Worth Dying For

was pretty sure the next guy he met would be a football player. He figured the Duncans knew he had gone out of town, possibly for a day, possibly for ever. He figured they would have gotten hold of the doctor long ago and squeezed that news out of him. And they were realistic but cautious people. They would have stood down five of their boys for the night, and left just one lone sentry to the south. And that one lone sentry would have to be dealt with. But not via
commotio cordis
. Reacher wasn’t about to aim a wild punch at a Cornhusker’s centre mass. Not in this lifetime. He would break his hand.
    He kept the Malibu humming along, eight miles, nine, and then he started looking ahead for the bar he had seen on the shoulder. The small wooden building. The Cell Block. Maybe just outside the city limit. Unincorporated land. Maybe a question of licensing or regulation. There was mist in the air and the Malibu’s headlights made crisp little tunnels. Then they were answered by a glow in the air. A halo, far ahead on the left. Neon, in kelly green, and red, and blue. Beer signs. Plus yellow tungsten from a couple of token spots in the parking lot.
    Reacher slowed and pulled in and parked his yellow car next to a pick-up that was mostly brown with corrosion. He got out and locked up and headed for the door. From close up the place looked nothing at all like a prison. It was just a shack. It could once have been a house or a store. Even the sign was written wrong. The words Cell Block were stencilled like a notation on an electrician’s blueprint. Like something technological. There was noise inside, the warm low hubbub and hoo-hah of a half-empty late-evening bar in full swing, plus a little music under it, probably from a jukebox, a tune Reacher didn’t recognize but was prepared to like.
    He went in. The door opened directly in the left front corner of the main public room. The bar ran front to back on theright, and there were tables and chairs on the left. There were maybe twenty people in the room, mostly men. The decoration scheme was really no scheme at all. Wooden tables, wheelback chairs, bar stools, board floor. There was no prison theme. In fact the electronic visuals from outside were continued inside. The stencilled words Cell Block were repeated on the bar back, flanked by foil-covered cut-outs of radio towers with lightning bolts coming out of them.
    Reacher threaded sideways between tables and caught the barman’s eye and the barman shuffled left to meet him. The guy was young, and his face was open and friendly. He said, ‘You look confused.’
    Reacher said, ‘I guess I was expecting bars on the windows, maybe booths in the old cells. I thought maybe you would be wearing a suit with arrows all over it.’
    The guy didn’t answer.
    ‘Like an old prison,’ Reacher said. ‘Like a cell block.’
    The guy stayed blank for a second, and then he smiled.
    ‘Not that kind of cell block,’ he said. ‘Take out your phone.’
    ‘I don’t have a phone.’
    ‘Well, if you did, you’d find it wouldn’t work here. No signal. There’s a null zone about a mile wide. That’s why people come here. For a little undisturbed peace and quiet.’
    ‘They can’t just not answer?’
    ‘Human nature doesn’t really work that way, does it? People can’t ignore a ringing phone. It’s about guilty consciences. You know, wives or bosses. All kinds of hassle. Better that their phones don’t ring at all.’
    ‘So do you have a pay phone here? Strictly for emergencies?’
    The guy pointed. ‘Back corridor.’
    ‘Thanks,’ Reacher said. ‘That’s why I came in.’
    He threaded down the line of stools, some of them occupied, some of them not, and he found an opening that led to the restrooms and a rear door. There was a pay phone on the wall opposite the ladies’ room. It was mounted on a cork rectangle that was dark and stained with age and marked with scribbled numbers in faded ink. He checked his pockets for quarters andfound five. He wished he had kept the Iranian’s coins. He dialled the same number he had used a quarter of an hour ago, and Dorothy Coe had used a quarter of a century ago. The call was answered and he asked for Hoag, and he was connected inside ten short seconds.
    ‘One more favour,’ he said. ‘You got phone books for the whole county, right?’
    Hoag said, ‘Yes.’
    ‘I need a number for a guy called Seth Duncan, about sixty miles north of you.’
    ‘Wait one,’ Hoag said.