Sorenson said, 'Go ahead.'
The guy said, 'You want me to be honest?'
'You usually are.'
'Then I can't promise you the incineration was post mortem. It might have been. Or it might not have been. There's something that might have been damage to what might have been a rib. If I squint a bit I could see it as a gunshot wound to the chest. Which might have been enough. It's in what would have been the general area of the heart. But I wouldn't say so in court. The other side would laugh me out of the room. There's far too much heat damage for conclusions about external injuries.'
'Gut feeling?'
'Right now my gut feeling is I want to retrain as a hairdresser. This thing was about the worst I've ever seen.'
Sorenson was quiet for a long moment.
Then she said, 'Anything else?'
'I started from the beginning, with the pelvic girdle. That's the only way to confirm gender with a case like this. And it was totally clear. The pelvic bones had been reasonably well protected by a thick layer of fat.'
Reacher looked up. Delfuenso wasn't fat. She was thin.
Sorenson said, 'And?'
'It's beyond a reasonable doubt the corpse was male.'
Sorenson ran through the details with her guy. Like a crash course in forensic anthropology. Reacher remembered some of the words and some of the principles from the classroom. He had studied such things once, partly as a professional requirement, and partly out of interest. There were four things to look for with pelvises. First was the iliac spread. The ilia were the big bones shaped like butterfly wings, and female ilia were flared wider, and shaped more like a cradle, like cupped hands, with the anterior spines farther apart, whereas male ilia were narrower and tighter and much more straight up and down, more like a guy on a riverbank describing a foot-long trout.
Then second, the hole in the ischium was small and triangular in females, and large and round in males. And third, the angle across the pubic arch was always greater than ninety degrees in females, and rounded, and always less than ninety degrees in males, and sharp.
And the fourth was the clincher, of course: the space between the ischia was big enough in females for a baby's head to fit through. Not so with males. Not even close.
Pelvises didn't lie. They couldn't be confused one for the other. Even a million-year-old pelvis dug out of the ground in pieces was quite clearly either male or female. Short of being ground to powder, a pelvis determined gender, no question, no doubt at all, end of story, thank you and goodnight. That was what Reacher had learned in the classroom, and that was what the voice on the phone confirmed.
Sorenson said, 'So it wasn't Delfuenso.'
The voice on the phone said, 'Correct. And I'm happy for you. But that's all I can reliably tell you. It was a male human being. Anything more than that would be pure guesswork.'
Sorenson clicked off the call and turned to Reacher and said, 'You knew, didn't you?'
Reacher said, 'I suspected.'
'Why?'
'Nothing else made sense after Lucy was taken. I figured Delfuenso might still be a captive somewhere, maybe freaking out, maybe refusing to cooperate, and the only way to shut her up was go get her kid.'
'To calm her down?'
'Or to threaten her with.'
'So now we have two of them in danger.'
'Or maybe we don't,' Reacher said. 'Maybe we have two of them as safe as houses. Because there are other potential conclusions, too. But they could be wrong conclusions. They could be embarrassingly grand pronouncements.'
'Which one died? King or McQueen? Or was it someone we never heard of yet?'
'It was King, I think. He was a little fat, especially around the middle. And he would fit the theory.'
'Which is what?'
'Something McQueen said when we pulled off the Interstate for gas.'
'You told me this already. He said you should have trusted him.'
'Before that. I was dubious about coming off there and he got a little impatient and said he was in charge.'
'Maybe he was. One or the other had to be. I doubt it was a democracy.'
'But there's a sound in those specific words, don't you think? In charge? You have special agents in charge. We had officers in charge of this and that. A charge is something you're given. You're entrusted with it. It's authority that devolves down an official hierarchy.'
'That's very subjective.'
'I think a regular bad guy would have said I'm the boss here. Something like that.'
'So what are you saying? You think McQueen is ex-military? Or ex-law enforcement?'
Reacher didn't answer that. He said, 'And then he said the thing about trusting him. As if he was worthy of trust, somehow as of right. And then he shot at me and missed.'
'Probably not either military or law enforcement, then. Lousy marksman.'
'Maybe he was a great marksman.'
'But he was in the room with you. It was what, about eight feet? How can he be a great marksman and miss from eight feet?'
'Maybe he missed on purpose.'
Sorenson said nothing.
Reacher said, 'I didn't really think much of it at the time. I was just happy to be alive. But it was a hell of a high shot. It was a foot over my head. Maybe more. I remember saying it would have missed the motel keeper if he'd been standing on his own shoulders. It was exaggerated. It must have been about ten degrees above the horizontal. More than eleven-point-something, to be precise.'
'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.'
'I'm serious. There's more. He moved his position so he was blocking my view of the car.'
'So?'
'So he was blocking their view of me. As if he needed them to think he was doing one thing, when really he was doing another thing.'
'He missed. That's all. People do, sometimes.'
'I think it was deliberate.'
'He killed the guy in the pumping station, Reacher. He killed his own partner, apparently. He burned him to death. Why would he miss you deliberately? What makes you special?'
'Only one way to find out,' Reacher said.
'Which is what?'
'Tell me your phone number.'
'Why?'
'I'm going to need it.'
'I left my phone in Delfuenso's house, remember?'
'You're about to go get it back. And your car. And your reputation. You're about to be a hero.'
FIFTY-FOUR
REACHER AND SORENSON swapped places in Goodman's car and Sorenson drove back to town, sedately, never more than fifty miles an hour. They passed Sin City, and they passed the empty bean fields, and they passed the quarter-mile of old machinery, and more bean fields, and they turned right at the crossroads and drove a hundred yards and parked next to the old pumping station. Sorenson fiddled with Goodman's phone and brought up the list of recent calls and voice mails. She found Dawson's cell number. She dialled it and the guy answered almost instantly.
He said, 'Sheriff Goodman?'
Sorenson said, 'No, this is Sorenson out of Omaha. Long story with the sheriff's phone. But I have the man you're looking for. He's in my custody. You can come pick him up any time you like.'
'Where are you?'
'At the old pumping station.'
'We'll be there in two minutes.'
Ninety seconds later Reacher opened his door and said, 'OK, I'm ready for my close-up.' He got out into the cold and crossed the sidewalk and faced the old pumping station's concrete wall and put his fingertips on the rough surface. He shuffled his feet a yard apart and leaned forward and took his weight on his hands. Assume the position. Sorenson stood six feet behind him and pulled her gun and held it two-handed, trained on the centre of his back.
'Looking good,' she said.
'Not feeling good,' he said.
'Best of luck,' she said. 'It's been fun hanging out with you.'
'We're not done yet. I hope to see you again.'
They held their poses. The concrete was cold. Then Reacher heard tyres on the pavement. He heard a car come to a stop, and he heard doors open. He turned his head. The blue Crown Vic. Dawson and Mitchell. They came out fast, coats billowing, guns drawn, triumph on their faces. They talked with Sorenson briefly. Congratulations, appreciation, thanks. They said they would take over from there. Reacher turned his face back to the wall. He heard Sorenson walk away. He heard Goodman's car start up. He heard it drive off down the street.