17

Reacher turned a careful one-eighty and stared back at the road to make sure he hadn’t drifted too far either west or east. He hadn’t. He was right on target. He walked five paces south, turned east, walked five more paces, turned around, walked ten steps west.

Saw nothing.

“Well?” Vaughan called.

“It’s gone,” he said.

“You were just yanking my chain.”

“I wasn’t. Why would I?”

“How accurate could you have been, with the stones? In the dark?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.”

Vaughan walked a small quiet circle, all around. Shook her head.

“It isn’t here,” she said. “If it ever was.”

Reacher stood still in the emptiness. Nothing to see. Nothing to hear, except Vaughan’s truck idling patiently twenty yards away. He walked ten more yards east and started to trace a wide circle. A quarter of the way through it, he stopped.

“Look here,” he said.

He pointed at the ground. At a long line of shallow crumbled oval pits in the sand, each one a yard apart.

Vaughan said, “Footprints.”

“My footprints,” Reacher said. “From last night. Heading home.”

They turned west and backtracked. Followed the trail of his old footprints back toward Despair. Ten yards later they came to the head of a small diamond-shaped clearing. The clearing was empty.

“Wait,” Reacher said.

“It’s not here,” Vaughan said.

“But it was here. This is the spot.”

The crusted sand was all churned up by multiple disturbances. There were dozens of footprints, facing in all directions. There were scrapes and slides and drag marks. There were small depressions in the scrub, some fairly precise, but most not, because of the way the dry sand had crumbled and trickled down into the holes.

Reacher said, “Tell me what you see.”

“Activity,” Vaughan said. “A mess.”

“A story,” Reacher said. “It’s telling us what happened.”

“Whatever happened, we can’t stay here. This was supposed to be in and out, real fast.”

Reacher stood up straight and scanned the road, west and east.

Nothing there.

“Nobody coming,” he said.

“I should have brought a picnic,” Vaughan said.

Reacher stepped into the clearing. Crouched down and pointed two-fingered at a pair of neat parallel depressions in the center of the space. Like two coconut shells had been pressed down into the sand, hard, on a north-south axis.

“The boy’s knees,” he said. “This is where he gave it up. He staggered to a stop and half-turned and fell over.” Then he pointed to a broad messed-up stony area four feet to the east. “This is where I landed after I tripped over him. On these stones. I could show you the bruises, if you like.”

“Maybe later,” Vaughan said. “We need to get going.”

Reacher pointed to four sharp impressions in the sand. Each one was a rectangle about two inches by three, at the corners of a larger rectangle about two feet by five.

“Gurney feet,” he said. “Folks came by and collected him. Maybe four or five of them, judging by all the footprints. Official folks, because who else carries gurneys?” He stood up and checked and pointed north and west, along a broad ragged line of footprints and crushed vegetation. “They came in that way, and carried him back out in the same direction, back to the road. Maybe to a coroner’s wagon, parked a little ways west of my cairn.”

“So we’re OK,” Vaughan said. “The proper authorities have got him. Problem solved. We should get going.”

Reacher nodded vaguely and gazed due west. “What should we see over there?”

“Two sets of incoming footprints,” Vaughan said. “The boy’s and yours, both heading east out of town. Separated by time, but not much separated by direction.”

“But it looks like there’s more than that.”

They skirted the clearing and formed up again west of it. They saw four separate lines of footprints, fairly close together.

“Two incoming, two outgoing,” Reacher said.

“How do you know?” Vaughan asked.

“The angles. Most people walk with their toes out.”

The newer of the incoming tracks showed big dents in the sand a yard or more apart, and deep. The older showed smaller dents, closer together, less regular, and shallower.

“The kid and me,” Reacher said. “Heading east. Separated in time. I was walking, he was stumbling and staggering.”

The two outgoing tracks were both brand new. The sand was less crumbled and therefore the indentations were more distinct, and fairly deep, fairly well spaced, and similar.

“Reasonably big guys,” Reacher said. “Heading back west. Recently. Not separated in time.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means they’re tracking the kid. Or me. Or both of us. Finding out where we’d been, where we’d come from.”

“Why?”

“They found the body, they were curious.”

“How did they find the body in the first place?”

“Buzzards,” Reacher said. “It’s the obvious way, on open ground.”

Vaughan stood still for a moment. Then she said, “Back to the truck, right now.”

Reacher didn’t argue. She had beaten him to the obvious conclusion, but only by a heartbeat.

18

The old Chevy was still idling patiently. The road was still empty. But they ran. They ran and they flung the truck’s doors open and dumped themselves inside. Vaughan slammed the transmission into gear and hit the gas. They didn’t say a word until they thumped back over the Hope town line, eight long minutes later.

“Now you’re really a citizen with a problem,” Vaughan said. “Aren’t you? The Despair cops might be dumb, but they’re still cops. Buzzards show them a dead guy, they find the dead guy’s tracks, they find a second set of tracks that show some other guy caught up with the dead guy along the way, they find signs of a whole lot of falling down and rolling around, they’re going to want a serious talk with the other guy. You can bet on that.”

Reacher said, “So why didn’t they follow my tracks forward?”

“Because they know where you were going. There’s only Hope, or Kansas. They want to know where you started. And what are they going to find?”

“A massive loop. Buried PowerBar wrappers and empty water bottles, if they look hard enough.”

Vaughan nodded at the wheel. “Clear physical evidence of a big guy with big feet and long legs who paid a planned clandestine visit the night after they threw a big guy with big feet and long legs out of town.”

“Plus one of the deputies saw me.”

“You sure?”

“We talked.”

“Terrific.”

“The dead guy died of natural causes.”

“You sure? You felt around in the dark. They’re going to put that boy on a slab.”

“I’m not in Despair anymore. You can’t go there, they can’t come here.”

“Small departments don’t work homicides, you idiot. We call in the State Police. And the State Police can go anywhere in Colorado. And the State Police get cooperation anywhere in Colorado. And you’re in my logbook from yesterday. I couldn’t deny it even if I wanted to.”

“You wouldn’t want to?”

“I don’t know anything about you. Except that I’m pretty sure you beat on a deputy in Despair. You practically admitted that to me. Who knows what else you did?”

“I didn’t do anything else.”

Vaughan said nothing.

Reacher asked, “What happens next?”

“Always better to get out in front of a thing like this. You should call in and volunteer information.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I was a soldier. I never volunteer for anything.”

“Well, I can’t help you. It’s out of my hands. It was neverin my hands.”

“You could call,” Reacher said. “You could call the State Police and find out what their thinking is.”

“They’ll be calling us soon enough.”

“So let’s get out in front, like you said. Early information is always good.”