17 A Wanted Man

the front fender. Reacher guessed she had left the alley when he closed the bathroom window. At that point she had hustled around to the front, double quick. Not to greet him. To make sure he didn’t run.
    She said, ‘You clean up pretty well.’
    Something in her face. Something in her voice. Not hurt. Not anger. Not necessarily even disappointment. More like confusion.
    Reacher said, ‘What?’
    ‘I got a call.’
    ‘I saw.’
    ‘My SAC.’
    ‘I guessed. Did he take you off the case?’
    She shook her head no, then changed it to a yes. She said, ‘I mean, I’m off the case, yes. But not because he took me off, no.’
    ‘Then why?’
    ‘Because there is no case. Not any more.’
    ‘What does that mean?’
    ‘It means that as of twenty minutes ago there is no active investigation. Which is logical, really, because as far as the Federal Bureau of Investigation is concerned nothing happened in Nebraska last night. Absolutely nothing at all.’

FORTY-THREE
    SORENSON SAID, ‘THEY took it the other way. They didn’t take it nuclear. They made it a black hole instead. They’re erasing it from history. A CIA demand, presumably. Or State. Something squirrelly. Some kind of national security bullshit.’ Then her phone rang again before Reacher could reply. She checked the incoming number and asked, ‘Where is the 405 area code?’
    ‘Southwestern Oklahoma,’ Reacher said. ‘Lawton, probably. It’s the army.’
    She answered and listened for a spell and thanked whoever she was talking to. She clicked off and said, ‘Mother Sill confirms she had a Peter James King on active duty in 1991. He was a fister. Which I’m sure isn’t what I think it is.’
    ‘Fire support team,’ Reacher said. ‘Not just a dagby after all. I sold him short. Probably a forward observer. Smart guys, most of them. The 13F MOS. Which means he manoeuvred with the lowly infantry or the humble armoured divisions, rather than the kings of battle themselves. Did they confirm a brother named Alan?’
    ‘No. Didn’t deny one, either. But they’ll need paperwork.’
    ‘What happened to Peter?’
    ‘He quit as a gunnery sergeant in 1997.’
    ‘Same year as me. Where is he now?’
    ‘Mother Sill doesn’t know for sure. Last she heard he was working with a security company in Denver, Colorado. Which happens to be exactly where the dead guy flew into.’
    ‘Coincidence,’ Reacher said. ‘Alan King said they don’t talk.’
    ‘Did you believe him?’
    ‘He told the truth about Peter’s name and service, apparently. Why wouldn’t he be telling the truth about not talking to him too?’
    ‘How many people live in Denver?’
    ‘About six hundred thousand,’ Reacher said. ‘Between two and a half and three million in the metro area, depending on how you measure it. Too small and too big to match King’s million and a half.’
    ‘How do you know stuff like that? Area codes and populations?’
    ‘I like information. I like facts. Denver was named after James W. Denver, who was governor of the Kansas Territory at the time. It was a kiss-ass move by a land speculator called Larimer. He hoped the governor would move a county seat there and make him rich. What he didn’t know was that the governor had already resigned. Mails were slow in those days. And then the new place became part of Colorado anyway, not Kansas. Area code is 303.’
    ‘Get in the car,’ Sorenson said.
    ‘Want me to drive the rest of the way?’
    ‘No, I don’t. I can’t arrive with you at the wheel. It’s bad enough having you in the front.’
    ‘I’m not going to ride in the back.’
    Sorenson didn’t reply to that. They climbed aboard, into their accustomed positions. Sorenson backed out of the motel lot and threaded her way back to the highway. She took the ramp and accelerated. There were rain clouds in the east. The weather was chasing them all the way. Sorenson fumbled her phone up into its cradle, where it beeped once to acknowledge it was charging, and then immediately it started to ring again, no longer thin and reedy, but loud and powerful through the sound system. Sorenson accepted the call and Reacher heard a man’s voice say he was en route for the location south and east of Des Moines, Iowa, as instructed.
    Sorenson clicked off and said, ‘My forensics team, heading for Delfuenso.’
    Reacher said, ‘Who is what we should be talking about here. How can the Bureau shut down a case where an innocent bystander died?’
    ‘Such a