* * *
The Duncans made the doctor stand upright at the head of the table. They sat and looked at him and said nothing for a minute, Jacob and Seth on one side, Jasper and Jonas on the other. Finally Jacob asked, 'Was it an act of deliberate rebellion?'
The doctor didn't answer. His throat was swollen and painful from vomiting, and he didn't understand the question anyway.
Jacob asked, 'Or was it some imagined sense of entitlement?'
The doctor didn't answer.
'We need to know,' Jacob said. 'You must tell us. This is a fascinating subject. It needs to be thoroughly explored.'
The doctor said, 'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'But perhaps your wife does,' Jacob said. 'Should we go pick her up and bring her here and ask her?'
'Leave her out of it.'
'I'm sorry?'
'Please. Please leave her alone.'
'She could entertain us. She used to, you know. We knew her long before you did. She came here half a dozen times. To this very house. She was happy to. Of course, we were paying her, which might have influenced her attitude. You should ask her, about what she used to do for money.'
'She babysat.'
'Is that what she says? I suppose she would, now.'
'That's what she did.'
'Ask her again sometime. Catch her in an unguarded moment. She was a girl of many talents, your wife, once upon a time. She might tell you all about it. You might enjoy it.'
'What do you want?'
Jacob Duncan said, 'We want to know the psychology behind what you did.'
'What did I do?'
'You put your licence plates on our truck.'
The doctor said nothing.
Jacob Duncan said, 'We want to know why. That's all. It's not much to ask. Was it just impertinence? Or was it a message? Were you retaliating for our having disabled your own vehicle? Were you claiming a right? Were you making a point? Were you scolding us for having gone too far?'
'I don't know,' the doctor said.
'Or did someone else change the plates?'
'I don't know who changed them.'
'But it wasn't you?'
'No.'
'Where did you find the truck?'
'At the motel. This afternoon. It was next to my car. With my plates on it.'
'Why didn't you change them back?'
'I don't know.'
'To drive with phoney plates is a criminal offence, isn't it? A misdemeanour at best. Should medical practitioners indulge in criminal behaviour?'
'I guess not.'
'But you did.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Don't apologize to us. We're not a court of law. Or a state board. But you should rehearse an excuse. You might lose your job. Then what would your wife do for money? She might have to return to her old ways. A comeback tour, of sorts. Not that we would have her back. I mean, who would? A raddled old bitch like that?'
The doctor said nothing.
'And you treated my daughter-in-law,' Jacob Duncan said. 'After being told not to.'
'I'm a doctor. I had to.'
'The Hippocratic oath?'
'Exactly.'
'Which says, first, do no harm.'
'I didn't do any harm.'
'Look at my son's face.'
The doctor looked.
'You did that,' Jacob said.
'I didn't.'
'You caused it to be done. Which is the same thing. You did harm.'
'That wasn't me.'
'So who was it?'
'I don't know.'
'I think you do. The word is out. Surely you've heard it? We know you people talk about us all the time. On the phone tree. Did you think it was a secret?'
'It was Reacher.'
'Finally,' Jacob said. 'We get to the point. You were his coconspirator.'
'I wasn't.'
'You asked him to drive you to my son's house.'
'I didn't. He made me go.'
'Whatever,' Jacob said. 'There's no use crying over spilt milk. But we have a question for you.'
'What is it?'
'Where is Reacher now?'
TWENTY-NINE
REACHER WAS IN HIS GROUND FLOOR ROOM AT THE COURTYARD Marriott, knee deep in old police reports. He had used the flat-bladed screwdriver from his pocket to slit the tape on all eleven cartons, and he had sampled the first page out of every box to establish the correct date order. He had shuffled the cartons into a line, and then he had started a quick-and-dirty overview of the records, right from the very beginning.
As expected, the notes were comprehensive. It had been a high-profile case with many sensitivities, and there had been three other agencies on the job, the State Police, the National Guard, and the FBI. The county PD had taken pains to be very professional. Multi-agency cases were essentially competitions, and the county PD hadn't wanted to lose. The department had recorded every move and covered every base and covered every ass. In some ways the files were slices of history. They had been nowhere near a computer. They were old-fashioned, human, and basic. They were typewritten, probably on old IBM electric machines. They had misaligned lines and corrections made with white fluid. The paper itself was foxed and brown, thin and brittle, and musty. There were no reams of cell phone records, because no one had had cell phones back then, not even the cops. No DNA samples had been taken. There were no GPS coordinates.
The files were exactly like the files Reacher himself had created, way back at the start of his army career.
Dorothy had called the cops from a neighbour's house, at eight in the evening on an early summer Sunday. Not 911, but the local switchboard number. There was a transcript of the call, by the look of it probably not from a recording. Probably reconstructed from the desk sergeant's memory. Dorothy's last name was Coe. Her only child Margaret had last been seen more than six hours previously. She was a good girl. No problems. No troubles. No reasons. She had been wearing a green dress and had ridden away on a pink bicycle.
The desk sergeant had called the captain and the captain had called a detective who had just gotten off the day shift. The detective was called Miles Carson. Carson had sent squad cars north and the hunt had begun. The weather had been good and there had been an hour of twilight and then darkness had fallen. Carson himself had arrived on scene within forty minutes. The next twelve hours had unfolded pretty much the way Dorothy had described over breakfast, the house to house canvass, the flashlight searches, the loudhailer appeals to check every barn and outbuilding, the all-night motor patrols, the arrival of the dogs at first light, the State Police contribution, the National Guard's loan of a helicopter.
Miles Carson was a thorough man, but he had gotten no result.
In principle Reacher might have criticized a couple of things. No reason to wait until dawn to call in the dogs, for instance. Dogs could work in the dark. But it was a moot point anyway, because as soon as Margaret had gotten on her bicycle, her scent had disappeared, suspended in the air, whisked away by the breeze, insulated by rubber tyres. The dogs tracked her to her own driveway, and that was all. The loudhailer appeals for folks to search their own property were curiously circular too, because what was a guilty party going to do? Turn himself in? Although in Carson's defence, foul play was not yet suspected. The first Carson had heard about local suspicions had come at nine the next morning, when Dorothy Coe had broken down and spilled the beans about the Duncans. That interview had lasted an hour and filled nine pages of notes. Then Carson had gotten right on it.
But from the start, the Duncans had looked innocent.
They even had an alibi. Five years earlier they had sold the family farm, retaining only a T-shaped acre that encompassed their driveway and their three houses, and in the country way of things they had never gotten around to marking off their new boundaries. Their neighbours' last ploughed furrows were their property line. But eventually they decided to put up a post-and-rail fence. It was a big production, much heavier and sturdier than was standard. They hired four local teenagers to come do the work. The four boys had been there all day on that Sunday, dawn to dusk, measuring, sawing, digging deep holes for the posts. The three Duncans and the eight-year-old Seth had been right there with them, all day, dawn to dusk, supervising, directing, checking up, helping out. The four boys confirmed that the Duncans had never left the property, and no one had stopped by, least of all a little girl in a green dress on a pink bicycle.