Worth Dying For

Carson didn’t really revisit the early phase in the light of the later phase. The first night, he had people checking their own outbuildings. Which was reasonable, frankly, with a missing kid. But later he never really searched those outbuildings independently. Only one of them, basically, for an old couple who hadn’t done it themselves. Everyone else self-certified, really. In effect they said no sir, the kid ain’t here, and she never was, I promise. At some point Carson should have started over and treated everyone as a potential suspect. But he didn’t. He focused on the Duncans only, based on information received. And the Duncans came out clean.’
    ‘You think it was someone else?’
    ‘Could have been anyone else in the world, just passing through. If not, it could have been any of the local residents. Probably not Dorothy or Arthur Coe themselves, but that still leaves thirty-nine possibilities.’
    The doctor’s wife said, ‘I think it was the Duncans.’
    ‘Three different agencies disagree with you.’
    ‘They might be wrong.’
    Reacher nodded in the dark, his gesture unobserved.
    ‘They might be,’ he said. ‘There might have been another conceptual error. A failure of imagination, anyway. It’s clearthat the Duncans never left their compound, and it’s clear that the kid never showed up there. There are reliable witnesses to both of those facts. Four boys were building a fence. And the science came up negative, too. But the Duncans could have had an accomplice. A fifth man, essentially. He could have scooped up the kid and taken her somewhere else. Carson never even thought about that. He never checked known associates. And he should have, probably. You wait five years to build a fence, and you happen to be doing it on the exact same day a kid disappears? Could have been a prefabricated alibi. Carson should have wondered, at least. I would have, for sure.’
    ‘Who would the fifth man have been?’
    ‘Anyone,’ Reacher said. ‘A friend, maybe. One of their drivers, perhaps. It’s clear a vehicle was involved, otherwise why was the bike never found?’
    ‘I always wondered about the bike.’
    ‘Did they have a friend? Did you ever see one, when you were babysitting?’
    ‘I saw a few people, I guess.’
    ‘Anyone close? This would have been a very intimate type of relationship. Shared enthusiasms, shared passions, absolute trust. Someone into the same kind of thing they were into.’
    ‘A man?’
    ‘Almost certainly. The same kind of creep.’
    ‘I’m not sure. I can’t remember. Where would he have taken her?’
    ‘Anywhere, theoretically. And that was another major mistake. Carson never really looked anywhere else, apart from the Duncans’ compound. It was crazy not to search the transportation depot, for instance. As a matter of fact I don’t think that was a real problem, because it seems like that place is real busy in the early part of the summer, seven days a week. Something to do with alfalfa, whatever that is. No one would take an abducted kid to a work site full of witnesses. But there was one other place Carson should have checked for sure. And he didn’t. He ignored it completely. Possibly because of ignorance or confusion.’
    ‘Which was where?’
    But Reacher didn’t get time to answer, because right then the window blazed bright and the room filled with moving lights and shadows. They played over the walls, the ceiling, their faces, alternately stark white and deep black.
    Headlight beams, strobing through the posts of the fence.
    A car, coming in fast from the east.

FORTY
    I T WAS D OROTHY C OE COMING IN FROM THE EAST, IN HER RATTY OLD pick-up truck. Reacher knew it a second after he saw her lights. He could hear her holed muffler banging away like a motorcycle. Like a Harley Davidson moving away from a stoplight. She came on fast and then she braked hard and stopped dead and stood off just short of the house. She had seen the gold Yukon on the driveway. She had recognized it, presumably. A Cornhusker’s car. She probably knew it well. The doctor’s wife stepped out to the hallway and undid the locks and the chain and opened the front door and waved. Dorothy Coe didn’t move an inch. Twenty-five years of habitual caution. She thought it could be a trick or a decoy. Reacher joined the doctor’s wife on the step. He pointed to the Yukon and then to himself. Big gestures, like semaphore.
My truck
. Dorothy Coe moved on again and turned in. She shut