61 Hours

to Bolton, folks. My name is Chief Tom Holland, and I’m here to see that you all get comfortable and taken care of tonight. The bad news is that the motels are all full, but the good news is that the people of Bolton are not the kind of folks who would let a group of stranded travellers such as yourselves sleep a night on cots in the high school gymnasium. So the call went out for empty guest rooms and I’m glad to saywe got a good response and we have more than a dozen people right here, right now, ready to invite you into their homes just like honoured visitors and long-lost friends.’
    There was a little low talking after that. A little surprise, a little uncertainty, then a lot of contentment. The old folks brightened and smiled and stood taller. Chief Holland ushered their hosts in from a side room, five local couples and four local men and four local women who had come alone. The lobby was suddenly crowded. People were milling about and shaking hands and introducing themselves and grouping together and hunting through the pile for their suitcases.
    Reacher kept count in his head. Thirteen knots of people, which implied thirteen empty guest rooms, which exactly mirrored the thirteen Mount Rushmore motel rooms on Knox’s official paperwork. Peterson was a good advance man.
    Reacher wasn’t on Knox’s official paperwork.
    He watched as the lobby emptied. Suitcases were hoisted, arms were offered, the doors were opened, pairs and threesomes and foursomes walked out to the waiting vehicles. It was all over inside five minutes. Reacher was left standing alone. Then the guy in the parka came back in and closed the doors. He disappeared down a doglegged corridor. Chief Holland came back. He looked at Reacher and said, ‘Let’s wait in my office.’
    Five to eight in the evening.
    Fifty-six hours to go.

FOUR
    H OLLAND’S OFFICE WAS LIKE A THOUSAND R EACHER HAD SEEN before. Plain municipal décor, tendered out, the job won by the underbidder. Sloppy gloss paint all over the place, thick and puckered and wrinkled, vinyl tile on the floor, a veneered desk, six last-generation file cabinets in an imperfect line against the wall under an institutional clock. There was a framed photograph centred on the cabinets under the clock. It showed Chief Holland as a straighter, stronger, younger man, standing and smiling with a woman and a child. A family portrait, maybe ten or more years old. The woman was attractive in a pale, fair-haired, strong-featured way. Holland’s wife, presumably. The child was a girl, maybe eight or nine, her face white and indistinct and unformed. Their daughter, presumably. There was a pair of dice on the desk. Big old bone cubes, worn from use and age, the dots rubbed and faded, the material itself veined where soft calcium had gone and harder minerals had remained. But apart from the photograph and the dice there was nothing personal in the room. Everything else was business.
    Holland sat down behind the desk in a worn leather chair. There was an undraped picture window behind his head, triple-glazed against the cold. Clean glass. Darkness outside. Snow on the outer sill, a heater under the inner sill.
    Reacher took a visitor chair in front of the desk.
    Holland didn’t speak.
    Reacher asked, ‘What am I waiting for?’
    ‘We wanted to offer you the same hospitality we offered the others.’
    ‘But I was a harder sell?’
    Holland smiled a tired smile. ‘Not really. Andrew Peterson volunteered to take you in himself. But he’s busy right now. So you’ll have to wait.’
    ‘Busy doing what?’
    ‘What cops do.’
    Reacher said, ‘This is a bigger place than I expected. The tour bus GPS showed it as a dot on the map.’
    ‘We grew. That GPS data is a little out of date, I guess.’
    The office was overheated. Reacher had stopped shivering and was starting to sweat. His clothes were drying, stiff and dirty. He said, ‘You grew because you got a prison built here.’
    ‘How do you figure that?’
    ‘New prison bus. New sign after the highway.’
    Holland nodded. ‘We got a brand-new federal facility. We competed for it. Everybody wanted it. It’s like getting Toyota to open an assembly plant. Or Honda. Lots of jobs, lots of dollars. Then the state put their new penitentiary in the same compound, which was more jobs and more dollars, and the county jail is there too.’
    ‘Which is why the motels are full tonight? Visiting day to-morrow?’
    ‘Total of three visiting days a