61 Hours

called Brokaw she claimed had been on network TV.
    Five to eleven in the evening.
    Twenty-nine hours to go.
    Reacher completed his eighth circuit of the interior perimeter. He saw nothing to get concerned about. Nothing to see from any window except frozen moonlit emptiness. Nothing to hear except the rush of water in the heating pipes and a faint creaking as the ice outside got colder. It was clamping down. The earth was in its grip. He thought back to the sodbusters and the pioneers that Janet Salter had talked about. Why the hell had they stayed?
    He was on his way back down the stairs when she called out.
    She said, ‘Someone’s coming.’
    She spoke loud and clear. But she added no information. No numbers, no location, no direction, no description. He stepped into the parlour and eased past her to the window. Saw a guy approaching on foot in the middle of the road, from the left. He was small, but swaddled in an enormous coat with a hood. He had a ski mask on. Plus a muffler, plus gloves, plus boots. Nothing in his hands. His hands were held out to the sides, for balance, and they were empty.
    The guy moved on, slowly, tentatively, unsure of his footing. He stopped directly opposite the end of Janet Salter’s driveway. Just stood there.
    Reacher asked, ‘Do you know who he is?’
    She said, ‘Wait.’
    The guy turned around, a stiff and ungainly half-circle, and faced the other way. A dog trotted up to him. A big white thing. Lots of fur. The guy turned around again, and man and dog walked on.
    Janet Salter said, ‘A neighbour. A she, actually. Mrs Lowell. But it was hard to be sure, the way she was dressed.’
    Reacher breathed out and said, ‘Is she the cop’s wife?’
    ‘Ex-wife. Officer Lowell moved out a year ago. There was some kind of unpleasantness.’
    ‘What kind?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘I saw Lowell today. Peterson called him an odd duck. Said he read books.’
    ‘He does. He comes over and borrows some of mine from time to time. My family and his go way back.’
    ‘Do you know his partner?’
    ‘Officer Kapler? I’ve met him, certainly.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘He moved here from Florida. Which struck me as odd.’
    ‘Me too,’ Reacher said. He stayed at the window and watched Mrs Lowell and her dog round a curve and move out of sight.
    They didn’t speak again for thirty minutes. The clock in Reacher’s head ticked on towards midnight. He asked, ‘Are you tired?’
    Janet Salter said, ‘I haven’t really thought about it.’
    ‘You could go to bed, if you like. I can take care of things down here.’
    ‘Would you take care of things standing up? So if you fell asleep I would hear you fall down?’
    Reacher smiled. ‘I won’t fall asleep.’
    ‘And I won’t go to bed. This is my responsibility. I shouldn’t be involving you at all.’
    ‘A problem shared is a problem halved.’
    ‘You could be killed.’
    ‘Unlikely.’
    She asked, ‘Are you married?’
    Reacher kept his eyes on the window and said, ‘No.’
    ‘Were you ever?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Were you an only child?’
    ‘I had a brother two years older. He worked for the Treasury Department. He was killed in the line of duty.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘Not your fault.’
    ‘Do you always deflect sympathy that way?’
    ‘Usually.’
    ‘So you’re the last of your family’s line.’
    ‘I suppose so. But it wasn’t much of a line in the first place.’
    ‘Just like me. Scoundrels, all of them.’
    ‘Where were your gold mines?’
    ‘The Black Hills. Why?’
    ‘Peterson thinks the army place west of here could be mostly underground. I was wondering if there were old workings they could have used.’
    ‘No mines here. Just prairie topsoil and rock.’
    ‘Were your parents alive when you went off to college?’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because if they were, they probably wrote you with all the local news. Maybe rumour and gossip, too. They must have told you something about that place. Maybe not exact enough for your scholarly mind to pass on as fact, but you must have heard some little thing.’
    ‘Nothing worth repeating.’
    ‘Try me.’
    ‘All I know is that it was built and never used. Apparently because its purpose was too revolting. There was a minor scandal about it.’
    ‘What was its purpose?’
    ‘I don’t know. No one spoke of it to me.’
    Five minutes to midnight.
    Twenty-eight hours to go.
    Nobody came.
    A thousand miles away down in Texas two fast cars covered the fifty miles south from Hood in