A Wanted Man (14 page)

And it turned out he was right to. A mile later, for the second time that night, Reacher was proved wrong. He saw a dull glow in the
mist, far ahead on the left, and he watched as it resolved itself into separate beige pearls of light, which turned out to be dim electric bulbs in bulkhead fixtures set knee-high on the walls of a long low motel building. The design of the place was standard. There was dark brown siding, and a lobby and an office at the north end, with a Coke machine and a porte cochere, and then the building continued south in a regular rhythm, window, door, window, door, for a total of twelve rooms. Each door had two white plastic lawn chairs next to it. The low-set bulkhead fixtures were to light a sidewalk that ran the length of the building. Two rooms had cars parked outside, one an old sedan, lacy with rust, and the other an immense pick-up truck painted in a motorcycle manufacturer’s colors. There was a third car parked tight against the office wall, a three-door import not much bigger than a golf cart. The night clerk’s ride, presumably.

Alan King slowed the Chevy and stopped and idled on the road twenty feet from the motel’s entrance. He surveyed the place, carefully, end to end, and he said, “Good enough?”

Don McQueen said, “Works for me.”

King didn’t seek Karen Delfuenso’s opinion. There was no big three-way democratic discussion. He just rolled onward and turned in on the far side of the porte cochere and came to a stop under it, facing north, with the rooms behind him. Inconvenient, in that he would have to back up or turn around after checking in, but inevitable, in that America drives on the right and takes circles counterclockwise.

There was a night light burning in the lobby. Reacher could see a reception counter, and a closed door behind it that no doubt led to an office. Probably the night guy was in there, asleep in a chair. There was a vase of flowers on the counter, probably fake.

Alan King said, “Mr. Reacher, would you go make the inquiry about rooms?”

Reacher said, “Obviously there are rooms. There are twelve doors and two cars.”

“Then would you kindly check us in?”

Reacher said, “I’m not the best guy to do that.”

“Why not?”

Reacher thought:
Because I don’t want to get out of the car. Not now. Because I no longer control the car key
.

He said, “Because I don’t have a credit card.”

“Really?”

“Or ID. Apart from an old passport, that is. But it’s been expired for years, and some people don’t like that.”

“You must have a driver’s license, surely.”

“I don’t.”

“But you were just driving.”

“Don’t tell the cops.”

“Unlicensed driving is a felony.”

“Probably just a misdemeanor.”

“Have you ever had a license?”

“Not a civilian license, no.”

“Have you ever even passed a test?”

“I guess so. Probably. In the army, possibly.”

“You don’t remember?”

“I remember learning. I don’t remember a test, as such.”

McQueen said, “I’ll come with you. I have a credit card.”

Which worked for Reacher. He didn’t want to be out of the car alone, but equally he didn’t want either King or McQueen to select the rooms alone. He wanted some influence over who went where. He opened his door. McQueen opened his door. They got out together, McQueen ten feet from the lobby, Reacher on the far side of the car. McQueen waited. Reacher looped around the trunk. Reacher paused, gestured, right-handed, open palm:
Go ahead. After you
. A precaution, not politeness. He didn’t want to walk in front of a man with a gun. Not that he thought there was a serious danger of getting shot. Not then and there. Not with a night clerk and at least two motel guests within earshot.

McQueen went ahead down a decorative path made of broken paving stones jigsawed together. Reacher followed. McQueen pulled the lobby door. Reacher stepped up and held it and gestured again:
After you
.

McQueen went in. Reacher followed. The lobby had a vinyl floor
and four gaudy wicker armchairs grouped around a low table. There was a higher table with push-top coffee flasks and stacks of paper cups. There was a rack on the wall with compartments for small folded brochures describing local tourist attractions. It was mostly empty.

The reception counter butted up against the side wall on the right. It ended six feet short of the wall on the left, near the table with the coffee. There was low TV sound behind the office door, and a rim of soft light all around it. McQueen bellied up to the counter on the right, and Reacher came to a stop alongside him, on the left.

