Worth Dying For_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [53]
Reacher said, “I’m going to Virginia.”
“OK.”
“With two stops along the way.”
“Where?”
“I’m going to drop in on the county cops. Sixty miles south of here. I want to see their paperwork.”
“Will they still have it?”
Reacher nodded. “A thing like that, lots of different departments cooperating, everyone on their best behavior, they’ll have built a pretty big file. And they won’t have junked it yet. Because technically it’s still an open case. Their notes will be in storage somewhere. Probably a whole cubic yard of them.”
“Will they let you see them? Just like that?”
“I was a cop of sorts myself, thirteen years. I can usually talk my way past file clerks.”
“Why do you want to see it?”
“To check it for holes. If it’s OK, I’ll keep on running. If it’s not, I might come back.”
“To do what?”
“To fill in the holes.”
“How will you get down there?”
“Drive.”
“Showing up in a stolen truck won’t help your cause.”
“It’s got your plates on it now. They won’t know.”
“My plates?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll swap them back again. If the paperwork’s OK, then I’ll leave the truck right there near the police station with the proper plates on it, and sooner or later someone will figure out whose it is, and word will get back to the Duncans, and they’ll know I’m gone for good, and they’ll start leaving you people alone again.”
“That would be nice. What’s your second stop?”
“The cops are the second stop. First stop is closer to home.”
“Where?”
“We’re going to drop in on Seth Duncan’s wife. You and me. A house call. To make sure she’s healing right.”
Chapter 25
The doctor was immediately dead set against the idea. It was a house call he didn’t want to make. He looked away and paced the kitchen and traced his facial injuries with his fingertips and pursed his lips and ran his tongue over his teeth. Then eventually he said, “But Seth might be there.”
Reacher said, “I hope he is. We can check he’s healing right, too. And if he is, I can hit him again.”
“He’ll have Cornhuskers with him.”
“He won’t. They’re all out in the fields, looking for me. The few that remain, that is.”
“I don’t know about this.”
“You’re a doctor. You took an oath. You have obligations.”
“It’s dangerous.”
“Getting out of bed in the morning is dangerous.”
“You’re a crazy man, you know that?”
“I prefer to think of myself as conscientious.”
Reacher and the doctor climbed into the pick-up truck and headed back to the county two-lane and turned right. They came out on the road a couple of miles south of the motel and a couple of miles north of the three Duncan houses. Two minutes later the doctor stared at them as they passed by. Reacher took a look, too. Enemy territory. Three white houses, three parked vehicles, no obvious activity. By that point Reacher assumed the second Brett had delivered his messages. He assumed they had been heard and then immediately dismissed as bravado. Although the burned-out truck should have counted for something. The Duncans were losing, steadily and badly, and they had to know it.
Reacher made the left where he had the night before in the Subaru wagon, and then he threaded through the turns until Seth Duncan’s house appeared ahead on his right. It looked much the same lit by daylight as it had by electricity. The white mailbox with Duncan on it, the hibernating lawn, the antique horse buggy. The long straight driveway, the outbuilding, the three sets of doors. This time two of them were standing open. The back ends of two cars were visible in the gloom inside. One was a small red sports car, maybe a Mazda, very feminine, and the other was a big black Cadillac sedan, very masculine.
The doctor said, “That’s Seth’s car.”
Reacher smiled. “Which one?”
“The Cadillac.”
“Nice car,” Reacher said. “Maybe I should go smash it up. I’ve got a wrench of my own now. Want me to do that?”
“No,” the doctor said. “For God’s sake.”
Reacher smiled again and parked where he had the night before and they climbed out together and stood