTY-NINE

TURNER TOOK A
curve and then had to brake hard, because there was a red road flare spiked in the blacktop directly ahead. Beyond it in the distance was another, and beyond that were headlight beams pointing in odd directions, one pair straight up vertically into the night-time sky, and another horizontal but at right angles to the traffic flow.

Turner threaded left and right between the two spiked flares, and then she coasted to a stop, with the tail pipes popping and burbling behind them. The vertical headlights were from a pickup truck that had gone off the road ass-first into a ditch. It was standing more or less upright on its tailgate. Its whole underside was visible, all complicated and dirty.

The horizontal headlights were from another pick-up truck, a sturdy half-ton crew-cab, which had turned and backed up until it was parked across the road at a right angle. It had a short and heavy chain hooked up to its tow hitch. The chain was stretched tight at a steep upward angle, and its other end was wrapped around a front suspension member on the vertical truck. Reacher guessed the idea was to pull the vertical truck over, back on to its wheels, like a falling tree, and then to drag it out of the ditch. But the geometry was going to be difficult. The chain had to be short, because the road was narrow. But the shortness of the chain meant that the front of the falling truck would hit the back of the half-ton, unless the half-ton kept on moving just right and inched out of the way. All without driving itself into the opposite ditch. It was going to be an intricate automotive ballet.

There were three men on the scene. One was sitting dazed on the shoulder, with his elbows on his knees, and his head down. He was the driver of the vertical truck, Reacher guessed, stunned by the accident, and maybe still drunk or high, or both. The other two men were his rescuers. One was in the half-ton’s cab, looking back, elbow on the door, and the other was walking side to side, getting ready to direct operations.

An everyday story, Reacher figured. Or an every-night story. Too many beers, or too many pipes, or too many of both, and then a dark winding road, and a corner taken too fast, and panicked braking, and locked rear wheels under an empty load bed, maybe some wintertime ice, and a spin, and the ditch. And then the weird climb out of the tipped-up seat, and the long slide down the vertical flank, and the cell phone call, and the wait for the willing friends with the big truck.

No big deal, from anyone’s point of view. Practically routine. The locals looked like they knew what they were doing, despite the geometric difficulties. Maybe they had done it before, possibly many times. Reacher and Turner were going to be delayed five minutes. Maybe ten. That was all.

And then that wasn’t all.

The dazed guy on the shoulder became slowly aware of the bright new lights, and he raised his head, and he squinted down the road, and he looked away again.

Then he looked back.

He struggled up and got to his feet, and he took a step.

He said, ‘That’s Billy Bob’s car.’

He took another step, and another, and he glared at them, at Turner first, then at Reacher, and he stamped his foot and swung his right arm as if batting away immense clouds of flying insects, and he roared, ‘What are you doing in it?’

Which sounded like
Whut chew doon an at
, maybe due to bad teeth, or booze, or befuddlement, or all of the above. Reacher wasn’t sure. Then the guy who was ready to direct operations got interested too, and the guy at the wheel of the half-ton crew-cab got out, and all three guys formed up in a raggedy little semicircle about ten feet ahead of the Corvette’s front fender. They were all wiry and worn down. They were all in sleeveless plaid work shirts over no-colour sweatshirts, and blue jeans, and boots. They all had woollen watch caps on their heads. The dazed guy was maybe five-eight, and the director of operations was maybe five-ten, and the half-ton driver was about six feet. Like small, medium and large in a country-clothing catalogue. From the low end of the market.

‘Run them over,’ Reacher said.

Turner didn’t.

The guy from the crew-cab said, ‘That’s Billy Bob’s car.’

The dazed guy roared, ‘I already said that.’

Are ready sud at
.

Real loud.

Maybe his hearing had been damaged by the wreck.

The guy from the crew-cab said, ‘Why are you folks driving Billy Bob’s car?’

Reacher said, ‘This is my car.’

‘No it ain’t. I recognize the plate.’

Reacher unclipped his seat belt.

Turner unclipped hers.

Reacher said, ‘Why do you care who’s driving Billy Bob’s car?’

‘Because Billy Bob is our cousin,’ the guy said.

‘Really?’

‘You bet,’ the guy said. ‘There have been Claughtons in Hampshire County for three hundred years.’