“Hello?” McQueen called.

No response.

McQueen tapped his knuckles on the counter.

“Hello?” he called again.

No response.

“Service industries,” McQueen said, quietly. “Can’t beat them.”

He knocked on the counter again, a little louder.

“Hello?” he said, also a little louder. No response.

He glanced left at Reacher and said, “You better go knock on his door.”

Which would put Reacher in front of the gun for the first time, but there was no natural way to refuse. The route around to the door was to the left, and Reacher was on the left. Simple as that. Choreography. Geometry. Inevitable.

So Reacher looped around, between the end of the counter and the table with the coffee, and he stepped into the narrow well behind the counter. He glanced back out through the lobby window. The Chevy was still there, under the porte cochere. It hadn’t moved. It was idling patiently, just waiting, with white exhaust pooling at the rear.

But McQueen had left his car door open.

Which was the first warning bell.

The second was the sound of feet on vinyl.

A fast one-two shuffle.

Exactly like the sound of a man stepping back and turning sideways.

The third warning bell was a fast composite rustle of skin and cotton and wool and metal.

Exactly like the sound of something heavy coming out of a pocket.

Reacher turned back and faced McQueen and saw nothing beyond the muzzle of a small stainless steel handgun pointing at the center of his face.

Chapter 29

The gun was a Smith & Wesson 2213. The smallest
automatic in Smith & Wesson’s extensive range. Three-inch barrel, .22 Long Rifle rimfires, eight in the magazine. Dainty, but a serious weapon. McQueen had been very fast with it. Phenomenally fast. Like a magician. Like a conjuror. First it wasn’t there, and then it was.

Just like that.

Reacher stood very still.

The gun was maybe eight feet away. Behind it McQueen’s long right arm was locked straight and raised slightly above the horizontal. He was standing sideways on. His head was turned. One eye was closed.

His finger was white on the trigger.

Not good.

The .22 Long Rifle was one of the world’s oldest rounds, and by far the most common. Annual production every year since 1887 had exceeded two billion units. For a reason. It was cheap, it was quiet, and its recoil was gentle. And it was effective. Out of a rifle it was good against rats and squirrels at four hundred and fifty feet, and against dogs and foxes at two-fifty, and against full-grown coyotes at one-fifty.

Against a human head at eight feet it would be devastating.

Even out of a short-barreled handgun.

Not good.

Not good at all.

Reacher couldn’t see the Chevy anymore. McQueen was in the way. Which was not such a bad thing. At least Delfuenso would not have to watch it happen.

Which was a mercy.

But then: look on the bright side of life.

That was Reacher’s innate credo.

As in: there were four basic ways of missing with a short-barreled handgun. Even at eight feet, even against a head-sized target. They were: missing high, missing low, missing left, and missing right.

Missing high was always the most likely.

All guns kick upward as they fire. Action, reaction, a basic law of physics. Inevitably new shooters with machine guns stitched a vertical line that rose forever. A classic fault. Ninety percent of training was about holding the muzzle down. Suppressors helped, because of the extra weight.

There was no reason to believe McQueen was a new shooter.

But if he was going to miss, he was going to miss high.

Laws of physics.

Four things happened at once: Reacher let out a sudden loud inarticulate bellow, and McQueen startled and rocked back a step, and Reacher dropped vertically toward the floor, and McQueen pulled the trigger.

And missed.

Missed high, partly because Reacher’s head was no longer where it had been before. Gravity had done its work. Reacher heard the roar of the shot, quieter than some, but still deafening in a closed room, and simultaneously he heard the wallboard explode above and behind his head, and then he hit the floor, knees first, then his hip, then his side, sprawling, down low behind the counter, out of sight. He had no plan. At that point he was in a strict one-step-at-a-time mode. Stay alive, and see what the next split second brings. As he fell he was aware of a vague intention to hurl the whole counter up and out, straight at McQueen, if it wasn’t bolted to the floor, or else roll backward through the door into the inner office, where there had to be a window, which would be closed against the weather, but he could
plunge through it elbows first, because cuts and bruises were better than a bullet in the head.

