Worth Dying For_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [51]
“How far?”
“Two hundred and eighty steps.”
“Wow. That would do it. Where was this?”
“That’s outside of your professional interest.”
“Then what happened?”
“That’s outside of your professional interest, too.”
“Recent event, yes?”
“Feels like yesterday,” Reacher said. “Now go get the needle.”
It was a long needle. The doctor went away and came back with a stainless-steel syringe that looked big enough for a horse. He made Reacher take his shirt off again and sit forward with his elbow on the table. He eased the sharp point deep into the joint, from the back. Reacher felt it pushing and popping through all kinds of tendons and muscles. The doctor pressed the plunger, slow and steady. Reacher felt the fluid flood the joint. Felt the joint loosen and relax, in real time, immediately, like healing insanely accelerated. Then the doctor did the other shoulder. Same procedure. Same result.
“Wonderful,” Reacher said.
The doctor asked, “What did you want to talk about?”
“A time long ago,” Reacher said. “When your wife was a kid.”
Chapter 24
Reacher dressed again and all three of them took mugs of fresh coffee to the living room, which was a narrow rectangular space with furniture arranged in an L shape along two walls, and a huge flat screen television on a third wall. Under the screen was a rack loaded with audiovisual components all interconnected with thick wires. Flanking the screen were two serious loudspeakers. Set into the fourth wall was an undraped picture window that gave a great view of a thousand acres of absolutely nothing at all. Dormant lawn, the postand-rail fence, then dirt all the way to the horizon. No hills, no dales, no trees, no streams. But no trucks or patrols, either. No activity of any kind. Reacher took an armchair where he could see the door and the view both at the same time. The doctor sat on a sofa. His wife sat next to him. She didn’t look enthusiastic about talking.
Reacher asked her, “How old were you when Dorothy’s kid went missing?”
She said, “I was fourteen.”
“Six years older than Seth Duncan.”
“About.”
“Not quite in his generation.”
“No.”
“Do you remember when he first showed up?”
“Not really. I was ten or eleven. There was some talk. I’m probably remembering the talk, rather than the event.”
“What did people say?”
“What could they say? No one knew anything. There was no information. People assumed he was a relative. Maybe orphaned. Maybe there had been a car wreck in another state.”
“And the Duncans never explained?”
“Why would they? It was nobody’s business but theirs.”
“What happened when Dorothy’s little girl went missing?”
“It was awful. Almost like a betrayal. It changed people. A thing like that, OK, it puts a scare in you, but it’s supposed to have a happy ending. It’s supposed to turn out right. But it didn’t.”
“Dorothy thought the Duncans did it.”
“I know.”
“She said you stood by her.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
Reacher said, “You were fourteen. She was what? Thirty? Thirty-five? More than twice your age. So it wasn’t about solidarity between two women or two mothers or two neighbors. Not in the normal sense. It was because you knew something, wasn’t it?”
“Why are you asking?”
“Call it professional interest.”
“It was a quarter of a century ago.”
“It was yesterday, as far as Dorothy is concerned.”
“You’re not from here.”
“I know,” Reacher said. “I’m on my way to Virginia.”
“So go there.”
“I can’t. Not yet. Not if I think the Duncans did it and got away with it.”
“Why does it matter to you?”
“I don’t know. I can’t explain it. But it does.”
“The Duncans get away with plenty, believe me. Every single day.”
“But I don’t care about that other stuff. I don’t care who gets their harvest hauled or when or how much they pay for it. You all can take care of that for yourselves. It’s not rocket science.”
The doctor’s wife said, “I was the Duncans’ babysitter that year.”
“And?”
“They didn’t really need one. They rarely