Nothing To Lose Part 26

"d.a.m.n right I do. You got a problem with that?"

"No."

They sat in the kitchen and drank coffee and water in silence. Vaughan took her free hand out of her lap and laid it on the table, her fingers spread and extended. They were the closest part of her to Reacher. He wondered whether it was a gesture, either conscious or subconscious. An approach, or an appeal for a connection.

No wedding band.

He's not here right now.

He put his own free hand on the table.

She asked, "How do we know they were fugitives at all? Maybe they were undercover environmental activists, checking on the pollution. Maybe the Anderson guy fooled them and Ramirez didn't."

"Fooled them how?"

"I don't know. But it worries me, if they're using poisons over there. We share the same water table."

"Thurman mentioned something called trichloroethylene. It's a metal degreaser. I don't know whether it's dangerous or not."

"I'm going to check it out."

"Why would the wife of an environmental activist be scared of cops?"

"I don't know."

"The Anderson guy wasn't fooling anyone. He was a guest there. They gave him a place to stay and protection. He washelped. " "

"But Lucy Anderson wasn't. She was thrown out."

"Like I said, the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing."

"And Ramirez was killed."

"Not killed. Left to die."

"So why help one and shun the other?"

"Why shun him at all? Why not just round him up and dump him at the line, like they did with me and Lucy?"

Vaughan sipped her water.

"Because Ramirez was different in some way," she said. "More specifically dangerous to them."

"Then why not just take him out immediately? Disappear him? The end result would have been the same."

"I don't understand it."

"Maybe I'm wrong," Reacher said. "Maybe they didn't shun him or keep him out. Maybe they never even knew he was there. Maybe he was sniffing around on the periphery, staying out of sight, trying to find a way in. Desperate enough to keep trying, not good enough to succeed."

Vaughan took her hand off the table.

"We need to know exactly who he was," she said. "We need to talk to Maria."

"She won't tell us anything."

"We can try. We'll find her in the diner. Meet me there, later."

"Later than what?"

"We both need to sleep."

Reacher said, "May I ask you a personal question?"

"Go ahead."

"Is your husband in prison?"

Vaughan paused a beat, and then smiled, a little surprised, a little sad.

"No," she said. "He isn't."

41

Reacher walked back to the motel, alone. Lucy Anderson's door was open. A maid's cart was parked outside. The bed was stripped and all the towels were on the floor. The closet was empty.I think she left town, the waitress had said, in the diner. Reacher watched for a moment and then he moved on. the waitress had said, in the diner. Reacher watched for a moment and then he moved on.Good luck, Lucky, he thought, he thought,whatever the h.e.l.l you're doing and wherever the h.e.l.l you're going. He unlocked his own door and took a long hot shower and climbed into bed. He was asleep within a minute. The coffee didn't fight him at all. He unlocked his own door and took a long hot shower and climbed into bed. He was asleep within a minute. The coffee didn't fight him at all.

He woke up in the middle of the afternoon with the MPs on his mind. The forward operating base. Its location. Its equipment mix. The place came at him like an a.n.a.lysis problem from the cla.s.srooms at Fort Rucker.

What was it for?

Why was it there?

The old County Route 37 wandered east to west through Hope, through Despair, through Halfway, and presumably onward. First he saw it laid out like a ribbon, like a line on a map, and then he pictured it in his head like a rotating three-dimensional diagram, like something on a computer screen, all green webs of origins and layers. Way back in its history it had been a wagon trail. Beaten earth, crushed rock, ruts and weeds. Then it had been minimally upgraded, when Model Ts had rolled out of Dearborn and flooded the country. Then Hope Towns.h.i.+p had upgraded ten miles of it again, for the sake of civic pride. They had done a conscientious job. Maybe foundation reinforcement had been involved. Certainly there had been grading and leveling. Maybe a little straightening. Possibly a little widening. Thick blacktop had been poured and rolled.

Despair Towns.h.i.+p had done none of that. Thurman and his father and his grandfather or whoever had owned the town before had ignored the road. Maybe they had grudgingly dumped tar and pebbles on it every decade or so, but fundamentally it was still the same road it had been back when Henry Ford ruled the world. It was narrow, weak, lumpy, and meandering.

Unfit for heavy traffic.

Except west of the metal plant. There, a thirty-five-mile stretch had been co-opted and rebuilt. Probably from the ground up. Reacher pictured a yard-deep excavation, drainage, a rock foundation, a thick concrete roadbed, rebar, a four-inch asphalt layer rolled smooth and true by heavy equipment. The shoulders were straight and the camber was good. Then after thirty-five miles the new road had been driven through virgin territory to meet the Interstate, and the old Route 37 had wound onward as before, once again in its native state, narrow, weak, and lumpy.