Fight or flight.

But neither thing was necessary.

The blast of the shot peaked and started to die and Reacher heard the scrape and scrabble of feet on vinyl and he grabbed the end of the counter low down near the floor and jerked himself overhand to his right, one powerful instantaneous stroke, and he got his head out in the gap, and he saw McQueen more or less falling out through the lobby door, and then sprinting back along the neat little path, and hurling himself back into the car, and the car howling away with spinning wheels and blue tire smoke. Reacher scrambled up to his knees and got there in time to see McQueen slam his door and the car rock through a wild 180 turn, back onto the road, facing south again, and then it accelerated away, hard, nose high, tail low, wheels spinning and scrabbling for grip and pouring smoke. The last thing Reacher saw through the haze was a brief flash of white in the Chevy’s rear window, which was Karen Delfuenso’s pale face, turning back in horror, her mouth wide open.

Reacher stayed on his knees. Silence came back. White gypsum powder drifted down on him, slowly, weightless, like talc, on his shoulders, in his hair. Tire smoke hung in the night air under the porte cochere, and it rolled slowly forward in a ghostly dissipating cloud, which followed the trajectory of the 180 turn, like a description, like an explanation, like proof, and then it disappeared completely, like it had never been there at all.

Then the office door opened a crack and a short fat man stuck his head out and looked around and said, “Just so you know, I already called the cops on you.”

Julia Sorenson heard
her phone ping over the noise of her speeding car and she opened her e-mail and found an audio attachment from the emergency operator in D.C. Her phone cradle was hooked up to her car’s stereo system, which was the base Ford option and therefore nothing fancy, but it was plenty loud and clear. She turned
the volume up and hit
Play
and heard a short fifteen-second recording, of two voices on the telephone, one in the Hoover Building and the other allegedly in Iowa.

This is the FBI. What is the nature of your emergency?

I have information, probably for your field office in Omaha, Nebraska
.

What is the nature of your information?

Just connect me, now. Sir, what is your name?

Then there was a short pause, just a beat really, and then:
Connect me now or you’ll lose your job
.

Then there was another short pause, then dead air, then a new dial tone.

Then nothing.

She played it again, and listened exclusively to the caller, not the operator.

I have information, probably for your field office in Omaha, Nebraska
.

Just connect me, now
.

Connect me now or you’ll lose your job
.

Six seconds. Twenty-three words, spoken with urgency but also with a certain weird patience. A very nasal intonation, full of breath sounds, entirely consistent with a badly broken nose, the
M
sounds shading toward
B
sounds,
information
more like
inforbation
, and
Omaha
more like
Obaha
.

She played it again, zeroing in.

Probably for your field office in Omaha, Nebraska
.

Or you’ll lose your job
.

Clearly the strange urgent-but-patient blend meant the guy was accustomed to making important operational calls, or issuing instructions of some kind, and that he knew even alert and intelligent listeners needed a chance to get from zero to sixty. But he wasn’t just a businessman. Even a high-level guy used to trading millions on the phone would get a little more freaked about calling an FBI emergency line in the middle of the night. This guy sounded like it was routine to him. The
your
in
your field office
meant he wasn’t actually FBI himself,
at least not currently, but he seemed to know how things worked, and in a sense the
your
sounded like he considered himself a peer, or a part of the same world.
Your field office, my field office
.

The
probably
was intriguing. It was measured, and considered, and intelligent. As if the guy was in reality almost a hundred percent certain he wanted Omaha, but didn’t want to derail the process with an initial assumption that could conceivably prove faulty later on. Or as if he wanted to recruit the emergency operator as a kind of partner, to let the operator own some component of the ultimate decision, to oil the wheels, to speed things along.