Part 15 (2/2)
”They can't be coming for me. They can't even have woken up yet.”
”Their deputies are coming. All four of them.”
”Really?”
”That's what deputies do. They deputize.”
”So I hide in your car? All night?”
”d.a.m.n straight.”
”You think I need protection?”
”My town needs protection. I don't want trouble here.”
”Those four won't be any trouble. One of them is already busted up and one was throwing his guts up the last time I saw him.”
”So you could take them?”
”With one hand behind my back and my head in a bag.”
”Exactly. I'm a cop. I have a responsibility. No fighting in my streets. It's unseemly.” She pulled a tight U-turn in the motel lot and headed back the way she had come. Reacher asked, ”When will they get here?”
”The plant shuts down at six. I imagine they'll head right over.”
”How long will they stay?”
”The plant opens up again at six tomorrow morning.”
Reacher said, ”You don't want me in your car all night.”
”I'll do what it takes. Like I said. This is a decent place. I'm not going to let it get trashed, either literally or metaphorically.”
Reacher paused and said, ”I could leave town.”
”Permanently?” Vaughan asked.
”Temporarily.”
”And go where?”
”Despair, obviously. I can't get in trouble there, can I? Their cops are in the hospital and their deputies will be here all night.”
Vaughan made a right and a left and headed down Second Street toward the diner. She stayed quiet for a moment and then she said, ”There's another one in town today.”
”Another what?”
”Another girl. Just like Lucy Anderson. But dark, not blonde. She blew in this afternoon and now she's sitting around and staring west like she's waiting for word from Despair.”
”From a boyfriend or a husband?”
”Possibly.”
”Possibly a dead boyfriend or husband, Caucasian, about twenty years old, five-eight and one-forty.”
”Possibly.”
”I should go there.”
Vaughan drove past the diner and kept on driving. She drove two blocks south and came back east on Fourth Street. No real reason. Just motion, for the sake of it. Fourth Street had trees and retail establishments behind the north sidewalk and trees and a long line of neat homes behind the south. Small yards, picket fences, foundation plantings, mailboxes on poles that had settled to every angle except the truly vertical.
”I should go there,” Reacher said again.
”Wait until the deputies get here. You don't want to pa.s.s them on the road.”
”OK.”
”And don't let them see you leave.”
”OK.”
”And don't make trouble over there.”
”I'm not sure there's anybody left to make trouble with. Unless I meet the judge.”
27
For the second time that day Vaughan gave up her pick-up truck and walked home to get her cruiser. Reacher drove the truck to a quiet side street and parked facing north in the shadow of a tree and watched the traffic on First Street directly ahead of him. He had a limited field of view. But there wasn't much to see, anyway. Whole ten-minute periods pa.s.sed without visible activity. Not surprising. Residents returning from the Kansas direction would have peeled off into town down earlier streets. And no one in their right mind was returning from Despair, or heading there. The daylight was fading fast. The world was going gray and still. The clock in Reacher's head was ticking around, relentlessly.
When it hit six-thirty-two he saw an old crew-cab pick-up truck flash through his field of vision. Moving smartly, from the Despair direction. A driver, and three pa.s.sengers inside. Big men, close together. They filled the cramped quarters, shoulder to shoulder.
Reacher recognized the truck.
He recognized the driver.
He recognized the pa.s.sengers.
The Despair deputies, right on time.
He paused a beat and started the old Chevy's engine and moved off the curb. He eased north to First Street and turned left. Checked his mirror. The old crew-cab was already a hundred yards behind him, moving away in the opposite direction, slowing down and getting ready to turn. The road ahead was empty. He pa.s.sed the hardware store and hit the gas and forced the old truck up to sixty miles an hour. Five minutes later he thumped over the expansion joint and settled in to a noisy cruise west.
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