At the bottom of the newsletter was a call for all concerned citizens to attend a meeting. Below that was an obvious pseudonym as the writer’s name, and an e-mail address.
Reacher handed the paper back to Jones.
He said, “What did you think of this at the time?”
“There’s nothing wrong with our water,” Jones said. “Never has been. I remember at first I figured this guy was probably a lawyer, jumping on a bandwagon. I figured he had identified a big corporation to go after with a class action suit. Maybe the company would settle just to make him go away. Bad ground water is never good PR. The lawyer would get a third. But I never heard about it again. I guess it fizzled out. I guess he never got his proof. Which he couldn’t ever anyway, because the water is fine.”
“You said at first you thought he was a lawyer.”
“Later someone told me he was just a crazy old coot about five miles north of here. Then I met him, and he seemed harmless enough. He’s not looking for money. He wants them to acknowledge their wrongdoing. Like a public confession. That seems to mean a lot to him.”
“You didn’t go to the meeting?”
“Meetings are not my thing.”
“Pity,” Reacher said.
“Why?”
“One very important fact about Ryantown was not in the newsletter.”
“What?”
“Where it is.”
“I thought you knew. You said the side road and the river.”
“That was a best guess. Plus now you tell me it’s going to look like a patch of primeval forest anyway. Which at first glance would seem to include about two-thirds of the state. I don’t want to spend all day.”
“To see the place your father grew up? Some folks would spend all day.”
“Where did your father grow up?”
“Right here.”
“Which is a lovely place, I can see. But we just agreed Ryantown is an overgrown hole in the ground. There’s a difference.”
“It might be of sentimental value. People like to know where they come from.”
“Right now I would rather know what a guy who wants to build a mill would need. He would need the road and the water. Is there anything else he would need?”
“How would I know?”
“You know how land is used.”
“I guess where the river meets the road would make sense. Look for a stand of trees with straight edges. The neighbors would have wanted safe grazing. They would have railed off the falling-down buildings long before the saplings came up, from seeds blowing in. The copse will have grown the same shape as the fences. Usually it’s the other way around.”
“Thank you,” Reacher said.
“Good luck,” Jones said.
The screen door creaked open ahead of him, and slapped shut behind him.
He walked away. All twelve dogs followed him to the picket gate.
Chapter 16
Patty and Shorty had moved out to their lawn chairs. Patty was staring at the view, which contained the dead Honda in the stony lot, and then the flat two acres, and then the dark belt of trees beyond, implacable, like a wall.
She looked at her watch.
She said, “Why is it when someone says between two hours and four hours it’s always nearer four hours than two hours?”
“Parkinson’s disease,” Shorty said. “Work expands to take up as much time as there is.”
“Law,” Patty said. “Not disease. That’s when you get the shakes.”
“I thought that was when you quit drinking.”
“It’s a lot of things.”
“How much longer has he got?”
Patty looked at her watch again, and did a sum in her head.
“Thirty-three minutes,” she said.
“Maybe he didn’t mean to be exactly precise.”
“He said two hours minimum and four hours maximum. That sounds exactly precise to me. Then he said, I promise I’ll get you on your way, cross my heart. With his accent.”
Shorty watched the dark space where the track came out of the woods.
He said, “Tell me about the mechanic things he told you.”
“Best part was he said he had to pay the bills. He said he was going to head out to the highway and maybe he would get lucky with a wreck. The way he said it sounded professional. It was the kind of thing only a mechanic would say. Who else would say lucky about a wreck?”
“He sounds real,” Shorty said.
“I think he’s real,” Patty said. “I think he’s coming.”
They watched the track. The sun was higher and the front rank of trees was lit up bright. Solid trunks, packed together, with more behind, with brush between, and brambles, and fallen branches propped at crazy angles.
Shorty said, “How long has he got now?”
Patty checked her watch.
“Twenty-four minutes,” she said.
Shorty said nothing.
“He promised,” she said.
They watched the track.
And he came.
They felt it before they saw it. There was gradually a deep bass presence in the air, in the distance, like a shuddering, like a tense moment in a movie, as if huge volumes of air were being bludgeoned aside. Then it resolved into the hammer-heavy throb of a giant diesel engine, and the subsonic pulse of fat tires and tremendous weight. Then they saw it drive out of the trees. A tow truck. A huge one. Industrial size. Heavy duty. It was the kind of thing that could haul an eighteen-wheeler off the highway. It was bright red. Its engine was roaring and it was grinding along in low gear.
Patty stood up and waved.
The truck bumped down off the blacktop into the lot. She had said it would be the shiniest truck you ever saw, purely from the guy’s voice alone, and she had guessed exactly right. It was as bright as a carnival float. The red paint was waxed and polished. It had pinstripes and coachlines painted in gold. There were chrome lids and levers, all polished to a blinding shine. The guy’s name was written on the side, proudly, a foot high, in a copperplate style. It was Karel, not Carol.
“Wow,” Shorty said. “This is great.”
“Sure seems to be,” Patty said.
“Finally we’re out of here.”
“If he can fix it.”
“We’re out of here either way. He doesn’t leave here without us. OK? Either he fixes our car or he gives us a ride. No matter what the assholes say. Deal?”
“Deal,” Patty said.
The truck came to a stop behind the Honda, and it settled back to a grumbling idle. Way up high the door opened and a guy used one step of the ladder and then jumped the rest of the way down. He was medium sized and wiry, bouncing on his toes, full of get-up-and-go. He had a shaved head. He looked like a photo in a war crimes trial. Like a stone-faced lieutenant behind a renegade colonel in a black beret. But he was smiling. He had a twinkle in his eye.
“Ms. Sundstrom?” he said. “Mr. Fleck?”
Patty said, “Call us Patty and Shorty.”
He said, “I’m Karel.”
She said, “Thank you so much for coming.”
He pulled an object from his pocket. It was a dirty black box the size of a deck of cards, with stubs of disconnected wires coming out. He said, “We got lucky with a wreck. Way in back of the junkyard. Same model as yours. Same color, even. Rear-ended by a gravel truck six months ago. But the front part was still OK.”