Worth Dying For

and a tyre shop. If he wanted to sleep, the only choice was a Courtyard Marriott.

TWENTY-SEVEN
    R EACHER BLEW STRAIGHT PAST THE BILLBOARD AND THEN SLOWED and checked ahead. In his experience most places reserved the main drag for profit-and-loss businesses. Municipal enterprises like cops and county offices would be a block or two over. Maybe more. Something to do with tax revenues. A town couldn’t charge as much for a lot on a back street.
    He slowed a little more and passed the first building. It was on the left. It was an aluminium coach diner, as advertised on the billboard, as mentioned by Dorothy the housekeeper. It was the place where the county cops got their morning coffee and doughnuts. And their afternoon snacks, apparently. There was a black-and-white Dodge police cruiser parked outside. Plus two working pick-up trucks, both of them farm vehicles, both of them dented and dirty. Next up in terms of infrastructure was a gas station across the street, Texaco, with three service bays attached. Then came a long sequence of miscellaneous enterprises, on the left and the right, a hardware store, a liquor store, a bank, tyre bays, a John Deere dealership, a grocery, apharmacy. The street was broad and muddy and had diagonal parking on both sides.
    Reacher drove all the way through town. At the end of it was a genuine crossroads, signposted left to an ethanol plant and right to a hospital and straight ahead to I-80, another sixty miles farther on. He U-turned shoulder-to-shoulder and came back again, north on the main drag. There were three side streets on the right, and three on the left. They all had names that sounded like people. Maybe original Nebraska settlers, or famous football players, or coaches, or champion corn growers. He made the first right, on a street named McNally, and saw the Marriott hotel up ahead. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, which was awkward. The old files would be in the police station or a county storeroom, and either way the file clerks would be quitting at five. He had one hour. That was all. Access alone might take thirty minutes to arrange, and there was probably plenty of paper, which would take much more than the other thirty to read. He was going to have to wait for the morning.
    Or, maybe not.
    Worth a try.
    He rolled ahead and took a look at the hotel on the way. He wasn’t sure what the difference was between a regular Marriott and a Courtyard Marriott. Maybe one was high-rise and the other was low-rise. This was a low-rise, just two storeys, H-shaped, a lobby flanked by two modest wings of bedrooms. There was a parking lot out front with marked spaces for about twenty cars, only two of them occupied. Same again at the rear of the building. Twenty spaces, only two of them occupied. Plenty of vacancies. Wintertime, in the middle of nowhere.
    He made a left and came back north again, parallel to the main drag, three blocks over. He saw the second restaurant. It was a rib shack. It boasted a dry rub recipe direct from Kansas. He turned left again just beyond it and came back to the main street and pulled in at the diner. The cop car was still there. Still parked. The diner wasn’t busy. Reacher could see in through the windows. Two cops, three civilians, a waitress, and a cook behind a hatch.
    Reacher locked the Cadillac and walked in. The cops were face to face in a booth, each of them wide and bulky, each of them taking up most of a two-person bench. One of them was about Reacher’s age, and one of them was younger. They had grey uniforms, with badges and insignia, and nameplates. The older cop was called Hoag. Reacher walked past him and stopped and pantomimed a big double take and said, ‘You’re Hoag, right? I don’t believe it.’
    The cop said, ‘Excuse me?’
    ‘I remember you from Desert Storm. Don’t I? The Gulf, in 1991? Am I right?’
    The cop said, ‘I’m sorry, my friend, but you’ll have to help me out here. There’s been a lot of water over the dam since 1991.’
    Reacher offered his hand. He said, ‘Reacher, 110th MP.’
    The cop wiped his hand on his pants and shook. He said, ‘I’m not sure I was ever in contact with you guys.’
    ‘Really? I could have sworn. Saudi, maybe? Just before? During Desert Shield?’
    ‘I was in Germany just before.’
    ‘I don’t think it was Germany. But I remember the name. And the face, kind of. Did you have a brother in the Gulf? Or a cousin or something?’
    ‘A cousin, sure.’
    ‘Looks just