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73
The waitress was overworked and slow, so I left Munro to receive the pies alone and I headed back to the dog-leg alley. I came out between Brannan's bar and the loan office and saw that a few cars had left and the crowd on the open ground had thinned considerably, much more so than the few absent cars could explain, so I figured people were inside at that point, drinking away their last precious minutes of freedom before heading home for the night.
I found most of them inside Brannan's bar itself. The place was packed. It was seriously overcrowded. I wasn't sure if Carter County had a fire marshal, but if it did, the guy would have been having a panic attack. There must have been a hundred Rangers and fifty women in there, back to back, chest to chest, holding their drinks up neck-high to avoid the crush. There was a roar of sound, a loud generalized amalgam of talk and laughter, and behind it all I could hear the cash drawer slamming in and out of the register. The river of dollars was back in full flow.
I spent five minutes fighting my way to the bar, on a random route left and right through the crowd, checking faces as I went, some up close, some from afar, but I didn't see Reed Riley. The Brannan brothers were hard at work, dealing beer in bottles, taking money, making change, dumping wet dollar bills into their tip jar, passing and repassing each other in their cramped space with moves like dancers. One of them saw me and did the busy-barman thing with his chin and his eyes and the angle of his head, and then he recognized me from our earlier conversation, and then he remembered I was an MP, and then he leaned in fast like he was prepared to give me a couple of seconds. I couldn't remember if he was Jonathan or Hunter.
I asked him, "Have you seen that guy Reed? The guy we were talking about before?"
He said, "He was in here two hours ago. By now he'll be wherever the shots are cheapest. "
"Which is where?"
"Can't say for sure. Not here, anyway. "
Then he ducked away to continue his marathon and I fought my way back to the door.
I got back to the diner sixteen minutes after I left it and found that the pies had been delivered in my absence and that Munro was halfway through eating his. I picked up my fork and he apologized for not waiting. He said, "I thought you were gone. "
I said, "I often take a walk between courses. It's a Mississippi thing, apparently. Always good to blend in with the local population. "
He said nothing in reply to that. He just looked a little bemused.
I asked, "What are you doing in Germany?"
"Generally?"
"No, specifically. As in, when you get there first thing in the morning the day after tomorrow, what's on your desk?"
"Not very much. "
"Nothing urgent?"
"Why?"
"Three women were killed here," I said. "And the perp is running around free as a bird. "
"We have no jurisdiction. "
"Remember that picture in Emmeline McClatchy's parlor? Martin Luther King? He said all that needs to happen for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing. "
"I'm a military cop, not a good man. "
"He also said the day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die. "
"That stuff is way above my pay grade. "
"He also said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. "
"What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to stay here," I said. "One more day. "
Then I finished my pie and went looking for Elizabeth Deveraux again.
It was eleven thirty-one when I left the diner for the second time. I turned right and walked up to the Sheriff's Department. It was locked up and dark. No vehicles in the lot. I kept on going and turned the corner onto the Kelham road. There was a stream of traffic coming out from behind Main Street. One car after another. Some were full of women and turning left. Most were full of Rangers and turning right, at least three and sometimes four guys in each car. Bravo Company, going home. Maybe they had a midnight curfew. I glanced down to the acre of beaten dirt and saw every single car except my Buick in motion. Some were just starting up and backing out. Others were maneuvering for position, getting in line, getting ready to join the convoy.
I kept on walking, on the left-hand shoulder, keeping my distance from the traffic heading for Kelham. A lot of beer had been consumed, and the designated driver concept was not big in 1997. Not in the army, anyway. Dust was coming up off the road, and bright headlight beams were cutting through it, and motors were roaring. Two hundred yards ahead of me cars were thumping over the railroad track and then accelerating away into the darkness.
Deveraux was right there, sitting in her car on the far side of the crossing. She was facing me. She was parked with her wheels on the shoulder of the road. I walked toward her, with Bravo Company overtaking me all the way, maybe ninety of them in thirty cars in the minute it took me to reach the railroad. By the time I got there the stream was already thinning behind me. The last of the stragglers were passing me by, five and ten and twenty seconds between each one. They were driving fast, chasing after their more punctual friends.
I waited for a break in the traffic long enough to get me safely over the track, and Deveraux opened her door and got out to meet me. We stood there together, lit up bright by the oncoming headlights. She said, "Five more minutes and they'll all be gone. But I have to wait until Butler and Pellegrino get back. I can't go off duty before they do. That wouldn't be fair. "
I asked, "When will they get back?"
"The train takes a whole minute to pass a given point. Which doesn't sound like much, but it feels like an hour when you've been working all evening. So they'll try to make it before midnight. "
"How long before midnight?"
She smiled. "Not long enough, I'm afraid. Five to, maybe. We wouldn't get home in time. "
I said, "Pity. "
She smiled wider.
