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48
Deputy Butler had been on his way to relieve Pellegrino for the middle watch at Fort Kelham's gate, and a mile out he had happened to glance to his left, and he had seen a forlorn shape low down in the scrub perhaps a hundred yards north of the road. Five minutes after that he had been on the horn to HQ with the bad news, and ninety seconds after taking the message the dispatcher had made it to the diner. Deveraux and I were in her car twenty seconds after that, and she put her foot down hard and drove fast all the way, so we were on the scene less than ten minutes after Butler had first chanced to turn his head.
Not that speed made any difference.
We parked nose to tail behind Butler's car and got out. We were on the main east - west road, two miles beyond the last of Carter Crossing itself, one mile short of Kelham, out in an open belt of scrubland, with the forest that bordered Kelham's fence well ahead of us and the forest that flanked the railroad track well behind us. It was the middle of the day and the sky was clear and blue. The air was warm and the breeze was still.
I could see what Butler had seen. It could have been a rock, or it could have been trash, but it wasn't. It was small in the distance, dark, slightly humped, slightly elongated, pressed down, deflated. It was unmistakable. Judging its size was difficult, because judging the exact distance was difficult. If it was eighty yards away, it was a small woman. If it was a hundred and twenty yards away, it was a large man.
Deveraux said, "I hate this job. "
Butler was standing out in the scrub, halfway between the dark shape and us. We set out walking toward him, and then we passed him without a word. I figured the overall distance was going to be close to dead-on a hundred yards, which made the shape neither a small woman nor a large man. It was going to be something in between. A tall woman, or a short man.
Or a teenager, maybe.
Then I recognized the distorted proportions.
And I started to run.
At twenty yards out I was sure. At ten yards out I was certain. At ten feet out I had absolute visual confirmation. No possible doubt. It was Bruce Lindsay. The ugly boy. Sixteen years old. Shawna Lindsay's little brother. He was on his front. His feet were apart. His hands were down by his sides. His giant head was turned toward me. His mouth was open. His deep-set eyes were dark and dead.
We followed no kind of crime-scene protocol. Deveraux and I trampled the area and touched the corpse. We rolled it over and found an entry wound on the left side of the rib cage, up high, close to the armpit. No exit wound. The bullet had come in, shattered the heart, shattered the spine, and had deflected and tumbled and was still in there somewhere.
I knelt up and scanned the horizon. If the kid had been walking east, he had been shot from the north, almost certainly by a rifleman who had exited Kelham's fence line woods and had been patrolling the open belt of scrub. The quarantine zone.
Deveraux said, "I talked to him this morning. Just a few hours ago. We had an appointment at his house. So why was he here?"
Which was a question I didn't want to answer. Not even to myself. I said, "He had a secret to keep, I guess. About Shawna. He knew you'd get it out of him. So he decided to be somewhere else this afternoon. "
"Where? Where was he going?"
"Kelham," I said.
"This is open country. If he was heading for Kelham he would have been on the road. "
"He was shy about strangers seeing him. Because of the way he looked. I bet he never walked on the roads. "
"If he was shy with strangers, why would he risk going to Kelham? There must be a dozen strangers in the guardhouse alone. "
I said, "He went because I told him it would be OK. I told him soldiers would be different. I told him he'd be welcome there. "
"Welcome there for what? They don't offer guided tours. "
The kid was wearing canvas pants, a little like mine, and a plain sweatshirt in navy blue, with a dark warm-up jacket over it. The jacket had fallen open when we rolled him. I saw folded paper in the inside pocket.
I said, "Take a look at that. "
Deveraux slid the paper out of the pocket. It looked like an official document, heavy stock, folded three times. It looked old, and I was sure it was. About sixteen years old, almost certainly. Deveraux unfolded it and scanned it and said, "It's his birth certificate. "
I nodded and took it from her. The State of Mississippi, a male child, family name Lindsay, given name Bruce, born in Carter Crossing. Born eighteen years ago, apparently. It might have withstood a hasty glance, but not further scrutiny. The alteration was not skillful, but it had been patient. Two digits had been carefully rubbed away, and then two others had been drawn in to replace them. The ink matched well, and the style matched well. Only the breached surface of the paper gave it away, but that was enough. It stood out. It drew the eye.
"My fault," I said. "My fault entirely. "
"How?"
Go straight to Kelham, I had said. There are recruiters on every post. As soon as you've got something in your hand that proves you're eighteen years old, they'll let you in and never let you out again.
