Never Go Back

‘It’s twelve bucks. This is West Virginia. We’d stick out like sore thumbs.’

‘Tell her we’re heading south on 220. Tell her we’ve got a long way to go before daybreak. Then when she hears about us on the scanner she’ll call it in wrong.’

Reacher collected twelve dollars and fifty-two cents in change, and said something about trying to make it to I-64 before dawn. The AM radio murmured its tunes, and the police scanner stayed quiet. The woman looked out the window and smiled a little sadly, as if it was going to be a long time before she saw a Corvette again.

Turner picked Reacher up at the pay-hut door, and they drove back towards town, and pulled in again three hundred yards later, at the motel.

She said, ‘Check in first, and then hit the café?’

Reacher said, ‘Sure.’

She paused a long beat, and looked straight at him.

She said, ‘How many rooms are we going to get?’

He paused a long beat in turn, and said, ‘Let’s eat first. Then check in.’

‘Why?’

‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

‘What?’

Samantha Dayton.

Sam.

Fourteen years old.

‘After we order,’ he said. ‘It’s a long story.’

THIRTY-TWO

THE CAFÉ WAS a rural greasy spoon as perfect as anything Reacher had ever seen. It had a black guy in a white undershirt next to a lard-slick griddle three feet deep and six feet wide. It had battered pine tables and mismatched chairs. It smelled of old grease and fresh coffee. It had two ancient white men in seed caps, one of them sitting way to the left of the door, the other way to the right. Maybe they didn’t get along. Maybe they were victims of a feud three hundred years old.

Turner chose a table in the middle of the room, and they rattled the chairs out over the board floor, and they sat down. There were no menus. No chalkboards with handwritten lists of daily specials. It wasn’t that kind of a place. Ordering was clearly telepathic between the cook and his regular customers. For new customers, it was going to be a matter of asking out loud, plain and simple. Which the cook confirmed, by raising his chin and rotating his head a little, so that his right ear was presented to the room.

‘Omelette,’ Turner said. ‘Mushrooms, spring onions and cheddar cheese.’

No reaction from the cook.

None at all.

Turner said it again, a little louder.

Still no reaction. No movement. Just total stillness, and a raised chin, and an averted gaze, and a dignified and implacable silence, like a veteran salesman insulted by a counter-offer. Turner looked at Reacher and whispered, ‘What’s with this place?’

‘You’re a detective,’ Reacher said. ‘You see any sign of an omelette pan up there?’

‘No, I guess not. All I see is a griddle.’

‘So probably the best way to get some enthusiasm out of this guy would be to order something griddle-related.’

Turner paused a beat.

Then she said, ‘Two eggs over easy on a fried biscuit with bacon on the side.’

The cook said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Same for me,’ Reacher said. ‘And coffee.’

‘Yes, sir.’ And immediately the guy turned away and got to work with a wedge of new lard and a blade, planing the metal surface, smoothing it, three feet out and three feet back, and six feet side to side. Which made him a griddle man at heart. In Reacher’s experience such guys were either griddle men or owners, but never really both. A griddle man’s first instinct was to tend the metal, working it until it was glassy down at a molecular level, so slick it would make Teflon feel like sandpaper. Whereas an owner’s first instinct would have been to bring the coffee. Because the first cup of coffee seals the deal. A customer isn’t committed until he has consumed something. He can still get up and walk away, if he’s dissatisfied with the wait, or if he remembers an urgent appointment. But not if he’s already started in on his first cup of coffee. Because then he would have to throw some money down, and who really knows what a cup of diner coffee costs? Fifty cents? A dollar? Two dollars?

‘OK, we’ve ordered,’ Turner said. ‘So what do you have to tell me?’

‘Let’s wait for the coffee,’ Reacher said. ‘I don’t want to be interrupted.’

‘Then I have a couple of things,’ she said. ‘I want to know more about this guy Morgan, for instance. I want to know who’s got his hands on my unit.’

‘My unit too,’ Reacher said. ‘I always assumed I’d be its worstever commander, but I guess I’m not. Your guys in Afghanistan missed two consecutive radio checks, and he did nothing about it.’

‘Do we know where he’s from?’

‘No idea.’

‘Is he one of them?’

‘Hard to say. Obviously the unit needed a temporary commander. That’s not proof of guilt in itself.’

‘And how would recalling you to service fit their game plan? Surely they would want to get rid of you, not keep you close at hand.’