She said, "Get in the car, Reacher. "
She started the motor and waited a moment as the last of the Bravo Company stragglers sped by. Then she eased off the shoulder, and maneuvered out to the humped crown of the pavement, and then she turned a tight right that put us up on the crossing, sideways to the road, facing north up the railroad track, directly in line with it. She put a light foot on the gas and steered carefully and got her right-hand wheels up on the right-hand rail. Her left-hand wheels were down on the ties. The whole car was tilted at a decent angle. She drove on, not fast, not slow, but decisive and confident. She went straight, one hand on the wheel, one hand in her lap, past the water tower, then onward. Her left-hand wheels pattered over the ties. Her right-hand wheels ran smooth. A fine piece of car control. Then she braked gently, one side up, one side down, and she came to a neat stop.
On the track.
Twenty yards north of the water tower.
Right where Reed Riley's car had waited for the train.
Where the broken glass began.
I said, "You've done this before. "
She said, "Yes, I have. "
74
She said, "This is the tricky part. It's all about momentum now. " She turned the wheel hard to the left and just as the front right-hand tire came down off the right-hand rail she hit the gas and the pulse of acceleration popped the front left-hand tire up over the left-hand rail. The whole car squirmed for a second, and she kept her foot light on the pedal, and the other wheels followed suit, two, three, four, with separate squelching sounds, sidewall rubber against steel, and then she stopped again and parked in the dirt very close to and exactly parallel with the track. The first of the ballast stones were about five feet from my window.
She said, "I love this spot. No other way to get to it, because of the ditch. But it's worth the trouble. I come here quite often. "
"At midnight?" I asked.
"Always," she said.
I turned and looked out the back window. I could see the road.
More than forty yards away, less than fifty. At first there was nothing happening. No traffic. Then a car flashed past east to west, left to right, away from Kelham, toward town, moving fast. A big car, with lights on its roof and a shield on its door.
"Pellegrino," she said. She was watching too now. Right at my side. She said, "He was probably holed up a hundred yards away, and as soon as that last straggler passed him he counted to ten and hightailed it for home. "
I said, "Butler was parked right at Kelham's gate. "
"Yes, Butler is the one with a race on his hands. And our fate in his hands. As soon as he passes us, I guarantee we're alone in the world. This is a small town, Reacher, and I know where everyone is. "
The clock in my head said eleven forty-nine. Butler's plight involved a complex calculation. He was three miles away and wouldn't hesitate to drive at sixty, which meant he could be home in three minutes. But he couldn't start that three-minute dash until the last straggler got at least within headlight range of Kelham. And that last straggler might be driving pretty slow at that point, having had a skinful of beer and having seen Pellegrino parked menacingly on the side of the road. My guess was Butler would be through in eleven minutes, which would be midnight exactly, and I said so.
"No, he'll have jumped the gun," Deveraux said. "The last ten minutes have been fairly quiet. He'll have moved off the gate five minutes ago. That's my guess. He might not be far behind Pellegrino. "
We watched the road.
All quiet.
I opened my door and got out of the car. I stepped right on the edge of the rail bed. The left-hand rail was no more than a yard away. It was gleaming in the moonlight. I figured the train was ten miles south of us. Passing through Marietta, maybe, right at that moment.
Deveraux got out on her side and we met behind the Caprice's trunk. Eleven fifty-one. Nine minutes to go. We watched the road.
All quiet.
Deveraux stepped back around and opened a rear door. She checked the back seat. She said, "Just in case. We might as well be ready. "
"Too cramped," I said.
"You don't like doing it in cars?"
"They don't make them wide enough. "
She checked her watch.
She said, "We won't make it back to Toussaint's in time. "
I said, "Let's do it right here. On the ground. "
She smiled.
Then wider.
"Sounds good to me," she said. "Like Janice Chapman. "
"If she did," I said. I took off my BDU jacket and spread it out on the weeds, as long and wide as it would go.
We watched the road.
All quiet.
She took off her gun belt and stowed it on the rear seat of the car. Eleven fifty-four. Six minutes. I knelt down and put my ear on the rail. I heard a faint metallic whisper. Almost not there at all. The train, six miles south.
We watched the road.
We saw a hint of a glow in the east.
Headlights.
Deveraux said, "Good old Butler. "
The glow grew brighter, and we heard rushing tires and a straining engine in the silence of the night. Then the glow changed to delineated beams and the noise grew louder and a second later Butler's car flashed left-to-right in front of us and thwacked over the crossing without slowing down at all. He went airborne on the lee side and crashed back to earth with a yelp of rubber and a cloud of dust. Then he was gone.
Four minutes to go.
We were neither refined nor elegant. We wrenched our shoes off and pulled our pants down and abandoned all adult sophistication in favor of pure animal instinct. Deveraux hit the deck and got comfortable on my jacket and I went down right on top of her and propped myself up on my palms and watched for the glimmer of the train's headlight in the distance. Not there yet. Three minutes to go.
She wrapped her legs around my hips and we got going, fast and hard from the first moment, anxious, desperate, insanely energetic. She was gasping and panting and rolling her head from side to side and grabbing fistfuls of my T-shirt and hauling on it. Then we were kissing and breathing both at the same time, and then she was arching her back and grinding her head on the ground, straining her neck, opening her eyes, looking at the world behind her upside down.
Then the ground began to shake.
