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Deputy Butler had been on his way to relieve Pellegrino for the ate, and a lance to his left, and he had seen a forlorn shape lon in the scrub perhaps a hundred yards north of the road Five minutes after that he had been on the horn to HQ with the bad news, and ninety seconds after taking the e the dispatcher had made it to the diner Deveraux and I were in her car twenty seconds after that, and she put her foot down hard and drove fast all the way, so ere on the scene less than ten minutes after Butler had first chanced to turn his head

Not that speed made any difference

We parked nose to tail behind Butler&039;s car and got out We were on the main east - west road, twoitself, one mile short of Kelham, out in an open belt of scrubland, with the forest that bordered Kelham&039;s fence well ahead of us and the forest that flanked the railroad track well behind us It was the middle of the day and the sky was clear and blue The air arm and the breeze was still

I could see what Butler had seen It could have been a rock, or it could have been trash, but it wasn&039;t It was sated, pressed down, deflated It was un the exact distance was difficult If it was eighty yards away, it was a small woe man

Deveraux said, "I hate this job"

Butler was standing out in the scrub, halfway between the dark shape and us We set out walking toward hiured the overall distance was going to be close to dead-on a hundred yards, which oing to be so in between A tall woer, nized the distorted proportions

And I started to run

At twenty yards out I was sure At ten yards out I was certain At ten feet out I had absolute visual confirly boy Sixteen years old Shawna Lindsay&039;s little brother He was on his front His feet were apart His hands were down by his sides His giant head was turned toward me His mouth was open His deep-set eyes were dark and dead

We followed no kind of crime-scene protocol Deveraux and I trampled the area and touched the corpse We rolled it over and found an entry wound on the left side of the rib cage, up high, close to the armpit No exit wound The bullet had come in, shattered the heart, shattered the spine, and had deflected and tumbled and was still in there somewhere

I knelt up and scanned the horizon If the kid had been walking east, he had been shot from the north, almost certainly by a rifleman who had exited Kelha the open belt of scrub The quarantine zone

Deveraux said, "I talked to hio We had an appointment at his house So as he here?"

Which was a question I didn&039;t want to answer Not even to uess About Shawna He knew you&039;d get it out of him So he decided to be somewhere else this afternoon"

"Where? Where was he going?"

"Kelham," I said

"This is open country If he was heading for Kelham he would have been on the road"

"He was shy about strangers seeing him Because of the way he looked I bet he never walked on the roads"

"If he was shy with strangers, ould he risk going to Kelhauardhouse alone"

I said, "He went because I told him it would be OK I told him soldiers would be different I told him he&039;d be welcome there"

"Welcouided tours"

The kid earing canvas pants, a little like mine, and a plain sweatshirt in navy blue, with a dark warm-up jacket over it The jacket had fallen open e rolled him I saw folded paper in the inside pocket

I said, "Take a look at that"

Deveraux slid the paper out of the pocket It looked like an official document, heavy stock, folded three times It looked old, and I was sure it was About sixteen years old, almost certainly Deveraux unfolded it and scanned it and said, "It&039;s his birth certificate"

I nodded and took it from her The State of Mississippi, a iven nao, apparently It lance, but not further scrutiny The alteration was not skillful, but it had been patient Two digits had been carefully rubbed away, and then two others had been drawn in to replace them The ink matched well, and the style ave it away, but that was enough It stood out It drew the eye

"My fault," I said "My fault entirely"

"How?"

Go straight to Kelham, I had said There are recruiters on every post As soon as you&039;ve got sohteen years old, they&039;ll let you in and never let you out again

The kid had taken it literally I had one ahead and ht there and then He hadto have in his hand Probably at the same kitchen table where I had sat and talked and drank iced tea I pictured hiue between his teeth,the old nu the daht pen, calculating, practicing, and then drawing in the new nuate The nuet him accepted

All onback toward the road

Deveraux caun"

She said, "Why?"

I stopped again and turned and looked east and scoped it out Fort Kelhale north of the road and its fence ran through a broad belt of trees that extended a couple hundred yards each side of the wire It looked like the whole place had been hacked out of the sauessed the opposite was true I guessed Kelharound fifty years before, and then far short of the fence, so the trees had come afterward Like neeeds Not like the old woods to the south The new trees thinned here and there, but mostly they provided deep cover wherever it was needed Easy enough for a s outward into the open belt of scrub when necessary, then slipping back inward and on through the fence for rest or resupply

I started walking again I said, "I&039; to find this quarantine squad that everyone claims doesn&039;t exist"

"Suppose you do?" Deveraux said "It will be your word against theirs Your word against the Pentagon&039;s, basically You&039;ll say the squad existed, they&039;ll say it didn&039;t And the Pentagon has the bigger ue with physical evidence I&039;ll bring back enough body parts to convince anyone"

"I can&039;t let you do that"

"They shouldn&039;t have shot the kid, Elizabeth That ay out of line, whoever they are They opened the wrong door there That&039;s for damn sure What lies on the other side is their problem, not ours"

"You don&039;t even knohere they are"

"They&039;re in the woods"

"In caet near them?"

"They have a blind spot"

"Where?"

"Close to Kelha for the kind of intruder who already knows he can&039;t get through the gate So they&039;re not looking there They&039;re looking farther afield"

"The guardhouse watches the gate"

"No, the guardhouse watches what approaches the gate I&039;ap Too far in the rear of the uardhouse"

"They&039;re shooting people, Reacher"

"They&039;re shooting the people they see They won&039;t see ive you a ride back to town"

"I&039; back to town I want a ride in the other direction And a firearm"

She didn&039;t answer

I said, "I&039; if necessary Slower and harder, but I&039;ll get it done"

She said, "Get in the car, Reacher"

No indication where she planned to take ot in the car and Deveraux backed it away from Butler&039;s cruiser and then she took off forward, east, toward Kelhaht direction, as far as I was concerned We covered rass To the edge of the woods Like you just saw soht at them?"

"They&039;re not here They&039;re north and west of here And they wouldn&039;t shoot at a police vehicle anyway"

"You sure about that?"

"Only one way to find out"

She slowed and turned the wheel and thumped down off the road onto hard-packed dirt The road was in a gap shaped like an hourglass Two hundred yards north of it Kelhaentle curve, and two hundred yards south of it the old woods ran away from us in a syle of forty-five degrees relative to the paveh a wide turn across the dirt and caht next to the woods My door was six feet from the nearest tree

I said, "Gun?"

"Jesus," she said "This whole thing is illegal on so many different levels"

"But like you told ainst mine If there&039;s anyone to shoot, they&039;ll say there wasn&039;t The "

She took a breath and let it out and pulled the shotgun from its scabbard between our seats It was an old Winchester Model 12, forty inches long, seven pounds in weight It was nicked and worn but deith oil and polish It could have been fifty years old, but it seeuns I have never fired Nothing worse than pulling a trigger and having nothing happen Or