Worth Dying For_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [65]
“She babysat.”
“Is that what she says? I suppose she would, now.”
“That’s what she did.”
“Ask her again sometime. Catch her in an unguarded moment. She was a girl of many talents, your wife, once upon a time. She might tell you all about it. You might enjoy it.”
“What do you want?”
Jacob Duncan said, “We want to know the psychology behind what you did.”
“What did I do?”
“You put your license plates on our truck.”
The doctor said nothing.
Jacob Duncan said, “We want to know why. That’s all. It’s not much to ask. Was it just impertinence? Or was it a message? Were you retaliating for our having disabled your own vehicle? Were you claiming a right? Were you making a point? Were you scolding us for having gone too far?”
“I don’t know,” the doctor said.
“Or did someone else change the plates?”
“I don’t know who changed them.”
“But it wasn’t you?”
“No.”
“Where did you find the truck?”
“At the motel. This afternoon. It was next to my car. With my plates on it.”
“Why didn’t you change them back?”
“I don’t know.”
“To drive with phony plates is a criminal offense, isn’t it? A misdemeanor at best. Should medical practitioners indulge in criminal behavior?”
“I guess not.”
“But you did.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to us. We’re not a court of law. Or a state medical board. But you should rehearse an excuse. You might lose your job. Then what would your wife do for money? She might have to return to her old ways. A comeback tour, of sorts. Not that we would have her back. I mean, who would? A raddled old bitch like that?”
The doctor said nothing.
“And you treated my daughter-in-law,” Jacob Duncan said. “After being told not to.”
“I’m a doctor. I had to.”
“The Hippocratic oath?”
“Exactly.”
“Which says, ‘First, do no harm.’ ”
“I didn’t do any harm.”
“Look at my son’s face.”
The doctor looked.
“You did that,” Jacob said.
“I didn’t.”
“You caused it to be done. Which is the same thing. You did harm.”
“That wasn’t me.”
“So who was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do. The word is out. Surely you’ve heard it? We know you people talk about us all the time. On the phone tree. Did you think it was a secret?”
“It was Reacher.”
“Finally,” Jacob said. “We get to the point. You were his co-conspirator.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You asked him to drive you to my son’s house.”
“I didn’t. He made me go.”
“Whatever,” Jacob said. “There’s no use crying over spilt milk. But we have a question for you.”
“What is it?”
“Where is Reacher now?”
Chapter 29
Reacher was in his ground floor room at the Courtyard Marriott, knee-deep in old police reports. He had used the flat-bladed screwdriver from his pocket to slit the tape on all eleven cartons, and he had sampled the first page out of every box to establish the correct date order. He had shuffled the cartons into a line, and then he had started a quick-and-dirty overview of the records, right from the very beginning.
As expected, the notes were comprehensive. It had been a high-profile case with many sensitivities, and there had been three other agencies on the job—the State Police, the National Guard, and the FBI. The county PD had taken pains to be very professional. Multi-agency cases were essentially competitions, and the county PD hadn’t wanted to lose. The department had recorded every move and covered every base and covered every ass. In some ways the files were slices of history. They had been nowhere near a computer. They were old-fashioned, human, and basic. They were typewritten, probably on old IBM electric machines. They had misaligned lines and corrections made with white fluid. The paper itself was foxed and brown, thin and brittle, and musty. There were no reams of cell phone records, because no one had had cell phones back then, not even the cops. No DNA samples had been taken. There were no GPS coordinates.
The files were exactly like the files Reacher himself had created, way back at the start of his army career.
Dorothy had called the cops from a neighbor’s house, at eight in the evening on an early summer Sunday. Not 911, but the local