‘Got a dark suit?’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re going to a funeral. Billy Bob doesn’t need a car any more. His lab burned up tonight. He didn’t get out in time. We were passing by. Nothing we could do for him.’

All three guys went quiet for a moment. They shuffled and flinched, and then shuffled some more and spat on the road. The guy from the half-ton said, ‘Nothing you could do for him but steal his car?’

‘Think of it as repurposing.’

‘Before he was even cold?’

‘Couldn’t wait that long. It was a hell of a fire. It’ll be a day or two before he’s cold.’

‘What’s your name, asshole?’

‘Reacher,’ Reacher said. ‘There have been Reachers in Hampshire County for about five minutes.’

‘You taking the mickey?’

‘Not really taking it. You seem to be giving it up voluntarily.’

‘Maybe you started the fire.’

‘We didn’t. Old Billy Bob was in a dangerous business. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Same with the car. Ill-gotten gains, ill gotten all over again.’

‘You can’t have it. We should have it.’

Reacher opened his door. He jack-knifed his feet to the floor and stood up fast, in a second, all the way from having his butt four inches off the blacktop to his full six feet five. He stepped around the open door and walked forward and stopped, right on the spot where the ragged little semicircle was centred.

He said, ‘Let’s not have a big discussion about inheritance rights.’

The guy from the half-ton said, ‘What about his money?’

‘Possession is nine points of the law,’ Reacher said, like Espin, in the Dyer interview room.

‘You took his money too?’

‘As much as we could find.’

Whereupon the dazed guy launched forward and swung his right fist in a violent arc. Reacher swayed backward and let the fist fizz past in front of him, harmlessly, and then he flapped his own right arm, back and forth, as if he was batting away more of the invisible insects, and the dazed guy stared at the pantomime, and Reacher cuffed him on the side of the head with his open left palm, just under the rim of his hat, like an old-time cop with a rude boy from the neighbourhood, just a tap, nothing more, but still the guy went down like his head had been blown apart by a round from a high-powered rifle. He lay still on the road, not moving at all.

The guy from the half-ton said, ‘Is that what you do? Pick on the smallest first?’

‘I wasn’t picking on him,’ Reacher said. ‘He was picking on me. Are you going to make the same mistake?’

‘Might not be a mistake.’

‘It would be,’ Reacher said. Then he glanced beyond the guy, at the vertical pick-up truck. He said, ‘Shit, that thing’s going to fall over.’

The guy didn’t turn around. Didn’t look. His eyes stayed fixed on Reacher’s.

He said, ‘Good try. But I wasn’t born yesterday.’

Reacher said, ‘I’m not kidding, you moron.’ And he wasn’t. Maybe the half-ton had a loose transmission. Maybe it had sagged forward six inches when the guy shut it down before he got out. But whatever, there was new tension in the chain. It was rigid. It was practically humming. And the vertical truck was teetering right on the point of balance, an inch away from falling forward like a tree. A breath of wind would have done it.

And then a breath of wind went right ahead and did it.

The branches all around sighed and moved gently, just once, and the vertical truck’s tailgate scraped over small stones trapped beneath it, and the chain went slack, and the truck started to topple forward, almost imperceptibly, one degree at a time, and then it hit the point of no return, and then it was falling faster, and faster, and then it was a giant sledgehammer smashing down into the half-ton’s load bed, the weight of its iron engine block striking a mighty blow on the corrugated floor, breaking the axle below it, the half-ton’s wheels suddenly canting out at the bottom and in at the top, like knock knees, or puppy feet, the smaller truck’s wheels folding the other way, on broken steering rods. The chain rattled to the ground, and competing suspensions settled, and the smaller truck came to rest, up at an angle, partly on top of the larger truck, both of them spent and inert and still.

‘Looks like they were having sex,’ Reacher said. ‘Doesn’t it?’

No one answered. The small guy was still on the floor, and the other two were staring at a whole new problem. Neither vehicle was going anywhere soon, not without a big crane and a flatbed truck. Reacher climbed down into the Corvette. The wreckage was blocking the road, from ditch to ditch, so Turner had no choice. She backed up and threaded between the two burning flares, and she headed back the way they had come.