Part 25 (2/2)
”No trace at all?”
”No physical sign, and a lot of zipped lips.”
”So what's going on?”
”When was the last time any normal person entered Despair and stayed as long as he wanted and left of his own accord? To your certain knowledge?”
”I don't know,” Vaughan said. ”Months, certainly.”
”There was an entry in the hotel register from seven months ago.”
”That sounds about right.”
”I met the new girl last night,” Reacher said. ”Sweet kid. Her name is Maria. I'm pretty sure the dead guy was her boyfriend. She showed me his picture. His name was Raphael Ramirez.”
”Did you tell her?”
”No.”
”Why not?”
”She asked me if I'd seen him. Truth is, I didn't actually see him. It was dark. And I can't give her news like that without being completely sure.”
”So she's still swinging in the wind.”
”I think she knows, deep down.”
”What happened to the body?”
”It didn't go to the county morgue. I checked on that.”
”We knew that already.”
”No, we knew it didn't go straight to the morgue. That was all. So I wondered if it had been dumped somewhere out of town and found later by someone else. But it wasn't. Therefore it never left Despair. And the only meat wagon and the only stretcher in Despair belong to the metal plant. And the metal plant has furnaces that could vaporize a corpse in five minutes flat.”
Vaughan got up and poured herself a gla.s.s of water, from a bottle in the refrigerator. She stood with her hips against the counter and stared out the window. Her heels were on the floor but most of her weight was on her toes. Her T-s.h.i.+rt had one lateral wrinkle where the base of her spine met her b.u.t.t. The cotton material was very slightly translucent. The light was all behind her. Her hair was dry and there was fine golden down on her neck.
She looked spectacular.
She asked, ”What else did Maria say?”
Reacher said, ”Nothing. I didn't ask her anything else.”
”Why ever not?”
”No point. The wives and the girlfriends aren't going to tell us anything. And what they do say will be misleading.”
”Why?”
”Because they've got a vested interest. Their husbands and their boyfriends aren't just hiding out in Despair on their own account. They're aiming to get help there. They're aiming to ride some kind of an underground railroad for fugitives. Despair is a way station, in and out. The women want to keep it all secret. Lucy Anderson was OK with me until I mentioned I used to be a cop. Then she started hating me. She thought I was still a cop. She thought I was here to bust her husband.”
”What kind of fugitives?”
”I don't know what kind. But the Anderson guy was the right kind and Raphael Ramirez was the wrong kind.”
Vaughan took Reacher's mug from him and refilled it from the machine. Then she refilled her gla.s.s from the refrigerator and sat down and said, ”May I ask you a personal question?”
Reacher said, ”Feel free.”
”Why are you doing this?”
”Doing what?”
”Caring, I suppose. Caring about what's happening in Despair. Bad stuff happens everywhere, all the time. Why does this matter to you so much?”
”I'm curious, that's all.”
”That's no answer.”
”I have to be somewhere, doing something.”
”That's still no answer.”
”Maria,” Reacher said. ”She's the answer. She's a sweet kid, and she's hurting.”
”Her boyfriend is a fugitive from the law. You said so yourself. Maybe she deserves to be hurting. Maybe Ramirez is a dope dealer or something. Or a gang member or a murderer.”
”Ramirez looked like a harmless guy to me.”
”You can tell by looking?”
”Sometimes. Would Maria hang out with a bad guy?”
”I haven't met her.”
”Would Lucy Anderson?”
Vaughan said nothing.
”I don't like company towns,” Reacher said. ”I don't like feudal systems. I don't like smug fat bosses lording it over people. And I don't like people so broken down that they put up with it.”
”You see something you don't like, you feel you have to tear it down?”
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