sidewalk.’
‘Your SAC is already involved. And you haven’t been replaced yet.’
‘He hasn’t kicked it upstairs yet. Can’t do that, in the middle of the night. But he will. And he’ll cover his ass. Right now I bet he’s writing a report, which will be in every e-mail in-box everywhere by the time the sun comes up, and the last paragraph will be a recommendation to pull me out and bring in the heavy hitters from D.C. You can take that to the bank.’
‘Doesn’t he trust you?’
‘He trusts me just fine. But this thing looks toxic. He won’t want it anywhere near his own office. He prefers to look good.’
‘So why are you going to Iowa?’
‘Because right now it’s still my case.’
‘You really think it’s them?’
‘The location is right. It’s about where they’d be by now.’
‘That’s just a wild-ass guess.’
‘Who else would call Omaha from east of Des Moines?’
‘Why would they call at all? And from a traceable pay phone?’
‘A secret conscience attack, maybe. By the driver, possibly. They tell me the voice was nasal. Which could be a busted nose, not the flu. And maybe a pay phone was all he could find.’
‘But he hung up.’
Sorenson nodded. ‘He changed his mind. That can happen.’
Goodman said, ‘What about Karen Delfuenso’s daughter?’
‘You’ll have to tell her. You’d have to anyway. This is your county, and she’s your people.’
‘When should I tell her?’
‘When she wakes up.’
‘That’s going to be tough.’
‘It always is.’
‘Those guys will be long gone by the time you get to southeastern Iowa. It’s a long way away.’
‘I can drive faster than they did. No more roadblocks, and I don’t have to worry about tickets.’
‘Even so.’
‘Whatever, it’s better than staying here, doing nothing,’ Sorenson said.
Sorenson checked in with Dawson and Mitchell and told them what she was going to do. She didn’t offer them a ride. She expected them to follow in their own car. She thought big-deal counterterrorism agents would relish the chase. But they said they were going to stay put, right there in the wilds of Nebraska. Near the point of vulnerability. They said there was nothing to worry about in Iowa. No disrespect to that fine state, they said. But it wasn’t a prime terrorist target.
Sorenson said, ‘They could have a base camp there. Like a hideout.’
Mitchell said, ‘Are you serious?’
‘Not really.’
Dawson nodded. ‘We’ll call St Louis. Technically southeastern Iowa is their responsibility. They’ll get involved if they need to.’
Sorenson didn’t speak to Lester L. Lester, Jr, of the State Department. She just ignored him completely. She got a ride with Goodman back to the old pumping station, and she got back in her car, and she followed her GPS back to the Interstate, seventy miles an hour all the way, with her lights flashing and her cell phone charging.
A deceptive exit, Reacher thought again. Dark rural roads, and places that were shut when you got there. He had been wrong about the gas station, but in and of itself that didn’t make the motel any more likely to exist. Fifty- fifty was a reasonable outcome, where truth in advertising was concerned. He had seen plenty of abandoned motels on his travels. America was full of them. They were like little time capsules, for ever frozen in an earlier era, sometimes plain, sometimes adventurous in their design, always testament to the long sad decline in their owners’ energies and ambitions, always evidence of the way public taste had moved on. A week in a cabin near a buggy lake was no longer enough. Now it was cruises and Vegas and the Virgin Islands. Reacher had seen travel agents’ windows. He knew where vacationers went. He knew where they didn’t go. He saw no reason why a motel in the wilds of Iowa would have done any business in the last thirty years.
Which was a pity, because a stop for the night would have opened up a whole new world of possibilities.
King had turned left and right, left and right, endlessly south and east through the chequerboard darkness, a total of more than thirty miles since leaving the Shell station. At each turn a copy of the accommodations board had tempted them onward, the bland little arrows looking both firm and tentative, both promising and hopeless. McQueen didn’t look worried. He was awake and vigilant, and he seemed confident. He trusted the signs.
And it turned out he was right to. A mile later, for the second time that night, Reacher was proved wrong. He saw a dull glow in the mist, far ahead on the left, and he watched as it resolved itself into separate beige pearls of light, which turned out to be dim electric bulbs in bulkhead fixtures set knee-high on the walls of a long low motel building. The design of the place was standard. There was dark brown siding, and a lobby and an office at the north end, with a Coke machine and a porte cochere, and then the building continued south in a regular rhythm, window, door, window, door, for a total of twelve rooms. Each door had two white plastic lawn chairs next to it. The low-set bulkhead fixtures were to light a sidewalk that ran the length of the building. Two rooms had cars parked outside, one an old sedan, lacy with rust, and the other an immense pick-up truck painted in a motorcycle manufacturer’s colours. There was a third car parked tight against the office wall, a three-door import not much bigger than a golf cart. The night clerk’s ride, presumably.
Alan King slowed the Chevy and stopped and idled on the road twenty feet from the motel’s entrance. He surveyed the place, carefully, end to end, and he said, ‘Good enough?’
Don McQueen said, ‘Works for me.’
King didn’t seek Karen Delfuenso’s opinion. There was no big three-way democratic discussion. He just rolled onward and turned in on the far side of the porte cochere and came to a stop under it, facing north, with the rooms behind him. Inconvenient, in that he would have to back up or turn around after checking in, but inevitable, in that America drives on the right and takes circles counterclockwise.
There was a night light burning in the lobby. Reacher could see a reception counter, and a closed door behind it that no doubt led to an office. Probably the night guy was in there, asleep in a chair. There was a vase of flowers on the counter, probably fake.
Alan King said, ‘Mr Reacher, would you go make the inquiry about rooms?’
Reacher said, ‘Obviously there are rooms. There are twelve doors and two cars.’
‘Then would you kindly check us in?’
Reacher said, ‘I’m not the best guy to do that.’
‘Why not?’
Reacher thought:
He said, ‘Because I don’t have a credit card.’
‘Really?’
‘Or ID. Apart from an old passport, that is. But it’s been expired for years, and some people don’t like that.’
‘You must have a driver’s licence, surely.’
‘I don’t.’
‘But you were just driving.’
‘Don’t tell the cops.’
‘Unlicensed driving is a felony.’
‘Probably just a misdemeanour.’
‘Have you ever had a licence?’
‘Not a civilian licence, no.’
‘Have you ever even passed a test?’
‘I guess so. Probably. In the army, possibly.’
‘You don’t remember?’
