The tractor salesman drained his final cup and gathered his stuff and left. The waitress backed away to a corner and picked up a paperback book. Reacher curled his fist around his mug to keep it warm.
The Hispanic girl stayed put.
Then she moved. She shifted sideways on her vinyl bench and stood up all in one smooth, delicate motion. She was extremely petite. Not more than five-nothing, not more than ninety-some pounds. Below the T-shirt she was wearing jeans and cheap shoes. She stood still and faced the door and then she turned toward Reacher's booth. There was nothing in her face. Just fear and shyness and loneliness. She came to some kind of a decision and stepped forward and stood off about a yard and said, "You can talk to me if you really want to."
Reacher shook his head. "I meant what I said."
"Thank you for my dinner." Her voice matched her physique. It was small and delicate. It was lightly accented, but English was probably her primary language. She was from southern California for sure. The Padres were probably her home team.
Reacher asked, "You OK for breakfast tomorrow?"
She was still for a moment while she fought her pride and then she shook her head.
Reacher asked, "Lunch? Dinner tomorrow?"
She shook her head.
"You OK at the motel?"
"That's why. I paid for three nights. It took all my money."
"You have to eat."
The girl said nothing. Reacher thought,Ten bucks a meal is thirty bucks a day, three days makes ninety, plus ten for contingencies or phone calls makes a hundred. He peeled five ATM-fresh twenties off his roll and fanned them on the table. The girl said, "I can't take your money. I couldn't pay it back."
"Pay it forward instead."
The girl said nothing.
"You know what pay it forward means?"
"I'm not sure."
"It means years from now you'll be in a diner somewhere and you'll see someone who needs a break. So you'll help them out."
The girl nodded.
"I could do that," she said.
"So take the money."
She stepped closer and picked up the bills.
"Thank you," she said.
"Don't thank me. Thank whoever helped me way back. And whoever helped him before that. And so on."
"Have you ever been to Despair?"
"Four times in the last two days."
"Did you see anyone there?"
"I saw lots of people."
She moved closer still and put her slim hips against the end of his table. She hoisted a cheap vinyl purse and propped it on the laminate against her belly and unsnapped the clasp. She dipped her head and her hair fell forward. Her hands were small and brown and had no rings on the fingers or polish on the nails. She rooted around in her bag for a moment and came out with an envelope. It was stiff and nearly square. From a greeting card, probably. She opened the flap and pulled out a photograph. She held it neatly between her thumb and her forefinger and put her little fist on the table and adjusted its position until Reacher could see the picture at a comfortable angle.
"Did you see this man?" she asked.
It was another standard one-hour six-by-four color print. Glossy paper, no border. Shot on Fuji film, Reacher guessed. Back when it had mattered for forensic purposes he had gotten pretty good at recognizing film stock by its color biases. This print had strong greens, which was a Fuji characteristic. Kodak products favored the reds and the warmer tones. The camera had been a decent unit with a proper glass lens. There was plenty of detail. Focus was not quite perfect. The choice of aperture was not inspired. The depth of field was neither shallow nor deep. An old SLR, Reacher thought, therefore bought secondhand or borrowed from an older person. There was no retail market for decent film cameras anymore. Everyone had moved into digital technology. The print in the girl's hand was clearly recent, but it looked like a much older product. It was a pleasant but unexceptional picture from an old SLR loaded with Fujicolor and wielded by an amateur.
He took the print from the girl and held it between his own thumb and forefinger. The bright greens in the photograph were in a background expanse of grass and a foreground expanse of T-shirt. The grass looked watered and forced and manicured and was probably in a city park somewhere. The T-shirt was a cheap cotton product being worn by a thin guy of about nineteen or twenty. The camera was looking up at him, as if the photograph was being taken by a much shorter person. The guy was posing quite formally and awkwardly. There was no spontaneity in his stance. Maybe repeated fumbles with the camera's controls had required him to hold his position a little too long. His smile was genuine but a little frozen. He had white teeth in a brown face. He looked young, and friendly, and amiable, and fun to be around, and completely harmless.
Not thin, exactly.
He looked lean and wiry.
Not short, not tall. About average, in terms of height.
He looked to be about five feet eight.
He looked to weigh about a hundred and forty pounds.
He was Hispanic, but as much Mayan or Aztec as Spanish. There was plenty of pure Indian blood in him. That was for sure. He had shiny black hair, not brushed, a little tousled, neither long nor short. Maybe an inch and a half or two inches, with a clear tendency to wave.
He had prominent cheekbones.
He was casually dressed, and casually turned out.
He hadn't shaved.
His chin and his upper lip were rough with black stubble.
His cheeks and his throat, not so much.
Young.
Not much more than a boy.
The girl asked, "Did you see him?"
Reacher asked, "What's your name?"
"Myname?"
"Yes."
"Maria."
"What's his name?"
"Raphael Ramirez."
"Is he your boyfriend?"
"Yes."
"How old is he?"
"Twenty."
"Did you take this picture?"
"Yes."
"In a park in San Diego?"
"Yes."
"With your dad's camera?"
"My uncle's," the girl said. "How did you know?"
Reacher didn't answer. He looked again at Raphael Ramirez in the photograph. Maria's boyfriend. Twenty years old. Five-eight, one-forty. The build. The hair, the cheekbones, the stubble.
The girl asked, "Did you see him?"
Reacher shook his head.
"No," he said. "I didn't see him."
34
The girl left the diner. Reacher watched her go. He thought that an offer to walk her back to the motel might be misinterpreted, as if he was after something more for his hundred bucks than a feel-good glow. And she was in no kind of danger, anyway. Hope seemed to be a safe enough place. Unlikely to be packs of malefactors roaming the streets, mainly because nobody was roaming the streets. It was the middle of the night in a quiet, decent place in the middle of nowhere. So Reacher let her walk away and sat alone in his booth and roused the college girl from her book and had her bring him more coffee.
"You'll never sleep," she said.
"How often does Officer Vaughan swing by during the night?" he asked.
The girl smiled the same smile she had used before, right after she saidI hear things.
"At least once," she said, and smiled again.
He said, "She's married."
She said, "I know." She took the flask away and headed back to her book and left him with a steaming mug. He dipped his head and inhaled the smell. When he looked up again he saw Vaughan's cruiser glide by outside. She slowed, as if she was noting that her truck was back. But she didn't stop. She slid right by the diner's window and drove on down Second Street.