17 A Wanted Man

groceries and gun shops and pawn shops. There was a bank. There was a pharmacy, and a John Deere dealership. All of those establishments closed at five o’clock each afternoon. There was angled street parking in front of the stores, uniformly unoccupied at night, and larger lots behind, mostly empty, and old barns used for storage, all locked up tight.
    Sheriff Goodman checked them all anyway. He was a thorough man. He drove slowly south, looking down the alleys between the buildings, then looping back north through the back lots on the right, then going south again and paying attention to the other side of the road, before coming north again through the back lots on the left.
    He found nothing. He repeated the same procedure on the road leading east, all the way out into open country and then back again, checking both sides, checking the alleys, checking the storefronts, checking the rear lots.
    And there it was.
    An old Ford Ranger pick-up truck, parked neatly behind Gus Bantry’s hardware store.
    Reacher folded the inadequate map and put it in his back pocket. He checked the view out the office window. Still dark. But dawn was coming. He looked at the fat man and said, ‘You want to rent me a room?’
    The fat man didn’t answer.
    Reacher said, ‘I could give you money and you could give me a key. You could call it running a business.’
    The guy responded by stepping out to the well behind the counter and unpinning a notice from the wall. It was a sheet of paper laminated in plastic, with a cursive script and pale inkjet printing spelling out a simple sentence:
Management reserves the right to refuse service
. The plastic was lightly dusted with gypsum powder, from the bullet hole.
    Reacher said, ‘I’m the good guy here. You heard me on the phone with the federal authorities. It was an amicable conversation.’
    The guy said, ‘I can’t afford any more trouble.’
    ‘You’ve had all the trouble you’re likely to get tonight. From here on in it’s going to be all about an investigation. You could have ten agents here for a week. Or more than ten, or more than a week. How does that compare to your usual winter occupancy?’
    The guy paused.
    Reacher said, ‘OK, we’ll all go somewhere else.’
    The guy said, ‘Forty dollars.’
    ‘Twenty.’
    ‘Thirty.’
    ‘Don’t push it. These guys have an office of budgetary responsibility. They see something they don’t like, they’ll call the IRS, just for fun.’
    ‘Twenty-five dollars.’
    ‘Deal,’ Reacher said. He dug in his other back pocket and came out with a wad of crumpled bills. He counted out twenty-five bucks, a ten and two fives and five singles.
    The fat man said, ‘A week in advance.’
    ‘Don’t push it,’ Reacher said again.
    ‘OK, two nights.’
    Reacher added a twenty and another five. He said, ‘I’ll take a room in the middle of the row. No neighbours either side.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because I’m a solitary soul.’
    The fat man trawled through a drawer and came out with a brass key on a leather fob, which had the number 5 printed in faded gilt on one side, and some mailing instructions on the other. He said, ‘You have to sign the register.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Iowa law.’
    Reacher put himself down as Bill Skowron, who had hit .375 for the Yankees in the World Series just weeks before Reacher was born. The fat man handed over the key and Reacher headed for his room.
    Sheriff Goodman called Julia Sorenson on her cell. He told her he had found the eyewitness’s truck.
    Sorenson asked, ‘Any signs of a disturbance?’
    Goodman said, ‘No, it was just parked, like normal. Behind a hardware store, real neat and tidy, just like the Mazda behind the cocktail lounge.’
    ‘Locked?’
    ‘Yes, which is a little unusual here, to be honest. People don’t normally lock their cars. Especially not twenty-year-old beaters.’
    ‘No sign of the guy himself?’
    ‘Nothing. Like he just vanished.’
    ‘Is there a bar nearby, or a rooming house?’
    ‘Nothing. It’s a strip mall.’
    ‘I’ll get some lab people to go take a look.’
    ‘It’s nearly dawn.’
    ‘All the better,’ Sorenson said. ‘Daylight always helps.’
    ‘No, I mean Karen Delfuenso’s kid will be waking up soon. Any news?’
    ‘The driver called me again. They dumped him. Delfuenso was still alive, the last he saw of her.’
    ‘How long ago was that?’
    ‘Long enough for the situation to have changed, I’m afraid.’
    ‘So I’m going to have to