17 A Wanted Man

there. North, south, east, west , no one can go anywhere except through that crossroads. Didn’t the sheriff block it?’
    ‘No,’ Sorenson said. ‘I don’t think he did.’
    ‘He should have. That was a mistake. But no big deal, because they ran away from it anyway. They went north, and they saw no obvious way east until they hit the highway. At night, in the dark, those side roads must have looked hopeless. So that’s why they took the Interstate. No choice.’
    ‘OK,’ Sorenson said. ‘I’ll buy that.’
    ‘The bigger question is how they got here in the first place. If they didn’t drive in from Denver with the dead guy, and if they didn’t have a car of their own, then they must have gotten a ride in with someone else. In other words they were dropped off here. Just like they were picked up again later. Possibly by the same people. In which case, why didn’t whoever it was just wait around for them? Why abandon them to a long and dangerous interlude? The only answer is whatever happened in the pumping station wasn’t supposed to happen. Maybe King and McQueen were supposed to get a ride with the dead guy. But they killed him instead. For some unexplained reason. Which left them improvising like crazy.’
    Sorenson’s phone rang. Loud and dramatic through the speakers. She checked the caller ID. ‘Omaha,’ she said. ‘The field office.’
    ‘Don’t answer it,’ Reacher said.
    She didn’t. She let it go. It rang for a long time, and then it cut off. Reacher said, ‘We should go see Delfuenso’s house. Or her neighbour’s, anyway. We should check it out. And we should talk to the neighbour’s kid. Maybe she remembered something about the men. They’re likely the same crew who vanished the eyewitness. Maybe the same crew who dropped King and McQueen here in the first place.’
    Sorenson said, ‘I can’t remember where Delfuenso’s house is. It was the middle of the night.’
    Her phone trilled once. A voice mail message.
    ‘Don’t listen to it,’ Reacher said.
    She didn’t. Instead she scrolled through her list of contacts until she found Sheriff Goodman’s cell number. She hit Call and the phone dialled. Reacher heard the purr of the ring tone through the speakers, slow and sonorous, patient, no kind of urgency.
    It rang for a long time, on and on.
    There was no answer.
    ‘Weird,’ Sorenson said.
    She backed away from the old pumping station and turned around and headed back towards the crossroads. Before she got there she turned off into a side street. Reacher knew what she was doing. The sheriff’s department wouldn’t be on a main drag. It would be in back somewhere, where land was cheaper, where a big lot wouldn’t be a drain on the public purse. She nosed around corners and passed all kinds of places, but none of them was a police station. She came out again south of the crossroads and tried again in another quadrant.
    ‘There,’ Reacher said. He had seen a shortwave antenna on the roof of a low tan building. The building had a fenced lot big enough for a small handful of cruisers. The lot was empty, except for puddles, where the blacktop was holed by age. The whole place was old and worn, but it looked like it was maintained to a reasonable paramilitary standard. Nothing like the army, but nothing like a regular civilian establishment either.
    Sorenson parked in the lot and they hustled through the downpour and found a woman behind a counter in the lobby doing double duty as receptionist and dispatcher. Sorenson showed her ID and asked where Sheriff Goodman was. The woman tried his car on the radio and got no result. She tried his cell from her landline console and got no result on that, either. She said, ‘Maybe he went home to take a nap. He’s an old man and he’s been awake for a long time.’
    ‘We need Karen Delfuenso’s address,’ Sorenson said. ‘And directions.’
    The woman behind the counter provided both. North and east of the crossroads, out in the empty farmland, maybe eight miles distant. Basically left and right and left and right at every opportunity. Another chequerboard. They drove out there slowly. The eastern horizon was bright. The rain was rolling out, but slower than it had rolled in. Reacher was tired. He felt hollowed out. Every cell in his body was thrilling and buzzing with exhaustion. He had been awake most of two days. Not the longest he had ever endured, but up there. He guessed Sorenson was feeling just as bad. She was pale to