Tripwire

eventually. “Thick as thieves with Victor, from kindergarten right through twelfth grade. But that was thirty-five years ago, Major. Don’t see how it can matter now.”
    Reacher nodded, because it didn’t matter now.
    “I’ve got your number,” he said. “I’ll call you, soon as I know anything.”
    “We’re relying on you,” the old lady said.
    Reacher nodded again.
    “It was a pleasure to meet you both,” he said. “Thank you for the coffee and the cake. And I’m very sorry about your situation.”
    They made no reply. It was a hopeless thing to say. Thirty years of agony, and he was sorry about their situation? He just turned and shook their frail hands and stepped back outside onto their overgrown path. Picked his way back to the Taurus, carrying the folder, looking firmly ahead.
    He reversed down the driveway, catching the vegetation on both sides, and eased out of the track. Made the right and headed south on the quiet road he’d left to find the house. The town of Brighton firmed up ahead of him. The road widened and smoothed out. There was a gas station and a fire-house. A small municipal park with a Little League diamond. A supermarket with a large parking lot, a bank, a row of small stores sharing a common frontage, set back from the street.
    The supermarket’s parking lot seemed to be the geographic center of the town. He cruised slowly past it and saw a nursery, with lines of shrubs in pots under a sprinkler which was making rainbows in the sun. Then a large shed, dull red paint, standing in its own lot: Steven’s Hardware. He swung the Taurus in and parked next to a timber store in back.
    The entrance was an insignificant door set in the end wall of the shed. It gave onto a maze of aisles, packed tight with every kind of thing he’d never had to buy. Screws, nails, bolts, hand tools, power tools, garbage cans, mailboxes, panes of glass, window units, doors, cans of paint. The maze led to a central core, where four shop counters were set in a square under bright fluorescent lighting. Inside the corral were a man and two boys, dressed in jeans and shirts and red canvas aprons. The man was lean and small, maybe fifty, and the boys were clearly his sons, younger versions of the same face and physique, maybe eighteen and twenty.
    “Ed Steven?” Reacher asked.
    The man nodded and set his head at an angle and raised his eyebrows, like a guy who has spent thirty years dealing with inquiries from salesmen and customers.
    “Can I talk to you about Victor Hobie?”
    The guy looked blank for a second, and then he glanced sideways at his boys, like he was spooling backward all the way through their lives and far beyond, back to when he last knew Victor Hobie.
    “He died in ‘Nam, right?” he said.
    “I need some background.”
    “Checking for his folks again?” He said it without surprise, and there was an edge of weariness in there, too. Like the Hobies’ problems were well known in the town, and gladly tolerated, but no longer exciting any kind of urgent sympathy.
    Reacher nodded. “I need to get a feel for what sort of a guy he was. Story is you knew him pretty well.”
    Steven looked blank again. “Well, I did, I guess. But we were just kids. I only saw him once, after high school.”
    “Want to tell me about him?”
    “I’m pretty busy. I’ve got unloading to see to.”
    “I could give you a hand. We could talk while we’re doing it.”
    Steven started to say a routine no, but then he glanced at Reacher, saw the size of him, and smiled like a laborer who’s been offered the free use of a forklift.
    “OK,” he said. “Out back.”
    He came out from the corral of counters and led Reacher through a rear door. There was a dusty pickup parked in the sun next to an open shed with a tin roof. The pickup was loaded with bags of cement. The shelves in the open shed were empty. Reacher took his jacket off and laid it on the hood of the truck.
    The bags were made of thick paper. He knew from his time with the pool gang that if he used two hands on the middle of the bags, they would fold themselves over and split. The way to do it was to clamp a palm on the comer and lift them one-handed. That would keep the dust off his new shirt, too. The bags weighed a hundred pounds, so he did them two at a time, one in each hand, holding them out, counterbalanced away from his body. Steven watched him, like he was a side-show at the circus.
    “So tell me about Victor Hobie,” Reacher