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By Root 763 0

pitted with potholes. It twisted and it wandered, and it rose and it fell. It was hard going, and not entirely safe. It was dangerous, even, because at that stage a broken axle or a busted half-shaft would ruin everything. So the driver turned left, on a rough grassy track he had used before, and bumped and bounced two hundred yards to a picnic spot provided for summer visitors. In winter it was always deserted. The driver had seen bears there, and coyotes, and red foxes, and moose, and twice he thought he had seen elk, although they might have been shadows, and once he thought he had seen a wolf, but it might have been just another coyote. But he had never seen people. Not in winter. Not even once.

He parked under a towering pine and shut down for the night.

Roberto Cassano and Angelo Mancini pulled their rented Impala around the back of the Marriott and slotted it next to a black Cadillac that was standing alone in the rear of the lot. They got out and stretched and checked their watches. They figured they had time for a quick dinner before their reinforcements arrived. The diner or the rib shack? They liked neither one. Why would they? They had taste, and the retard local yokels sure as hell didn’t. But they were hungry, and they had to eat somewhere.

They pondered for a second and decided on the diner. They turned away from the hotel lobby and headed for the main drag.

The Duncans let the doctor finish a third glass of Wild Turkey, and then they sent him on his way. They pushed him out the door and told him to walk home. They watched him down the driveway, and then they turned and strolled back and regrouped in Jacob’s kitchen. Jacob put the bottle back in the cupboard, and put the glass in the sink, and returned the chair to the corner of the room. His brother Jasper asked, “So what do you think?”

Jacob said, “About what?”

“Should we call the county and stop them showing Reacher the files?”

“I don’t see how we could do that.”

“We could try.”

“It would draw attention.”

Jonas asked, “Should we call Eldridge Tyler? Strictly as a backup?”

“Then we would owe him something.”

“It would be a wise investment, if Reacher is coming back.”

“I don’t think he’s coming back,” Jacob said. “That’s my first thought, certainly.”

“But?”

“Ultimately I guess it depends on what he finds, and what he doesn’t find.”

Chapter 30

Reacher found a statement from the little girl’s father. It was long and detailed. Cops weren’t dumb. Fathers were automatic suspects when little girls disappeared. Margaret’s father had been Arthur Coe, universally known as Artie. At the time of his daughter’s disappearance he was thirty-seven years old. Relatively ancient for a father of an eight-year-old, back in the 1980s. He was a local man. He was a Vietnam veteran. He had refused an offer from the local Selective Service board to classify his farmwork as an essential occupation. He had served, and he had come back. A brave man. A patriot. He had been fixing machinery in an outbuilding when Margaret had ridden away, and he had still been fixing it four hours later, when his wife came to tell him that the kid was still out. He had dropped everything and started the search. His statement was full of the same kind of feelings Dorothy had described over breakfast, the unreality, the hope against hope, the belief that the kid was just out playing somewhere, surely to God, maybe picking flowers, that she had lost track of time, that she would be home soon, right as rain. Even after twenty-five years the typewritten words still reeked of shock and pain and misery.

Arthur Coe was an innocent man, Reacher thought.

He moved on, to a packet marked by hand Margaret Coe Biography. Just a regular manila envelope, quite thin, as would befit an eight-year-old’s short life story. The gummed flap had never been licked, but it was stuck down anyway, from dampness in the storage facility. Reacher eased it open. There were sheets of paper inside, plus a photograph in a yellowed glassine jacket. Reacher eased it out. And was surprised.

Margaret Coe was Asian.