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13

Elizabeth Deveraux paid for her burger and enerous, so I left the tip, which ain We stepped out to the sidewalk together and stood for a hter A thin layer of high cloud had moved away There were stars out

I said, "Can I ask you another question?"

Deveraux was iuarded She said, "About what?"

"Hair," I said "Ours is supposed to confor inward to a natural termination point at the base of the neck What about yours?"

"I wore a buzz cut for fifteen years," she said "I started growing it out when I kneas going to quit"

I looked at her in the ht and the spill from the dinerI pictured her with a buzz cut She must have looked sensational I said, "Good to know Thanks"

She said, "I had no chance, right froulation for women in the Corps required what they called a non-eccentric style Your hair could touch your collar, but it couldn&039;t fall below the bottoe You were allowed to pin it up, but then I couldn&039;t get my hat on"

"Sacrifices," I said

"It orth it," she said "I loved being a Marine"

"You still are," I said "Once a Marine, always a Marine"

"Is that what your daddy said?"

"He never got the chance He died in harness"

She asked, "Is your mom still alive?"

"She died a few years later"

"Mine died when I was in boot camp Cancer"

"Really? Mine too Cancer, I mean Not boot camp"

"I&039;m sorry"

"Not your fault," I said, automatically "She was in Paris"

"So was I Parris Island, anyway Did she erate?"

"She was French"

"Do you speak French?"

I said, "Un peu, mais doucement"

"What does that mean?"

"A little, and slowly"

She nodded and put her hand on the Caprice&039;s door I took the hint and said, "OK, goodnight, Chief Deveraux It was a pleasureyou"

She just smiled

I turned left and walked doard the hotel I heard the big Chevy motor start up, and I heard the tires start to roll, and then the car passedslow, and then it pulled a wide U-turn across the width of the street and stopped again, just ahead of ht next to the Toussaint&039;s hotel I walked on and got there just as Deveraux opened her door and got out again Naturally I assu and waited politely

"I live here," she said "Goodnight"

She had already gone upstairs before I got into the lobby The old guy I had seen in the diner was behind the reception counter He was open for business I could tell he was disconcerted by e, but cash hteen dollars of ave me the key to room twenty-one He told , overlooking the street, which he said was quieter than the back, which made no sense at all until I remembered the railroad track

On the second floor the staircase ca north - south corridor, which was uncarpeted and diht doors off the back side and nine off the street side There was a slih the crack under room seventeen&039;s door, which was on the street side Deveraux, presu ready for bed My room was four doors further north I unlocked it and went in and turned on the light and found the kind of still air and dusty chill that indicates long disuse It was a rectangular space with a high ceiling and ould have been pleasant proportions, except that at some point in the last decade an attached bathroom had been shoehorned into one corner The as a pair of glazed doors that gave out on the iron balcony I had seen fro table, and on the floor there was a threadbare Persian rug worn thin by use and beating

I pulled the drapes closed and unpacked, which consisted solely of asselass on the bathroom shelf I had no toothpaste, but then, I had never been convinced toothpaste was anythinglubricant An army dentist I had knoore that the mechanical action of the brush&039;s bristles was all that was needed for perfect oral health And I had chewing gum for freshness And I still had all my teeth, apart from a top-row molar knocked out ht in Cleveland, Ohio

The clock in my head said it was about twenty after eleven I sat on the bed for a spell I had been up early and was s to do, and lih to let an average person get off to sleep, and then I went out to the corridor again Deveraux&039;s light was off There was nothing showing under her door I crept down the stairs to the lobby The reception desk was once again unattended I went out to the street and turned left, toward territory as yet unexplored

14

I looked at the whole length of Main Street as carefully as was possible in the gray ht It ran on south for about two hundred yards, as straight as a die, and then it narrowed a little and started to meander and became residential, withsizes The west side of the straight don stretch had stores and commercial operations of various kinds, punctuated with narrow alleys, some of which led onward into the scrub and had ht Those stores and commercial operations were matched by similar establishments on the east side of Main Street, neatly in line with the diner and the hotel, and the alleys to the ere eways opposite, which linked all the way through to a one-sided street built parallel to and behind Main Street I guessed that one-sided street had been the whole point of the town in the early days, and was certainly the point in ht

It ran north and south and had a long line of establish but a blank width of beaten earth I i to a stop, with their panting locomotives next to the water tower a little ways up the line, the trains&039; long ed sides stretching south I i across the beaten earth and placing wooden steps below the train doors I iry fro the width of earth, and then eating and drinking their fill I i, the train whistles blowing, the passengers returning, the trainsretrieved, then stillness returning for an hour, then the next train easing in, and the whole process repeating itself endlessly

That single-sided street had powered the local econoer trains were long gone, of course, and so were the cafes and the restaurants But the cafes and the restaurants had been replaced by bars, and auto parts stores, and bars, and loan offices, and bars, and gun shops, and bars, and secondhand stereo stores, and bars, and the trains had been replaced by strea on the beaten earth, and s Uncle Sam&039;s money up and down the row A captive market, miles from anywhere, like Garber had said, just like the railroad passengers back in the day I had seen the proposition repeated at a hundred bases all around the world The cars would be old Mustangs or Gran Torinos or GTOs, or secondhand BMWs or Mercedes in Gere Toyota Crowns or Datsuns in the Far East, and the beer would be different brands and different strengths, and the loans would be in different currencies, and the guns would be chambered for different loads in different calibers, and the used stereo equipes, but other than that the give and take was exactly the same everywhere

