Worth Dying For

bar said nothing, not following.
    Cassano said, ‘If he didn’t sleep here, where the hell did he sleep? You got no local competition. And he didn’t sleep out under a hedge. For one thing, there don’t seem to be any hedges in Nebraska. For another, he’d have frozen his ass off.’
    ‘I don’t know where he went.’
    ‘You sure?’
    ‘He wouldn’t tell me.’
    ‘Any kindly souls here, who would take a stranger in?’
    ‘Not if the Duncans told them not to.’
    ‘Then he must have stayed here.’
    ‘Sir, I told you, he didn’t.’
    ‘You checked his room?’
    ‘He returned the key before he left.’
    ‘More than one way into a room, asshole. Did you check it?’
    ‘The housekeeper already made it up.’
    ‘She say anything?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Where is she?’
    ‘She finished. She left. She went home.’
    ‘What’s her name?’
    ‘Dorothy.’
    Mancini said, ‘Tell us where Dorothy lives.’

SIXTEEN
    D OROTHY ’ S IDEA OF A FIFTEEN-DOLLAR BREAKFAST TURNED OUT to be a regular feast. Coffee first, while the rest of it was cooking, which was oatmeal, and bacon, and eggs, and toast, big heaping portions, lots of everything, all the food groups, all piping hot, served on thick china plates that must have been fifty years old, and eaten with ancient silverware that had heavy square Georgian handles.
    ‘Fabulous,’ Reacher said. ‘Thank you very much.’
    ‘You’re welcome. Thank you for mine.’
    ‘It isn’t right, you know. People not eating because of the Duncans.’
    ‘People do all kinds of things because of the Duncans.’
    ‘I know what I’d do.’
    She smiled. ‘We all talked like that, once upon a time, long ago. But they kept us poor and tired, and then we got old.’
    ‘What do the young people do here?’
    ‘They leave, just as soon as they can. The adventurous ones go all over the place. It’s a big country. The others stay closer to home, in Lincoln or Omaha.’
    ‘Doing what?’
    ‘There are jobs there. Some boys join the State Police. That’s always popular.’
    ‘Someone should call those boys.’
    She didn’t answer.
    He asked, ‘What happened twenty-five years ago?’
    ‘I can’t talk about it.’
    ‘You can, to me. No one will know. If I ever meet the Duncans, we’ll be discussing the present day, not ancient history.’
    ‘I was wrong anyway.’
    ‘About what?’
    She wouldn’t answer.
    He asked, ‘Were you the neighbour with the dispute?’
    She wouldn’t answer.
    He asked, ‘You want help cleaning up?’
    She shook her head. ‘You don’t wash the dishes in a restaurant, do you?’
    ‘Not so far.’
    ‘Where were you, twenty-five years ago?’
    ‘I don’t remember,’ he said. ‘Somewhere in the world.’
    ‘Were you in the army then?’
    ‘Probably.’
    ‘People say you beat up three Cornhuskers yesterday.’
    ‘Not all at once,’ he said.
    ‘You want more coffee?’
    ‘Sure,’ he said, and she recharged the percolator and set it going again. He asked, ‘How many farms contracted with the Duncans?’
    ‘All of us,’ she said. ‘This whole corner of the county. Forty farms.’
    ‘That’s a lot of corn.’
    ‘And soybeans and alfalfa. We rotate the crops.’
    ‘Did you buy part of the old Duncan place?’
    ‘A hundred acres. A nice little parcel. It squared off a corner. It made sense.’
    ‘How long ago was that?’
    ‘It must be thirty years.’
    ‘So things were good for the first five years?’
    ‘I’m not going to tell you what happened.’
    ‘I think you should,’ he said. ‘I think you want to.’
    ‘Why do you want to know?’
    ‘Like you said, I had three football players sent after me. I’d like to understand why, at least.’
    ‘It was because you busted Seth Duncan’s nose.’
    ‘I’ve busted lots of noses. Nobody ever retaliated with retired athletes before.’
    She poured the coffee. She placed his mug in front of him. The kitchen was warm from the stove. It felt like it would stay warm all day long. She said, ‘Twenty-five years ago Seth Duncan was eight years old.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘This corner of the county was like a little community. We were all spread out and isolated, of course, but the school bus kind of defined it. Everybody knew everybody else. Children would play together, big groups of them, at one house, then another.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘No one liked going to Seth Duncan’s place. Girls especially. And Seth played with girls a lot. More so than with boys.’
    ‘Why didn’t they