Worth Dying For_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [128]
“I hope you never have to. I hope I’m wrong.”
“Where is this place we’re talking about?”
“Mrs. Coe told me that fifty years ago two farms were sold for a development that never happened. The outbuildings from one of them are still there. Way out in a field. A barn, and a smaller shed.”
The doctor nodded. “I know where they are.”
“People plow right up to them.”
“I know,” the doctor said. “I guess they shouldn’t, but why let good land go to waste? The subdivisions were never built, and they’re never going to be. So it’s something for nothing, and God knows these people need it. It’s yield that doesn’t show up on their mortgages.”
“So when Detective Carson came up here twenty-five years ago, what did he see? In the early summer? He saw about a million acres of waist-high corn, and he saw some houses dotted around here and there, and he saw some outbuildings dotted around here and there. He stopped in at every house, and every occupant said they’d searched their outbuildings. So Carson went away again, and that old barn and that old shed fell right between the cracks. Because Carson’s question was, did you search your outbuildings? Everyone said yes, probably quite truthfully. And Carson saw the old barn and the old shed and quite naturally assumed they must belong to someone, and that therefore they had indeed been looked at, as promised. But they didn’t belong to anyone, and they hadn’t been looked at.”
“You think that was the scene of the crime?”
“I think Carson should have asked that question twenty-five years ago.”
“There won’t be anything there. There can’t be. Those buildings are ruins now, and they must have been ruins then. They’ve been sitting there empty for fifty years, in the middle of nowhere, just moldering away.”
“Have they?”
“Of course. You said it yourself, they don’t belong to anyone.”
“Then why have they got wheel ruts all the way to the door?”
“Have they?”
Reacher nodded. “I hid a truck in the smaller shed my first night. No problem getting there. I’ve seen worse roads in New York City.”
“Old ruts? Or new ruts?”
“Hard to tell. Both, probably. Many years’ worth, I would say. Quite deep, quite well established. No weeds. Not much traffic, probably, but some. Some kind of regularity. Enough to keep the ruts in shape, anyway.”
“I don’t understand. Who would use those places now? And for what?”
Reacher said nothing. He was looking out the window. The light was getting stronger. The fields were turning from gray to brown. The parked pick-up beyond the fence was all lit up by low rays.
The doctor asked, “So you think someone scooped the kid up and drove her to that barn?”
“I’m not sure anymore,” Reacher said. “They were harvesting alfalfa at the time, and there will have been plenty of trucks on the road. And I’m guessing this whole place felt a bit happier back then. More energetic. People doing this and that, going here and there. The roads were probably a little busier than they are now. Probably a lot busier. Maybe even too busy to risk scooping a kid up against her will in broad daylight.”
“So what do you think happened to her?”
Reacher didn’t answer. He was still looking out the window. He could see the knots in the fence timbers. He could see clumps of frozen weeds at the base of the posts. The front lawn was dry and brittle with cold.
Reacher said, “You’re not much of a gardener.”
“No talent,” the doctor said. “No time.”
“Does anyone garden?”
“Not really. People are too tired. And working farmers hardly ever garden. They grow stuff to sell, not to look at.”
“OK.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I’m asking myself, if I was a little girl with a bicycle, and I loved flowers, where would I go to see some? No point coming to a house like this, for instance. Or any house, probably. Or anywhere at all, really, because every last inch of ground is plowed for cash crops. I can think of just three possibilities. I saw two big rocks in the fields, with brambles around them. Nice wildflowers in the early summer, probably. There may be more just like them, but it doesn’t matter anyway,