“May I bring you coffee?”
“Yes, please,” Reacher called out to him. “A pot for two.”
The guy nodded politely, after a fractional delay. To bring coffee to a police detective was one thing. To a guest was another. Beneath his station. But on the other hand, the customer was always right. He backed out of the room and Amos came all the way in. She sat down at Reacher’s table, in the empty seat across from him.
She said, “As a matter of fact I already had coffee this morning.”
“It doesn’t have to be a once-a-day thing,” he said. “There’s no law that says you ever have to stop.”
“Also as a matter of fact I think Dunkin’ is spiking it with LSD today.”
“How so?”
“Or else as a matter of fact this is the biggest déjà vu in history.”
“OK, how so that?”
“You know what déjà vu literally means?”
“It literally means already seen. It’s French. My mother was French. She liked it when Americans used French phrases. It made her feel part of things.”
“Why are you telling me about your mother?”
“Why are you asking me about LSD?”
“What did we do yesterday?”
“Do?” he said.
“We dug up an old case from seventy-five years ago, in which a youth was found unconscious on the sidewalk of a downtown Laconia street. He was identified as a local twenty-year-old, already known to the police department as a loudmouth and a bully, but untouchable, because he was the son of the local rich guy. Remember?”
“Sure,” Reacher said.
“What happened when I got to work this morning?”
“I have no way of knowing.”
“I was told that a youth had just been found unconscious on the sidewalk of a downtown Laconia street. He had been identified as a local twenty-year-old, already known to the police department as a loudmouth and a bully, but untouchable, because he was the son of the local rich guy.”
“Seriously?”
“And I walk into the hotel across the street and here you are.”
“I guess that seems like a coincidence.”
“You think?”
“Not really. Clearly such crimes happen all the time.”
“Seventy-five years apart is all the time?”
“I’m sure there were many similar incidents in between. All rich bullies get a smack sooner or later. You could have picked any old case at random, and it could have been the same kind of match. And obviously I’m here, because I’m the guy who asked you about the non-random old case in question. So instead of a coincidence, it’s really a mathematical certainty, especially because you know I don’t live here, so where else would I be, except a hotel?”
“Directly across the street from the crime scene.”
“Are you going house to house for witnesses?”
“That’s what we do.”
“Did anyone see anything?”
“Did you?”
“I’m not a birdwatcher,” Reacher said. “More’s the pity. Migration has started. My dad would have been excited.”
“Did you hear anything?”
“What time?”
“The kid was still unconscious at seven. Assuming his assailant was a human being and not an eighteen-wheel truck, call it no earlier than five o’clock.”
“I was asleep at five o’clock,” Reacher said. “Didn’t hear a thing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Something woke me up the night before. But that was three o’clock, and a different hotel.”
“What was it?”
“It woke me up but it didn’t happen again. I couldn’t get a fix on it.”
“The kid also has a broken arm,” Amos said.
“That can happen,” Reacher said.
A waitress came in with two pots of coffee and two fresh cups. Reacher poured, but Amos didn’t. She closed her notebook. He asked her, “How is this investigation viewed inside the department?”
She said, “We have low expectations.”
“Are tears not being shed?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Who was the kid?”
“The kid is a lout and a bully and a predator. The kind who gets the best of everything, including victims and lawyers.”
“Doesn’t sound all that complicated to me.”
“We’re worried about what happens next.”
“You think he’s going to get up a posse?”
“The problem is his father already has a posse.”
“The local rich guy? Who is he?”
“I paraphrased a little. He’s really from Boston. But he lives in Manchester now.”
“And what kind of posse does he have?”
“He makes financial arrangements for clients who can’t risk paper trails. In other words he launders money for the kind of people who need money laundered. I imagine he could borrow pretty much any kind of posse he wants. And we think he will. These guys have a culture. Someone attacked his family. Got to be made an example. This guy can’t look weak. So we know sooner or later his people will show up here in town, asking around. We don’t want trouble here. That’s why it’s complicated.”
Reacher poured another cup of coffee.
Amos watched.
She said, “How did you hurt your hand?”
“I punched the garden wall.”
“That’s an odd way to put it.”
“Can’t really blame the wall.”
“It makes it sound deliberate.”
He smiled. “Am I coming across as the kind of guy who would deliberately punch a wall?”
“When did it happen?”
“About twenty minutes ago.”
“Were you bending down to look at the flowers?”
“I like flowers as much as the next guy.”
Her phone dinged, and she read a message.
She said, “The kid woke up but doesn’t remember a thing about his attacker.”
“That can happen,” Reacher said again.
“He’s lying. He knows but he’s not telling us. He wants to tell his father instead.”
“Because they have a culture.”
“I hope whoever did it knows what’s coming.”
“I’m sure whoever did it will leave town. Just like seventy-five years ago. Déjà vu all over again.”
“What are your own movements today?”
“I guess technically I’m leaving town.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to Ryantown,” Reacher said. “If I can find it.”
He bought a paper map at an old edge-of-town gas station. It showed the same kind of vagueness as Elizabeth Castle’s phone. Certain roads headed in certain directions, as if for a purpose, and certain destinations were shaded gray, as if once developed, but none of them had names anymore, and there was no way of telling one from the other. He wasn’t entirely sure what kind of geographic setting a tin mill would require. Truth was, he wasn’t entirely sure what a tin mill did. Did it make tin out of ore? Or did it make cans and whistles and toys out of tin? Either way he guessed heat was involved. All kinds of fires and furnaces. Maybe a steam engine, to drive belts and tools. Which meant trucking in wood or coal. Plus water would be necessary, to make the steam. He looked at the map again, for roads, and rivers, and streams, all meeting at a place shaded gray. North and west of Laconia, according to Elizabeth Castle’s historical research.
There were two possibilities. One was eight miles out, and the other was ten. Both had roads coming in off the main drag and stopping right there, for no apparent modern-day reason. Both had water, in what looked like broad tributaries both flowing toward the same larger river. The streams met the roads in tiny triangles, both printed as fine as the mapmaker could get them, both set in dots shaded gray. Little mills and factories, a couple dozen workers in four-flats, maybe a one-room schoolhouse, maybe a church, Amos had said. Either spot would fit the bill. Except the access road in and out of the ten-mile place curved gently north. Away from Laconia. Whereas the road in and out of the eight-mile place curved gently south. Toward Laconia. As if part of it. Not turning its back. Reacher pictured a boy on a bike, rattling eagerly away from home, his binoculars bouncing around his neck. From the ten-mile place he would first waste a couple of miles on the wrong bearing, and then he would have to make an awkward against-the-flow tight right turn. Whereas from the eight-mile place he would be heading the right way from the get-go, accelerating around the curve and then launching straight toward the heart of town. Which boy would say he lived in Laconia?