Her personality, he guessed.
It seemed to him that one mind had chosen everything and one pair of hands had done everything. There was no evidence of compromise or dueling tastes. He knew that way back a kitchen was considered a woman's domain. Certainly it had been that way in his mother's day, but she had been French, which had made a difference. And since then he had been led to believe that things had changed. Guys cooked now, or at least left six-packs lying around, or put oil stains on the linoleum from fixing motorcycle engines.
There was no evidence of a second person in the house. None at all. Not a trace. From his position by the sink Reacher could see into the living room through an arch that was really just a doorway with the door taken out. There was a single armchair in there, and a TV set, and a bunch of moving boxes still taped shut.
Vaughan said, "Want coffee?"
"Always."
"Did you sleep last night?"
"No."
"Don't have coffee, then."
"It keeps me awake until bedtime."
"What's the longest you ever stayed awake?"
"Seventy-two hours, maybe."
"Working?"
He nodded. "Some big deal, twenty years ago."
"A big MP deal?"
He nodded again. "Somebody was doing something to somebody. I don't recall the details."
Vaughan rinsed her coffee pot and filled her machine with water. The machine was a big steel thing withCuisinart embossed on it in large letters. It looked reliable. She spooned coffee into a gold basket and hit a switch. She said, "Last night the deputies from Despair headed home after an hour."
"They found me in the bar," Reacher said. "They flushed me west with the phone call and then came after me. It was a trap."
"And you fell for it."
"Theyfell for it. I knew what they were doing."
"How?"
"Because twenty years ago I used to stay up for seventy-two hours at a time dealing with worse folks than you'll ever find in Despair."
"What happened to the deputies?"
"They joined their full-time buddies in the infirmary."
"All four of them?"
"All six of them. They added some on-site moral support."
"You're a one-man crime wave."
"No, I'm Alice in Wonderland."
Now Vaughan nodded.
"I know," she said. "Why aren't they doing anything about it? You've committed assault and battery on eight individuals, six of them peace officers, and you've wrecked two police cars. And yet you're still walking around."
"That's the point," Reacher said. "I'm still walking around, but in Hope, not in Despair. That's weirdness number one. All they ever want to do is keep people out of there. They're not interested in the law or justice or punishment."
"What's weirdness number two?"
"They came at me six against one and I walked away with two bruises and sore knuckles from pounding on them. They're all weak and sick. One of them even had to call it quits so he could find time to throw up."
"So what's that about?"
"The clerk at my motel figures they're breaking environmental laws. Maybe there's all kinds of poisons and pollution out there."
"Is that what they're hiding?"
"Possibly," Reacher said. "But it's kind of odd that the victims would help to hide the problem."
"People worry about their jobs," Vaughan said. "Especially in a company town, because they don't have any alternatives." She opened a cabinet and took out a mug. It was white, perfectly cylindrical, four inches high, and two and a half inches wide. It was made of fine bone china as thin as paper. She filled it from the pot and immediately from the aroma Reacher knew it was going to be a great one. She glanced at the living room but carried the mug to the kitchen table instead, and placed it down in front of one of the three chairs. Reacher glanced at the boxes and the lone armchair in the living room and said, "Just moved in?"
"A year and a half ago," Vaughan said. "I guess I'm a little slow unpacking."
"From where?"
"Third Street. We had a little cottage with an upstairs, but we decided we wanted a ranch."
"We?"
"David and I."
Reacher asked, "So where is he?"
"He's not here right now."
"Should I be sorry about that?"
"A little."
"What does he do?"
"Not so much anymore." She sat in one of the chairs without the mug in front of it and tugged the hem of her T-shirt down. Her hair was drying and going wavy again. She was naked under the shirt, and confident about it. Reacher was sure of that. She was looking straight at him, like she knew he knew.
He sat down opposite her.
She asked, "What else?"
"My motel clerk figures the plant makes way too much money."
"That's common knowledge. Thurman owns the bank, and bank auditors gossip. He's a very rich man."
"My motel clerk figures he's smuggling dope or something with his little airplane."
"Do you think he is?"
"I don't know."
"That's your conclusion?"
"Not entirely."
"So what else?"
"A quarter of the plant is screened off. There's a secret area. I think he's got a contract to recycle military scrap. Hence the wealth. A Pentagon contract is the fastest way on earth to get rich these days. And hence the MP unit down the road. Thurman is breaking up classified stuff back there, and people would be interested in it. Armor thickness, materials, construction techniques, circuit boards, all that kind of stuff."
"So that's all? Legitimate government business?"
"No," Reacher said. "That's not all."
40
Reacher took the first sip of his coffee. It was perfect. Hot, strong, smooth, and a great mug. He looked across the table at Vaughan and said, "Thank you very much."
She said, "What else is going on there?"
"I don't know. But there's a hell of a vigilante effort going on about something. After the PD ended up depopulated I went to see the local judge about getting sworn in as a deputy."
"You weren't serious."
"Of course not. But I pretended I was. I wanted to see the reaction. The guy panicked. He went crazy. He said he'd deputize the whole population first. They're totally serious about keeping strangers out."
"Because of the military stuff."
"No," Reacher said. "That's the MPs' job. Any hint of espionage, Thurman's people would get on the radio and the MPs would lock and load and about a minute later the whole town would be swarming with Humvees. The townspeople wouldn't be involved."
"So what's going on?"
"At least two other things."
"Why two?"
"Because their responses are completely incoherent. Which means there are at least two other factions in play, separate and probably unaware of each other. Like this morning, Thurman had me checked out. He saw that my paper trail went cold ten years ago, and therefore I was no obvious danger to him, and then he ran your plate and saw that I was in some way associated with a cop from the next town, and therefore in some way untouchable, so he played nice and gave me a guided tour. But meanwhile without all that information someone else was busy busting your windows. And nobody busts a cop's windows for the fun of it. Therefore the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing."