Nothing to Lose

tens.
    The foreman waited for a nod, then left again. Reacher sat down in a leather armchair and said, “I’m Jack Reacher. You’ve got five minutes.”
    The guy behind the desk said, “I’m Jerry Thurman. I’m very pleased to meet you.”
    Reacher said, “Now you’ve got four minutes and fifty-six seconds.”
    “Actually, sir, I’ve got as long as it takes.” Thurman’s voice was soft and mellifluous. His cheeks quivered as he spoke. Too much fat, not enough muscle tone. Not an attractive sight. “You’ve been making trouble in my town and now you’re trespassing on my business premises.”
    “Your fault,” Reacher said. “If you hadn’t sent those goons to the restaurant I would have eaten a quick lunch and moved on days ago. No reason to stay. You’re not exactly running the Magic Kingdom here.”
    “I don’t aim to. This is an industrial enterprise.”
    “So I noticed.”
    “But you knew that days ago. I’m sure the people in Hope were quick to tell you all about us. Why poke around?”
    “I’m an inquisitive person.”
    “Evidently,” Thurman said. “Which raised our suspicions a little. We have proprietary processes here, and methodologies of our own invention, which might all be called industrial secrets. Espionage could hurt our bottom line.”
    “I’m not interested in metal recycling.”
    “We know that now.”
    “You checked me out?”
    Thurman nodded.
    “We made inquiries,” he said. “Last night, and this morning. You are exactly what you claimed to be, in Judge Gardner’s vagrancy hearing. A passerby. A nobody who used to be in the army ten years ago.”
    “That’s me.”
    “But you’re a very persistent nobody. You made a ludicrous request to be sworn in as a deputy. After taking a badge from a man in a fight.”
    “Which he started. On your orders.”
    “So we ask ourselves, why are you so keen to know what happens here?”
    “And I ask myself, why are you so keen to hide it?”
    Thurman shook his great white head.
    “We’re not hiding anything,” he said. “And you’re no danger to me commercially, so I’ll prove it to you. You’ve seen the town, you’ve met some of the folks who live here, and now I’m going to give you a tour of the plant. I’ll be your personal guide and escort. You can see everything and ask me anything.”

    They went in Thurman’s personal vehicle, which was a Chevy Tahoe the same style and vintage as the security vehicles, but painted black, not white. Same modest interior. A working truck. The keys were already in the ignition. Habit, probably. And safe enough. Nobody would use the boss’s car without permission. Thurman drove himself and Reacher sat next to him in the front. They were alone in the vehicle. They headed to the west wall, away from the vehicle gate, moving slow. Thurman started talking immediately. He described the various office functions, which in order of appearance were operations management, and invoicing, and purchasing, and he pointed out the first-aid station, and described its facilities and capabilities, and made a mildly pointed comment about the people Reacher had put in there. Then they moved on to the line of storage tanks, and he described their capacities, which were five thousand gallons each, and their contents, which were gasoline for the Tahoes and some of the other trucks, and diesel for the cranes and the crushers and the heavier equipment, and a liquid chemical called trichloroethylene, which was an essential metal degreaser, and oxygen and acetylene for the cutting torches, and kerosene, which fueled the furnaces.
    Reacher was bored rigid after sixty seconds.
    He tuned Thurman out and looked at things for himself. Didn’t see much. Just metal, and people working with it. He got the general idea. Old stuff was broken up and melted down, and ingots were sold to factories, where new stuff was made, and eventually the new stuff became old stuff and showed up again to get broken up and melted down once more.
    Not rocket science.
    Close to a mile later they arrived at the internal partition and Reacher saw that a truck had been parked across the gate, as if to hide it. Beyond the wall no more sparks were flying and no more smoke was rising. Activity seemed to have been abandoned for the day. He asked, “What happens back there?”
    Thurman said, “That’s our junkyard. Stuff that’s too far gone to work with goes in there.”
    “How do you get it in, with that truck in the