61 Hours

For methamphetamine you need ephedrine or pseudoephedrine. You can buy it in bulk, if you can get past the regulations. Or you can extract it from over-the-counter decongestant medicines. To do that you need red phosphorus and iodine. Or lithium, from certain types of batteries. That’s an alternative method, called the Birch reduction.’
    ‘You can get it direct from acacia trees in west Texas,’ Reacher said. ‘Plus mescaline and nicotine. A wonderful tree, the acacia.’
    ‘But this is not west Texas,’ Janet Salter said. ‘This is South Dakota. My point is, you can’t make bricks without straw. If they’re shipping out vast quantities of finished product, they must be shipping in vast quantities of raw materials. Which must be visible. There must be truckloads involved. Why can’t Chief Holland get at them that way, without involving me?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘I think Chief Holland has gotten lazy.’
    ‘Peterson claimed they gave you the option of backing out.’
    ‘But don’t you see? That’s no option at all. I couldn’t live with myself. It’s a matter of principle.’
    ‘Peterson claims you were offered federal protection.’
    ‘And perhaps I should have accepted it. But I much preferred to stay in my own home. The justice system is supposed topenalize perpetrators, not witnesses. That’s a matter of principle, too.’
    Reacher glanced at the kitchen door. A cop in the hallway, a cop at the rear window, two more sleeping upstairs ready for the night watch, a car outside, another car one block over, a third at the end of the street. Plus alert townsfolk, and a paranoid police HQ. Plus snow all over the place.
    All good, unless the siren sounded.
    Reacher asked, ‘Are you a grandmother?’
    Janet Salter shook her head. ‘We didn’t have children. We waited, and then my husband died. He was English, and much older than me. Why do you ask?’
    ‘Peterson was talking about your credibility on the stand. He said you look like a storybook grandma.’
    ‘Do I?’
    ‘I don’t know. I guess I didn’t have those storybooks.’
    ‘Where were you raised?’
    ‘On Marine Corps bases.’
    ‘Which ones?’
    ‘It felt like all of them.’
    ‘I was raised here in South Dakota. My father was the last in a long line of robber barons. We traded, we bought land from the native inhabitants at twelve cents an acre, we bought thousands of government stakes through surrogates, we mined gold, we invested in the railroad. At insider rates, of course.’
    Reacher said, ‘Hence this house.’
    Janet Salter smiled. ‘No, this is where we came when we hit hard times.’
    Out in the hallway the bell chimed once, quiet and civilized. Reacher stood up and stepped to the door and watched. The policewoman on duty was sitting on the bottom stair. She got up and crossed the dim space and opened the front door. Chief Holland came in, with a soft flurry of snow and a cloud of cold air. He stamped his feet on the mat and shivered as the warmth hit him. He took off his parka. The policewoman hung it up for him, right on top of Reacher’s borrowed coat.
    Holland crossed the hallway and nodded to Reacher andpushed past him to the kitchen door. He told Janet Salter that he had no significant news for her, and that he was dropping by merely to pay his respects. She asked him to wait in the library. She said she would make coffee and bring it in. Reacher watched her fill an old percolator made of thick dull aluminum. It had a cord insulated with fabric. It was practically an antique. It could have been melted down from a surplus B-24 Liberator after World War Two. Reacher stood ready to help, but she waved him away and said, ‘Go and wait with the chief in the library.’ So Reacher joined Holland in the book-lined room and asked, ‘How are things?’
    Holland said, ‘What things?’
    ‘The car out on the eastern town limit. With the dead guy in it.’
    ‘We’re not sure if our initial assumption was correct. About breaking the chain, I mean. It could have been a simple robbery gone wrong.’
    ‘How so?’
    ‘The guy was a lawyer, but there was no briefcase in the car. You ever heard of that? A lawyer without a briefcase? Maybe someone took it.’
    ‘Was there a wallet in his pocket?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘A watch on his wrist?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Was he expected up at the jail?’
    ‘Not according to the visitor lists. His client made no request. But his office claims he got a call.’
    ‘Then it wasn’t