Part 44 (1/2)

So, allowing a minute's margin for her protective detail to clear the area, someone had been between six and nine minutes late to the roll call up at the prison.

Someone would remember.

Maybe.

If there had been a roll call at all.

If the guy had even gone.

Reacher zipped his coat and jammed his hat down over his ears and covered it with his hood. Put his gloves on, opened the front door, and stepped out once again into the cold. It crowded in on him, battered at him, tormented him, froze him. But he ignored it. An act of will. He closed the door and walked down the driveway and made the turns and headed back towards the station. He stayed vigilant all the way, right up there in the kind of hyper-alert zone that made him feel he could draw and fire a thousand times faster than any opponent. The kind of zone that made him feel he could mine the ore and smelt the metal and draw the blueprint and cast the parts and build his own gun, all before any opponent got the drop on him.

I'm not afraid of death.

Death's afraid of me.

Fear into aggression.

Guilt into aggression.

The police station was completely deserted apart from the civilian aide back on duty behind the reception counter. He was a tall creaky individual about seventy years old. He was sitting glumly on his stool. Reacher asked for the news. The guy said there wasn't any. Reacher asked how long the department would stay deployed. The guy said he didn't know. The department had no experience of such a thing. There had never been an escape before.

'There was no escape tonight,' Reacher said. 'The guy is hiding out inside.'

'That's your opinion?'

'Yes, it is.'

'Based on what?'

'Common sense,' Reacher said.

'Then I should think they'll give it another hour or so. The perimeter is a mile out. Two hours is long enough to decide the guy is already through, or maybe not coming at all.'

'Tell me how the roll call works. For the department, at the prison.'

'I do it from here. By radio. I work through the list, they answer me from their cars or their collar mikes, I check them off.'

'How did it go tonight?'

'All present and correct.'

'No absentees?'

'None at all.'

'Misfires? Hesitations?'

'None.'

'When did you do it?'

'I started when I heard the siren. It takes about five minutes, beginning to end.'

'So they're self-certifying, aren't they?'

'I don't follow.'

Reacher said, 'You don't really know where they are or what they're doing. All you know is if they answer your call or not.'

'I ask them where they are. They tell me. Either they're in position or close to it. And the prison warden is ent.i.tled to check.'

'How?'

'He can go up in a tower and eyeball. The land is flat. Or he can tap into our radio net and call the roll himself, if he wants.'

'Did he tonight?'

'I don't know.'

Reacher asked, 'Who was last into position tonight?'

'I can't say. Early in the alphabet, they're all still in motion. Late in the alphabet, they're all already on station.'

'So they tell you.'

'Why would I doubt them?'

'You need to call Chief Holland,' Reacher said. 'Mrs Salter is dead.'

Reacher wandered through the silent station, the squad room, Holland's office, the bathrooms, and he came to rest in the room with the crime scene photographs pinned to the walls. The biker, and the lawyer. He sat with his back to the biker and looked at the lawyer. He didn't know the guy's name. Didn't know much about him at all. But he knew enough to know the guy was basically the same as Janet Salter. A man, not a woman, a frozen road, not a warm book-lined room, but they were both half-wise, half-unworldly people lulled into a false sense of security, tricked into relaxing. The s.h.i.+ft lever in Park and the window all the way down in the door were the same things as Janet Salter's comfortable posture and the book on her lap.

Understand their motives, their circ.u.mstances, their goals, their aims, their fears, their needs. Think like them. See what they see. Be Be them them.

They were both all the way there. Not partway, not halfway. They were completely trusting. They had opened up, literally. Doors, windows, hearts, minds. Not half worried, not half formal, not half suspicious.

They were all the way there.

Not just any cop could do that to them.

It was a cop they both knew, had met before, were familiar with.

Peterson had asked: What would your elite unit do now? What would your elite unit do now?

Answer: Reacher or Susan or any of the other 110th Special Unit COs in between them would put their feet up on the damaged desk and send a pair of eager lieutenants to map out both lives, to list all known acquaintances in the Bolton PD in order of intimacy. Then he or she or any of the others would cross-reference the lists, and a name would show up in common.

Reacher had no pair of eager lieutenants.

But there were other approaches.