Nothing to Lose

PowerBar wrappers and empty water bottles, if they look hard enough.”
    Vaughan nodded at the wheel. “Clear physical evidence of a big guy with big feet and long legs who paid a planned clandestine visit the night after they threw a big guy with big feet and long legs out of town.”
    “Plus one of the deputies saw me.”
    “You sure?”
    “We talked.”
    “Terrific.”
    “The dead guy died of natural causes.”
    “You sure? You felt around in the dark. They’re going to put that boy on a slab.”
    “I’m not in Despair anymore. You can’t go there, they can’t come here.”
    “Small departments don’t work homicides, you idiot. We call in the State Police. And the State Police can go anywhere in Colorado. And the State Police get cooperation anywhere in Colorado. And you’re in my logbook from yesterday. I couldn’t deny it even if I wanted to.”
    “You wouldn’t want to?”
    “I don’t know anything about you. Except that I’m pretty sure you beat on a deputy in Despair. You practically admitted that to me. Who knows what else you did?”
    “I didn’t do anything else.”
    Vaughan said nothing.
    Reacher asked, “What happens next?”
    “Always better to get out in front of a thing like this. You should call in and volunteer information.”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “I was a soldier. I never volunteer for anything.”
    “Well, I can’t help you. It’s out of my hands. It was never in my hands.”
    “You could call,” Reacher said. “You could call the State Police and find out what their thinking is.”
    “They’ll be calling us soon enough.”
    “So let’s get out in front, like you said. Early information is always good.”
    Vaughan didn’t reply to that. Just lifted off the gas and slowed as they hit the edge of town. The hardware guy had his door open and was piling his stuff on the sidewalk. He had some kind of a trick stepladder that could be put in about eight different positions. He had set it up like a painter’s platform good for reaching second-story walls. Vaughan made a right on the next block and then a left, past the back of the diner. The streets were broad and pleasant and the sidewalks had trees. She pulled in to a marked-off parking space outside a low brick building. The building could have been a suburban post office. But it wasn’t. It was the Hope Police Department. It said so, in aluminum letters neatly fixed to the brick. Vaughan shut off the engine and Reacher followed her down a neat brick path to the police station’s door. The door was locked. The station was closed. Vaughan used a key from her bunch and said, “The desk guy gets in at nine.”
    Inside, the place still looked like a post office. Dull, worn, institutional, bureaucratic, but somewhat friendly. Accessible. Oriented toward service. There was a public inquiry counter and a space behind it with two desks. A watch commander’s office behind a solid door, in the same corner a postmaster’s would be. Vaughan stepped past the counter and headed for a desk that was clearly hers. Efficient and organized, but not intimidating. There was an old-model computer front and center, and a console telephone next to it. She opened a drawer and found a number in a book. Clearly contact between the Hope PD and the State Police was rare. She didn’t know the number by heart. She dialed the phone and asked for the duty desk and identified herself and said, “We have a missing person inquiry. Male, Caucasian, approximately twenty years of age, five-eight, one-forty. Can you help us with that?” Then she listened briefly and her eyes flicked left and then right and she said, “We don’t have a name.” She was asked another question and she glanced right and said, “Can’t tell if he’s dark or fair. We’re working from a black-and-white photograph. It’s all we have.”
    Then there was a pause. Reacher saw her yawn. She was tired. She had been working all night. She moved the phone a little ways from her ear and Reacher heard the faint tap of a keyboard in the distant state office. Denver, maybe, or Colorado Springs. Then a voice came back on and Vaughan clamped the phone tight and Reacher didn’t hear what it had to say.
    Vaughan listened and said, “Thank you.”
    Then she hung up.
    “Nothing to report,” she said. “Apparently Despair didn’t call it in.”
    “Natural causes,” Reacher said. “They agreed with me.”
    Vaughan shook her head. “They should have called it in