61 Hours

the road. Maybe she had grown kids in another town. Late night phone calls were as bad as knocks on the door.
    Reacher asked, ‘Is this Alice?’
    ‘Yes, it is. Who are you?’
    Reacher said, ‘I’m with Kim Peterson. Your neighbour. She needs you to come right over. Her husband was killed tonight.’
    There was silence on the line. Then Alice spoke. But Reacher didn’t hear what she said. Her words were drowned out by another sound. Sudden. Loud. From outside. Wailing and howling. Screaming and whispering. Rising and falling. The new sound rolled in across the frozen fields like a wave. It smashed against the side of the house and battered against the windows.
    The prison siren.
    Five minutes to one in the morning.
    Three hours to go.

THIRTY-EIGHT
    R EACHER SAW A CRAZY DIAGRAM IN HIS MIND, EXPLODING IN four dimensions, time and space and distance: cops all over town, all moving randomly north, south, east, west, all answering Holland’s summons, all heading for the station house, all hearing the siren, all changing direction at once, the seven on duty with Janet Salter rushing straight out into the night, joining the confusion, getting set, heading for the prison, leaving Janet Salter all alone behind them.
    All alone and wide open and vulnerable to a last-ditch swing by the bad guy before he either ran for his life or tried to blend back in.
    I know what to do
, Janet Salter had said.
    Reacher hung up the phone and called softly to Kim.
    ‘I got to go,’ he said. ‘Alice is on her way.’
    He got the front door open and stopped. The siren howled on. It was deafening. The ploughed path was right there in front of him. Fifty feet to the split in the Y, fifty more to the street. Then a mile to town and another mile to the Salter house.
    He was on foot.
    No car.
    He closed the door behind him and moved out and slipped and skidded and made the tight turn and headed for the barn. The old Ford pick-up was still in there. With the plough blade.
    No key in it.
    He hustled all the way back to the house. Pounded on the door. A long, long wait. He pounded some more. Then Kim Peterson opened up again. Shock was over. She was deep into her nightmare. She was slouched, vacant, detached. She was crying hard.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But I need the key for the pick-up truck.’
    She didn’t answer.
    ‘Kim, I’m sorry, but I really need the key.’
    She said, ‘It’s on Andrew’s key ring. In his pocket.’
    ‘Is there a spare?’
    ‘I don’t think so.’
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘It’s a very old truck.’
    ‘There has to be a spare.’
    ‘I think it was lost.’ She looked away and turned and walked back down the hallway. She staggered and put out a hand and steadied herself against the wall. Reacher put the door on the latch and stepped outside to wait. For Alice. The neighbour. South Dakota farm country was big and empty. Houses were not adjacent. Not even close together. Alice would drive. He could borrow her vehicle.
    He waited.
    The siren howled on.
    Alice came on foot.
    He saw her a hundred yards away in the moonlight. She was a tall woman, dishevelled after hasty dressing, hurrying, slipping and sliding on the ice, gloved hands out like a tightrope walker, wild hair spilling from under a knitted cap. She came right to left along the road, a pale face glancing anxiously at the Peterson house, arms and legs jerky and uncoordinated by treacherous conditions underfoot. Reacher moved away from the door, intothe cold, down the path, to the split in the Y, and on towards the street. He met her at the bottom of the driveway. Asked, ‘Don’t you have a car?’
    She said, ‘It wouldn’t start.’
    He glanced left, towards the road to town.
    She glanced ahead, at the house.
    She asked, ‘How’s Kim?’
    He said, ‘Bad.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘Andrew was shot and killed. Some guy in a vacant lot.’
    ‘That’s awful.’
    ‘You better go in. It’s going to be a long night.’
    ‘It will be longer than a night.’
    ‘You OK with that?’
    ‘I’ll have to be.’
    ‘Call her dad. She said he sometimes comes to visit.’
    ‘I will.’
    ‘Good luck.’
    She moved on up the driveway.
    He headed left down the street.
    I know what to do
, Janet Salter had said.
    A minute later Reacher was a hundred yards short of the corner that would put him on the main east–west county two-lane. To his right, the centre of town. To his left, the boondocks. He wanted a cop to be living way out there. The