Nothing to Lose

There’s a logic problem with it. Almost mathematical.”
    “Try me,” Vaughan said. “I did four years of college.”
    “How long have you got?”
    “I’d love to catch whoever dropped the gum wrapper. But I could put that on the back burner, if you like.”
    Reacher smiled. “There are three things going on over there. The military contract, plus something else, plus something else again.”
    “OK,” Vaughan said. She moved the saltshaker, the pepper shaker, and the sugar shaker to the center of the table. “Three things.”
    Reacher moved the saltshaker to one side, immediately. “The military contract is what it is. Nothing controversial. Nothing to worry about, except the possibility that someone might steal something heavy. And that’s the MPs’ problem. They’re straddling the road, they’ve got six Humvees, they’ve got thirty miles of empty space for a running battle, they can stop any truck they need to. No special vigilance required from the townspeople. No reason for the townspeople to get excited at all.”
    “But?”
    Reacher cupped his hands and put his left around the pepper shaker and his right around the sugar shaker. “But the townspeople are excited about something. All of them. They are vigilant. Today they all turned out in defense of something.”
    “What something?”
    “I have no clue.” He held up the sugar shaker, in his right hand. “But it’s the bigger of the two unknowns. Because everyone is involved in it. Let’s call it the right hand, as in the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing.”
    “What’s the left hand?”
    Reacher held up the pepper shaker, in his left hand. “It’s smaller. It involves a subset of the population. A small, special subgroup. Everyone knows about the sugar, most don’t know about the pepper, a few know about both the sugar and the pepper.”
    “And we don’t know about either.”
    “But we will.”
    “How does this relate to Lucy Anderson’s husband not being taken out by plane?”
    Reacher held up the sugar shaker. A large glass item, in his right hand. “Thurman flies the plane. Thurman is the town boss. Thurman directs the larger unknown. It couldn’t happen any other way. And if the Anderson guy had been a part of it, everyone would have been aware. Including the town cops and Judge Gardner. Thurman would have made sure of that. Therefore Lucy Anderson would not have been arrested, and she would not have been thrown out as a vagrant.”
    “So Thurman’s doing something, and everyone is helping, but a few are also working on something else behind his back?”
    Reacher nodded. “And that something the few are working on behind his back involves these young guys.”
    “And the young guys either get through or they don’t, depending on who they bump into first, the many right-hand people or the few left-hand people.”
    “Exactly. And there’s a new one now. Name of Rogers, just arrested, but I didn’t see him.”
    “Rogers? I’ve heard that name before.”
    “Where?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Wherever, he was one of the unlucky ones.”
    “The odds will always be against them.”
    “Exactly.”
    “Which was Ramirez’s problem.”
    “No, Ramirez didn’t bump into anyone,” Reacher said. “I checked the records. He was neither arrested nor helped.”
    “Why? What made him different?”
    “Great question,” Reacher said.
    “What’s the answer?”
    “I don’t know.”

48
    The clock in Reacher’s head hit one in the morning and the clock on the diner’s wall followed it a minute later. Vaughan looked at her watch and said, “I better get back in the saddle.”
    Reacher said, “OK.”
    “Go get some sleep.”
    “OK.”
    “Will you come with me to Colorado Springs? To the lab, with the water sample?”
    “When?”
    “Tomorrow, today, whatever it is now.”
    “I don’t know anything about water.”
    “That’s why we’re going to the lab.”
    “What time?”
    “Leave at ten?”
    “That’s early for you.”
    “I don’t sleep anyway. And this is the end of my pattern. I’m off duty for four nights now. Ten on, four off. And we should leave early because it’s a long ride, there and back.”
    “Still trying to keep me out of trouble? Even on your downtime?”
    “I’ve given up on keeping you out of trouble.”
    “Then why?”
    Vaughan said, “Because I’d like your company. That’s all.”
    She put four bucks on the table for her juice. She put the salt and the