The kid had taken it literally. I had meant he would have to wait. But he had gone ahead and made himself eighteen years old, right there and then. He had manufactured something to have in his hand. Probably at the same kitchen table where I had sat and talked and drank iced tea. I pictured him, head down, concentrating, tongue between his teeth, maybe wetting the paper with a drop of water, scraping the old numbers off with the tip of a dinner knife, blotting the damp patch, waiting for it to dry, finding the right pen, calculating, practicing, and then drawing in the new numbers. The numbers that would get him through Kelham's gate. The numbers that would get him accepted.
All on my dime.
I started walking back toward the road.
Deveraux came after me. I told her,
"I need a gun. "
She said, "Why?"
I stopped again and turned and looked east and scoped it out. Fort Kelham was a giant rectangle north of the road and its fence ran through a broad belt of trees that extended a couple hundred yards each side of the wire. It looked like the whole place had been hacked out of the same kind of old forest that lay south of the road, but I guessed the opposite was true. I guessed Kelham had been laid out on open ground fifty years before, and then farmers had stopped plowing short of the fence, so the trees had come afterward. Like new weeds. Not like the old woods to the south. The new trees thinned here and there, but mostly they provided deep cover wherever it was needed. Easy enough for a small force to stay concealed among them, slipping outward into the open belt of scrub when necessary, then slipping back inward and on through the fence for rest or resupply.
I started walking again. I said, "I'm going to find this quarantine squad that everyone claims doesn't exist. "
"Suppose you do?" Deveraux said. "It will be your word against theirs. Your word against the Pentagon's, basically. You'll say the squad existed, they'll say it didn't. And the Pentagon has the bigger microphone. "
"They can't argue with physical evidence. I'll bring back enough body parts to convince anyone. "
"I can't let you do that. "
"They shouldn't have shot the kid, Elizabeth. That was way out of line, whoever they are. They opened the wrong door there. That's for damn sure. What lies on the other side is their problem, not ours. "
"You don't even know where they are. "
"They're in the woods. "
"In camouflage with binoculars. How would you even get near them?"
"They have a blind spot. "
"Where?"
"Close to Kelham's gate. They're looking for the kind of intruder who already knows he can't get through the gate. So they're not looking there. They're looking farther afield. "
"The guardhouse watches the gate. "
"No, the guardhouse watches what approaches the gate. I'm not go
ing to approach the gate. I'm going to find the gap. Too far in the rear of the mobile force, too far in advance of the guardhouse. "
"They're shooting people, Reacher. "
"They're shooting the people they see. They won't see me. "
"I'll give you a ride back to town. "
"I'm not going back to town. I want a ride in the other direction. And a firearm. "
She didn't answer.
I said, "I'm prepared to do it without either thing if necessary. Slower and harder, but I'll get it done. "
She said, "Get in the car, Reacher. "
No indication where she planned to take me.
We got in the car and Deveraux backed it away from Butler's cruiser and then she took off forward, east, toward Kelham. The right direction, as far as I was concerned. We covered most of the last mile and I said, "Now head off across the grass. To the edge of the woods. Like you just saw something. "
She said, "Straight at them?"
"They're not here. They're north and west of here. And they wouldn't shoot at a police vehicle anyway. "
"You sure about that?"
"Only one way to find out. "
She slowed and turned the wheel and thumped down off the road onto hard-packed dirt. The road was in a gap shaped like an hourglass. Two hundred yards north of it Kelham's new trees ran away from us in a gentle curve, and two hundred yards south of it the old woods ran away from us in a symmetrical pattern. Deveraux headed north and east, at an angle of forty-five degrees relative to the pavement, bucking and bouncing, and then she steered through a wide turn across the dirt and came to a stop with the flank of the car right next to the woods. My door was six feet from the nearest tree.
I said, "Gun?"
"Jesus," she said. "This whole thing is illegal on so many different levels. "
"But like you told me, it's their word against mine. If there's anyone to shoot, they'll say there wasn't. The more shooting, the more denying. "
She took a breath and let it out and pulled the shotgun from its scabbard between our seats. It was an old Winchester Model 12, forty inches long, seven pounds in weight. It was nicked and worn but dewy with oil and polish. It could have been fifty years old, but it seemed well looked after. Even so, I worry about guns I have never fired. Nothing worse than pulling a trigger and having nothing happen. Or missing.
I asked her, "Does it work?"
She said, "It works perfectly. "
"When did you last fire it?"
"Two weeks ago. "
"At what?"
"At a target. I make the whole department requalify every year. And I need to be able to kick their butts, so I practice. "
"Did you hit the target?"
"I destroyed the target. "
