“Ready?” Shorty said.
“Yes.”
“On three.”
They swung once, and twice, gathering momentum, and on three they stepped in toward the wall and accelerated the weight as hard as they could.
The case smacked against the tile.
The result was not what Shorty expected.
His instinctive prediction had been that the wall board would flex inward a fraction, which would cause the skim coat to crack off. The tiles were cemented to the skim coat. If the skim coat flaked off, the tiles would come down with it. In sheets. Gravity would see to that.
Didn’t happen.
Instead half a dozen tiles shattered into pieces. Some of the broken bits rained down on the floor. Others stayed up on the wall. Like random coin-sized fragments, still solidly glued to separate coin-sized daubs of adhesive. A cheap job. The tiler had buttered three or four knobs of cement on the back of a tile, and then pressed it into place. One after another, over and over. All the unbuttered voids behind them had made them shatter on impact. But the wall board itself hadn’t flexed at all.
They put the suitcase down. Shorty pressed his thumbnail in the space between two surviving fragments. The skim coat was right there, dry and smooth and creamy. It was hard and rigid. He scraped at it. It powdered a little. He pressed harder, with the ball of his thumb, and then with his knuckles, and then harder still, with his fist. The wall board didn’t yield. Not even a tiny fraction. It felt solid.
“Weird,” he said.
“Should we try again?” Patty asked.
“I guess,” he said. “Real hard this time.”
They backed off as far as the width of the room would allow, and they swung the case once, through a big healthy arc about a yard long, and then again, and on three they staggered sideways and smashed the case into the wall as hard as they could.
Same result. A couple more orphan fragments fell off the wall. Nothing more. It was like hitting concrete. They felt the shock in their wrists.
They dragged the case out the way. Shorty tapped on the wall, experimentally, here and there, in different places, like knocking on a door. The sound it made was strange. Not exactly solid, not exactly hollow. Somewhere in between. He stepped back and kicked out hard. And again, harder. The whole wall seemed to bounce and tremble as a single unit.
“Weird,” he said again.
He picked up a jagged shard of tile and used it to scrape at the skim coat. He made a long furrow, and deepened it, working back and forth, stabbing and scraping. Then he made another furrow, and another, in a wide triangle, missing some of the still-stuck fragments, including others inside the lines. Then he stepped back and kicked out again, hard, aiming carefully. The scored-around triangle of skim coat flaked off and fell to the floor. Under it was revealed the papery surface of brand new wall board. He attacked it with the shard of tile, furiously, hacking and gouging, spraying dust and curls of torn paper all around. Then he stepped back again, and kicked, and kicked, and kicked, in a frenzy of frustration. He kicked the wall board to fragments and powder. He pulverized it. He reduced it to nothing.
But he didn’t kick his way through it. He couldn’t. It was backed by some kind of thick steel mesh. Which came into view, section by section, as the wall board in front of it was destroyed. It loomed up through the cloud of dust and particles, white and ghostly and tightly woven. It was a net, with steel filaments as thick as his finger, running up and down and side to side. The holes they made were grudging and square. About big enough to put his thumb in, but nothing better.
He used the shard of tile to cut more wall board away. He found a place where a bright green ground wire was soldered to the back of the mesh. Like an electrical connection. A very neat job. A random yard away he found another. Same thing. A ground wire, soldered to the back of the mesh.
Then he found a place where the mesh was welded to a prison bar.
There was no doubt about it. He knew from the size, and the shape, and the spacing. Like on every cop show ever made. There were floor-to-ceiling prison bars built inside the wall. The mesh was spot welded to it, here and there, like a curtain. Like a sheet nailed over a window. He knew why it was there. Because of the ground wires. Because of a long-ago memory of a build-your-own electronics kit he had gotten at Christmas. When he was a kid. From his uncle. Same uncle who gave him the Civic, as a matter of fact. The mesh wasn’t there for reinforcement. It was there because it made the room a Faraday cage. Room ten was an electronic black hole. Any radio signal trying to get in would splinter every which way through the mesh, and then drain away to ground, through the many carefully soldered wires. Like the signal never existed at all. Same thing for a signal trying to get out. Didn’t matter what kind of signal it was. Cell phone, satellite phone, pager, walkie-talkie, police radio, whatever, it wasn’t going to happen. The laws of physics. Couldn’t be ignored.
A signal couldn’t get out because of the mesh.
A person couldn’t get out because of the bars.
Patty took a look over his shoulder and said, “What is all that stuff?”
Shorty tried hard to think of something cheerful to say, but he couldn’t, so he didn’t answer the question.
Chapter 30
Burke and Reacher drove back to the turn, where they headed south toward Laconia. Not all the way. Just a few miles. Far enough to get bars on Burke’s old phone. They pulled off on the shoulder of a wide left-hand curve. Ahead of them were fields and trees, and presumably the town itself on the other side of them, in the far distance, through the haze. Reacher took out Amos’s business card, and dialed her number. It rang twice and dumped to voice mail. She was away from her desk. He clicked off and tried again, this time with her cell number. It rang five times, and then it was answered.
Her voice said, “Interesting.”
He said, “What is?”
“You’re calling on the Reverend Burke’s phone. You’re still with him. You’re still in the vicinity.”
“How did you know this is the Reverend Burke’s phone?”
“I saw his license plate this morning. I checked with county. Now I know all about him. He’s a troublemaker.”
“He’s been very nice to me.”
“How can I help you?”
“Something made me think about guys getting drafted in from Boston. Seems to be a regular habit around here. I was wondering how you were doing with that.”
“Why?”
“Did anyone show up yet?”
Amos didn’t answer.
Reacher said, “What?”
“Chief Shaw is talking to the Boston PD again. They’re calling in some favors. The word on the street is five guys are working out of town today. There’s no sign of them at home. Their absence is conspicuous. It’s a reasonable assumption they’ve been sent our way. In which case we know all about the first four. They were the guy in the Chrysler and the three in the library. It’s the fifth guy we need to worry about. He left Boston much later than the others. We assume in response to a panic call from here. We assume he’s their cleanup hitter. The ultimate sanction.”
“Has he arrived?”
“I don’t know. We watch what we can, but we’re sure to miss something.”
“When did he leave Boston?”
“Long enough ago to be here by now.”
“With my description,” Reacher said.
“That doesn’t matter anymore,” Amos said. “Does it?”
Then she paused.
Then she said, “Don’t you dare tell me you’re coming back to town. Because you ain’t, major. You’re staying away.”
“Relax, soldier,” Reacher said. “Stand easy. I’m staying away. I’m not coming back to town.”