Weak, strong, weak.

There was no military presence east of Despair or west of the fork, across the weak parts of the road.

The MP base straddled the strong part.

The truck route.

Close to Despair, but not too close.

Not sealing the town like a trap, but guarding one direction only and leaving the other wide open.

The base was equipped with six up-armored Humvees, each one an eight-ton rhinoceros, each one reasonably fast and reasonably maneuverable, each one topped with a belt-fed 7.62-caliber M60 machine gun on a free-swinging mount.

Why all that?

Reacher lay in bed and closed his eyes and heard barking voices from the Rucker cla.s.srooms:This is what you know. What's your conclusion?

His conclusion was that n.o.body was worried about espionage.

He got out of bed at four o'clock and took another long hot shower. He knew he was out of step with the Western world in terms of how often he changed his clothes, but he tried to compensate by keeping his body scrupulously clean. The motel soap was white and came in a small thin paper-wrapped morsel, and he used the whole bar. The shampoo was a thick green liquid in a small plastic bottle. He used half of it. It smelled faintly of apples. He rinsed and stood under the water for a moment more and then shut it off and heard someone knocking at his door. He wrapped a towel around his waist and padded across the room and opened up.

Vaughan.

She was in uniform. Her HPD cruiser was parked neatly behind her. She was staring in at him, openly curious. Not an unusual reaction.Look at yourself. What do you see? He was a spectacular meso-morph, built of nothing except large quant.i.ties of bone and sinew and muscle. But with his s.h.i.+rt off most people saw only his scars. He had a dozen minor nicks and cuts, plus a dimpled .38 bullet hole in the left center of his chest, and a wicked spider web of white lacerations low down on the right side of his abdomen, all criss-crossed and puckered by seventy clumsy st.i.tches done quick and dirty in a mobile army surgical hospital. Souvenirs, in the first instance of childhood mayhem, in the second of a psychopath with a small revolver, and in the third, shrapnel from a bomb blast. Survivable, because childhood mayhem was always survivable, and because the .38 that hit him had been packed with a weak load, and because the shrapnel had been someone else's bone, not white-hot metal. He had been a lucky man, and his luck was written all over his body. He was a spectacular meso-morph, built of nothing except large quant.i.ties of bone and sinew and muscle. But with his s.h.i.+rt off most people saw only his scars. He had a dozen minor nicks and cuts, plus a dimpled .38 bullet hole in the left center of his chest, and a wicked spider web of white lacerations low down on the right side of his abdomen, all criss-crossed and puckered by seventy clumsy st.i.tches done quick and dirty in a mobile army surgical hospital. Souvenirs, in the first instance of childhood mayhem, in the second of a psychopath with a small revolver, and in the third, shrapnel from a bomb blast. Survivable, because childhood mayhem was always survivable, and because the .38 that hit him had been packed with a weak load, and because the shrapnel had been someone else's bone, not white-hot metal. He had been a lucky man, and his luck was written all over his body.

Ugly, but fascinating.

Vaughan's gaze traveled upward to his face.

"Bad news," she said. "I went to the library."

"You get bad news at libraries?"

"I looked at some books and used their computer."

"And?"

"Trichloroethylene is called TCE for short. It's a metal degreaser."

"I know that."

"It's very dangerous. It causes cancer. Breast cancer, prostate cancer, all kinds of cancers. Plus heart disease, problems with the nervous system, strokes, liver disease, kidney disease, even diabetes. The EPA says a concentration of five parts per billion is acceptable. Some places have been measured twenty or thirty times worse than that."

"Like where?"

"There was a case in Tennessee."

"That's a long way from here."

"This is serious, Reacher."

"People worry too much."

"This isn't a joke."

He nodded.

"I know," he said. "And Thurman uses five thousand gallons at a time."

"And we drink the groundwater."

"You drink bottled water."

"Lots of people use tap."

"The plant is twenty miles away. There's a lot of sand. A lot of natural filtration."

"It's still a concern."

Reacher nodded. "Tell me about it. I had two cups of coffee right there. One in the restaurant and one at the judge's house."

"You feel OK?"

"Fine. And people seem OK here."

"So far."

She went quiet.

He said, "What else?"

"Maria is missing. I can't find her anywhere. The new girl."

42

Vaughan hung around in the open doorway and Reacher grabbed his clothes and dressed in the bathroom. He called out, "Where did you look?"

"All over," Vaughan called back. "She's not here in the motel, she's not in the diner, she's not in the library, she's not out shopping, and there isn't anywhere else to go."

"Did you speak to the motel clerk?"