Worth Dying For_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [52]
“How long did you work for them?”
“About six times.”
“And what happened?”
“In what way?”
“Anything bad?”
She looked straight at him. “You mean, was I interfered with?”
He asked, “Were you?”
“No.”
“Did you feel in any danger?”
“A little.”
“Was there any inappropriate behavior at all?”
“Not really.”
“So what was it made you stand by Dorothy when the kid went missing?”
“Just a feeling.”
“What kind of a feeling?”
“I was fourteen, OK? I didn’t really understand anything. But I knew I felt uncomfortable.”
“Did you know why?”
“It dawned on me slowly.”
“What was it?”
“They were disappointed that I wasn’t younger. They made me feel I was too old for them. It creeped me out.”
“You felt too old for them at fourteen?”
“Yes. And I wasn’t, you know, very mature. I was a small girl.”
“What did you feel would have happened if you had been younger?”
“I really don’t want to think about it.”
“And you told the cops about how you felt?”
“Sure. We all told them everything. The cops were great. It was twenty-five years ago, but they were very modern. They took us very seriously, even the kids. They listened to everybody. They told us we could say anything, big or small, important or not, truth or rumor. So it all came out.”
“But nothing was proved.”
The doctor’s wife shook her head. “The Duncans were clean as a whistle. Pure as the driven snow. I’m surprised they didn’t get the Nobel Prize.”
“But still you stood by Dorothy.”
“I knew what I felt.”
“Did you think the investigation was OK?”
“I was fourteen. What did I know? I saw dogs and guys in FBI jackets. It was like a television show. So, yes, I thought it was OK.”
“And now? Looking back?”
“They never found her bike.”
The doctor’s wife said that most farm kids started driving their parents’ beat-up pick-up trucks around the age of fifteen, or even a little earlier, if they were tall enough. Younger or shorter than that, they rode bikes. Big old Schwinn cruisers, baseball cards in the spokes, tassels on the handlebars. It was a big county. Walking was too slow. The eight-year-old Margaret had ridden away from the house Reacher had seen, down the track Reacher had seen, all knees and elbows and excitement, on a pink bicycle bigger than she was. Neither she nor the bike was ever seen again.
The doctor’s wife said, “I kept on expecting them to find the bike. You know, maybe on the side of a road somewhere. In the tall grass. Just lying there. That’s what happens on the television shows. Like a clue. With a footprint, or maybe the guy had dropped a piece of paper or something. But it didn’t happen that way. Everything was a dead end.”
“So what was your bottom line at the time?” Reacher asked. “On the Duncans. Guilty or not guilty?”
“Not guilty,” the woman said. “Because facts are facts, aren’t they?”
“Yet you still stood by Dorothy.”
“Partly because of the way I felt. Feelings are different than facts. And partly because of the aftermath. It was horrible for her. The Duncans were very self-righteous. And people were starting to wake up to the power they had over them. It was like the thought police. First Dorothy was supposed to apologize, which she wouldn’t, and then she was supposed to just shut up and carry on like nothing had ever happened. She couldn’t even grieve, because somehow that would have been like accusing the Duncans all over again. The whole county was uneasy about it. It was like Dorothy was supposed to take one for the team. Like one of those old legends, where she had to sacrifice her child to the monster, for the good of the village.”
There was no more talk. Reacher collected the three empty coffee cups and carried them out to the kitchen, partly to be polite, partly because he wanted to check the view through a different window. The landscape was still clear. Nothing coming. Nothing