I found the spot where Janice May Chaprino had said she had bled out like a lake, which meant sand would have been used to soak up the spill, and I found a fresh spreading pile of it in a paved alley near the rear left-hand corner of a bar called Brannan&039;s Brannan&039;s was about in the center of the one-sided street, and the alley in question ran along its left flank before dog-legging twice and exiting on Main Street between an old-style pharmacy and a hardware store Maybe the hardware store here the sand had cos would have done the job It was spread in a neat teardrop shape over the sstones, about three or four inches deep

The spot was not directly overlooked Brannan&039;s rear door was about fifteen feet away, and the bar had no side s The back of the pharhbor was a loan office with a Western Union franchise, and its right flank had a ard the rear, but the place would have been closed at night No witnesses Not that there would have beena throat doesn&039;t take ht and force, it takes as long as it takes to ht inches That&039;s all

I stepped out of the alley and walked halfway to the railroad track and stood on the beaten earth and judged the light No point in looking for things I wouldn&039;t be able to see But the h and the sky was still clear, so I kept on going and stepped over the first rail and turned left and hiked north, walking on the ties like guys used to way back, when they were leaving the land and heading to Chicago or New York I passed over the road crossing, and I passed the old water tower

Then the ground began to shake

Just faintly at first, a e of a distant earthquake I stopped walking The tie underI turned around and saw a tiny pinpoint of light far in the distance A single headlight Theon fast

I stood there The rails huh tiny ravel under the bass shudders The distant headlight twinkled like a star, juh hard constrained limits

I stepped off the track and looped back to the old water tower and leaned against a tarred wooden upright It shook against round shook underand loud and forlorn in the distance The warning bells at the roadside twenty yards away started ringing The red lights started flashing

The train kept on co tiht next to e, just insanely round shook so hard that the old water tower next to me danced mutely in place and I was bounced up and dohole inches Moving air whipped and battered at an an endless sequence of cars, ha north without pause, ten of the to the tarred pole for a whole longround, scoured by the slipstreaone

The butt end of a bulk silo car rolled away from me at sixty miles an hour, and the howl of the wind dropped a half tone, and the earthquake subsided torails quieted to a low hiss The manic bells stopped dead

Silence caeto have to walk to find the wreckage of the blue car I had assumed it would be close by But after that awesoht be somewhere in New Jersey Or Canada

15

In the end I found most of the car about two hundred yards north It was preceded by a debris field that stretcheddistance There were pebbles of broken windshield glass, glistening and glinting in the dew and therandoiant hand There was a chroht V, like a drinking straw It had eround, like a lawn dart There was a wheel with no hub cap The impact had been colossal The car had been smashed forward like a baseball off a tee Zero to sixty, instantaneously

I guessed it had been parked on the track about twenty yards north of the water tower That here the first of the glass was located The locomotive had hit the car, and it had flown fifty or h the air, and then it had landed and cartwheeled Maybe wheels to roof to wheels to roof, or end over end I guessed the initial impact had more or less disasse its constituent parts all over the place Including its fuel, which had ignited There were narrow black tongues of burned scrub all over the last fifty yards, and as left of the vehicle itself was nested against the trees in the epicenter of a starburst of blackened trunks and branches Arson investigators I had met could have worked out its rate of rotation frorino had seen the car in daylight and called it blue In the ray to me I couldn&039;t find an intact painted surface I couldn&039;t find an intact anything larger than a square inch It was a burned-outvirtually unrecognizable I was prepared to accept it was a car, but only because I couldn&039;t iine what else it could be

If someone&039;s intention had been to conceal evidence, then that so tiot back to the hotel at one o&039;clock exactly, and went straight to bed I set the alarured Deveraux would be getting up for work I figured her day would start at eight Clearly she was not neglectful of her appearance, but she was a Marine and a praget ured I could match her shower time with my own, and then I could find her in the diner for breakfast Which was as far ahead asto say to her

But I didn&039;t sleep until seven in theloudly on my door I wasn&039;t thrilled I rolled out of bed and pulled on uy The hotel keeper

He said, "Mr Reacher?"

I said, "Yes?"

He said, "Good I&039;ht person At this hour, I mean It&039;s always better to be sure"

"What do you want?"

"Well, initially, as I said, I&039; who you are"

"I sincerely hope there&039;s uests And the other one isn&039;t "

"You have a phone call"

"Who from?"

"Your uncle"

"My uncle?"

"Your uncle Leon Garber He said it was urgent And judging by his tone, it&039;s important, too"

I put uy downstairs, barefoot He led h a side door into the office behind the counter There was a worn any desk with a phone on it The handset was off the hook, resting on the desk top

The old guy said, "Please make yourself at home," and left, and closed the door on me I sat down in his chair and picked up the phone

I said, "What?"

Garber said, "You OK?"

"I&039;m fine How did you find me?"

"Phone book There&039;s only one hotel in Carter Crossing Everything going well?"

"Terrific"

"You sure?"

"Positive"

"Because you&039;re supposed to check in everyat six"

"Areed"

"When?"

"We spoke yesterday at six As you were leaving"

"I know," I said "I reree we&039;d talk at six every day"

"You called ain today"

"I didn&039;t specify the time"

"I think you did"

"Well, you&039;re wrong, you old coot What do you want?"

"You&039;re cranky this ht"

"Doing what?"

"Looking around"

"And?"

"There are a couple of things," I said

"Like what?"

"Just two specific iteress?"

"At this point they&039;re just questions The answers et the nowhere at Kelhaht be ht"

I didn&039;t answer that Garber was quiet for a beat

"Wait," he said "What do you et the answers?"