At the last minute he sidestepped and the car slid to a stop alongside him. The driver's window came down. A woman at the wheel. Her face was pale and swollen with sleep. Her hair was a mess. Her eyes were red. He didn't know her.
He said, 'I have to get to the Salter house.' His words were unclear. His lips were numb. The upper part of his face was a frozen slab. The lower half was just as bad. The hinge in his jaw was hardly working at all.
The cop said, 'What?'
'I need a ride.'
'Where?'
'Janet Salter's house.'
Five miles away the prison siren howled on. There was radio chatter in the car. A dispatcher's voice, low and fast, trying not to sound urgent. Probably the old guy already back at the police station desk. There was alcohol on the woman's breath. Maybe bourbon. A nightcap. Maybe two or three of them.
She asked, 'Who the hell are you?'
Reacher said, 'I've been working with Holland and Peterson.'
'Peterson's dead.'
'I know that.'
'Are you the MP?'
'Yes. And I need a ride.'
She said, 'Can't do it.'
'So why did you turn in for me?'
'I didn't. I'm heading for my position.'
'The prison isn't this way.'
'We make a perimeter a mile out. I get the northeast corner. This is how I'm supposed to get to it.'
'What happened?'
'The biker escaped. His cell is empty.'
'No,' Reacher said. 'What do you mean, no?'
'Not possible. It's a fake. It's a decoy.'
'He's either in there or not, pal. And they say not.'
'He's hiding out in there. In a broom closet or something. It's a fake.'
'Bullshit.'
'I've seen it before. Two problems with escaping. Getting out, and then beating the manhunt. The smart ones hide first. Inside. Until the manhunt dies. Then they go. But this guy isn't going anywhere. He's doing the first part only. As a decoy.'
The cop didn't answer.
'Think about it,' Reacher said. 'Escaping is harder than it looks. I promise you, he's still in there. Tomorrow he'll get hungry and come on out from wherever he holed up. Big smile on his face. Because it will be too late by then.'
'You're nuts.'
'He's still in there. Believe me. Take a chance. Be the one.'
'You're crazy.'
'OK, suppose I am. Suppose the guy really is out. He was gone more than five hours ago. You know that. So what the hell is the point of a one-mile perimeter now?'
The cop didn't answer.
The siren howled on.
'Five minutes,' Reacher said. 'Please. That's all I need from you.'
The cop didn't answer. Just hit the button and the gas and her window thumped back up and the car moved off. He leaned towards it and it accelerated and the rear three-quarter panel smacked him in the hip and spun him around and dumped him down hard on his back. He lay breathless in the frozen snow and watched the acre of lights move away into the distance.
I know what to do, Janet Salter had said.
Reacher got up and struggled onward to the corner and the siren died. It cut off mid-wail and tiny brittle echoes of its last howl came back off the ice and then night-time silence swarmed in. Not the dull padded silence of fresh snowfall, but the weird keening, crackling, scouring, rustling hiss of a deep-frozen world. The thump of his footsteps ran ahead of him through veins and sheets of ice. The wind was still out of the west, in his face, hurling tiny frozen needles at him. He looked back. He had made it through a hundred and fifty yards. That was all. He had two miles ahead of him. There was nothing on the road. He was completely alone.
He was very cold.
He half walked, half ran, in the wheel ruts, his heels sliding wildly after every step until they locked into the next broken fissure, where a tyre chain had cracked the surface. He was breathing hard, freezing air burning down his windpipe and searing his lungs. He was coughing and gasping.
Two miles to go. Maybe thirty whole minutes. Too long. He thought, surely one of them had the balls to stay with her. One of the seven. One of the women. Damn the rules. Damn the plan. Peterson was dead. Still warm. Enough justification right there. Surely one of them would gut it out and tell the feds to go to hell. At least one. Maybe more. Maybe two or three.
Maybe all of them.
Or maybe none of them.
I know what to do, Janet Salter had said.
Did she?
Had she done it?
Reacher pounded on. One step, and another, and another. The wind pushed back at him. Ice fragments pattered against his coat. All the feeling had gone out of his feet and his hands. The water in his eyes felt like it was freezing solid.
Dead ahead was a bank. It stood alone in a small parking lot. The edge of town. The first building. It had a sign on a tall concrete pillar. Red numbers. Time and temperature. Twenty past one in the morning. Minus thirty degrees.
He struggled on, faster. He felt he was getting somewhere. Left and right there was one building after another. A grocery store, a pharmacy, party favours, DVD rental. Auto parts, UPS, a package store, a dry cleaner. All with parking lots. All spread out. All for customers with cars. He hurried on. He was sweating and shivering, all at the same time. The buildings closed in. They grew second storeys. Downtown. The big four-way was a hundred yards ahead. Right to the prison, left to the highway. He cut the corner on a cross street. Turned south at the police station. The wind was howling through the forest of antennas on its roof.
A mile to go.
He ran alone down the centre of the main drag. A solitary figure. Ungainly. Short, choppy steps. He was bringing his feet up and dropping them down more or less vertically. It was the only way to stay upright. No fluid, loping stride. The ice didn't allow it. His vision was blurring. His throat burned. All around him every window was dark and blank. He was the only thing moving, in a white empty world.
Reacher passed the family restaurant. It was closed up and quiet. Dark inside. Ghostly inverted chairs were stacked on tables like a silent anxious crowd all with upraised arms. Four hundred yards to Janet Salter's street. Forty seconds, for a decent athlete. Reacher took two minutes. The roadblock car was long gone. Just its ruts remained. Empty, like a railroad switch. Reacher picked his way over them. Headed on down the street. Past one house, past the next. The wind hissed through evergreens. The earth creaked and groaned under his feet.
Janet Salter's driveway.
Lights in the house.
No movement.
No sound.
Nothing out of place.
All quiet.
He rested for a second, his hands on his knees, his chest heaving.
Then he hurried up towards the house.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
REACHER STEPPED UP ON JANET SALTER'S PORCH. HER DOOR WAS locked. He pulled the handle for the bell. The wire spooled out of the little bronze eye. It spooled back in. The bell bonged, a second later, quiet and polite and discreet, deep inside the silent house.
No response.
Which was good. She wouldn't hear it in the basement. And even if she did, she wouldn't come out to answer it.
He hoped.
I know what to do, she had said. The basement, the gun, the password.
He peered in through a stained glass panel. The hallway lights were still on. He got a blue distorted view of the room. The chair. The telephone table. The stairs, the rug, the paintings. The empty hat stand.
No movement. No one there. No sign of disturbance.
All quiet.
Forty-three possible ways in, according to his earlier calculation, fifteen of them practical, eight of them easy. He backed away from the door and recrossed the porch. Stepped down and floundered through deep crusty snow alongside foundation plantings, around the side of the house, to the rear. He knew from his earlier inspection that the lock on the kitchen door was a sturdy brass item with a tongue neatly fitted into a heavy escutcheon plate. The plate was set into the jamb, which was a strip of century-old softwood. It was painted, whereas the front door's jamb was a piece of lacquered chestnut, fine-grained and milled and exquisite. Harder to replace. All things considered, breaking in at the rear would be the considerate thing to do.