The sergeant said, 'Mostly I remember the driver.'
'Male or female?'
'Male. A big guy, with a busted nose. Badly busted. I mean raw, like a very recent injury. He looked like a gorilla with its face smashed in.'
'Like the result of a fight?'
'He more or less admitted it. But he said it didn't happen in Iowa.'
'You talked to him?'
'Briefly. He was polite enough to me. Nothing to report, apart from the nose.'
'Was he acting nervous?'
'Not really. He was quiet. And stoic. He had to be, with a nose like that. He should have been in the hospital.'
'What was he wearing?'
'A winter coat.'
'What about the passengers?'
'I don't really recall them very well.'
'You're not on the witness stand here, sergeant. You're not under oath. Anything you can remember might help me.'
'All I have is impressions. I don't want to mislead you.'
'Anything at all might help.'
'Well, I thought they were like Peter, Paul and Mary.'
'Who?'
'Folk singers. From back in the day. Before your time, maybe. They were all dressed the same. Like a singing group. Two men and a woman.'
'Blue denim shirts?'
'Exactly. Like a country music trio. I figured their trunk would be full of steel-strung guitars. I thought maybe they were heading from last night's show to tonight's. We see that sometimes. And the woman was all made up, like she had just come off stage.'
'But the driver was different?'
'I thought he was maybe a manager. Or a roadie. You know, big and rough. Just an impression, like I said.'
'Anything else?'
'Don't quote me, OK?'
'I won't.'
'There was an atmosphere. The woman looked mad. Or resentful, somehow. I thought maybe the shows weren't going so well, and she wanted to quit the tour, but it was two against one. Or three, if the manager guy had a stake. It was late, but she was wide awake, like she had something on her mind. That was my impression, anyway.'
Sorenson said nothing.
The sergeant said, 'They were the targets, right?'
Sorenson said, 'The two men in the shirts, yes.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Not your fault.'
Then the captain came back on. He said, 'Ma'am, you told us to look for two fugitives, not some family psychodrama involving a car full of vaudeville players.'
'Not your fault,' Sorenson said again.
'Can I break down this roadblock now?'
'Yes,' Sorenson said. 'And I need an APB on that plate number, all points east of you.'
'I have no units on the road east of me, lady. I had to bring them all here. Face it, ma'am, whoever those guys are, they're long gone now.'
Reacher could wink, but only with his left eye. A childhood inheritance. As a kid he had slept mostly on his left side, and on waking would keep his left eye closed against the pillow and open only his right, to peer around whatever darkened bedroom he happened to be in. And he wasn't sure Delfuenso could see his left eye. Not from the back seat, with the mirror set the way it was. And to mess with his vision was not a good idea at eighty miles an hour, anyway. So he raised his right hand off the shifter, so she could see it, and then he dropped it back.
He jabbed his thumb to the left. No mirror involved. They were both facing the same way. Left was left. He tapped his index finger three times. Then left again, one tap. Then right, nine, his pale finger fast but clear in the low light, and then left, ten, and left, one, and left, three, and finally left, eleven.
He looked in the mirror and raised his eyebrows, to supply the question mark.
Carjack?
Delfuenso nodded back at him, eagerly.
A definite yes.
Which explained a lot of things.
But not the matching outfits.
Reacher took his hand off the shifter and plucked at the shoulder of his coat, finger and thumb, and he looked quizzically in the mirror and mouthed, 'Shirts?'
Delfuenso glanced left, glanced right, frustrated, as if unable to find a quick way to explain. Then she looked hard to her left, as if checking on McQueen, and she started to unbutton her shirt. Reacher watched the road with one eye and the mirror with the other. Three buttons, four, five. Then Delfuenso pulled her shirt wide open and Reacher saw a tiny black and silver garment under it, like fancy underwear, like a bodice, laced tight against her stomach, her breasts resting high and proud on a fabric shelf made from two vestigial cups.
Reacher nodded in the mirror. He had seen similar outfits. Most men had. Every soldier had. She was a roadhouse waitress, maybe a bartender. She had been coming off her shift, maybe getting into her car, maybe waiting at a light, and the two guys had pounced. They had stopped somewhere and bought her a shirt, to eliminate an APB's inevitable headline description: a dark-haired woman wearing practically nothing.
Delfuenso started buttoning up again. Reacher jabbed his finger in Alan King's direction and his thumb in Don McQueen's, and then he opened his hand and raised it uncertainly, questioningly, like a universal semaphore: Why them too?
Delfuenso opened her mouth and closed it, and then she started blinking again, a long and laborious sequence.
Forward two, forward twelve, backward twelve, backward twelve, forward four.
B-L-O-O-D, blood.
Backward twelve, backward thirteen.
O-N, on.
Backward seven, forward eight, forward five, forward nine, backward nine.
T-H-E-I-R, their.
'Blood on their clothes?' Reacher mouthed.
Delfuenso nodded.
Reacher drove on through the darkness, with the white Dodge's tail lights still a mile ahead, past quiet lonely exits spaced miles apart, with questions in his head spinning like plates on sticks.
TWENTY-TWO
SHERIFF GOODMAN HUNCHED deeper into his coat against the cold and turned a full circle in the convenience store's back lot. He said, 'I assume they parked here. Therefore they probably changed here too. Maybe they trashed their old jackets. The knife too, possibly. We should check the trash cans.'
Sorenson said, 'You volunteering?'
'I have deputies with nothing better to do.'
'OK,' Sorenson said. 'But it's probably a waste of time. A buck gets ten they pitched the jackets in Delfuenso's trunk. And they probably dropped the knife down one of the water pipes in the bunker.'
'Are you going to try a third roadblock?'
'Iowa doesn't have the manpower.'
'Illinois, then. If they're staying on the Interstate, they're most likely going all the way to Chicago. You could have the Illinois cops waiting for them, right on the state line.'
'They have to know they're pushing their luck. They've survived twice. They won't risk a third time. They're going to take back roads now. Or go to ground somewhere.'
'So we're done with roadblocks?'
'I think there's nothing more to be gained.'
'Will their thinking match yours?'
'I'm trying to make mine match theirs.'
'Then that's bad news for Karen Delfuenso,' Goodman said. 'They don't need the smokescreen any more. They'll dump her out in the middle of nowhere.'
'They won't,' Sorenson said. 'She's seen their faces. They'll kill her.'
The first question in Reacher's mind was: would they call out roadblocks in two separate states for a carjacking? And the answer was: yes, probably. Almost certainly, in fact. Because carjacking where the owner was forced to stay on board was kidnapping, and kidnapping was a big, big deal. A federal case, literally, handled by the FBI, which was the only agency capable of coordinating a multi-state response.
And the local terrain was huge and empty. Blocking the roads was about the only option for any kind of law enforcement in that part of the country.
That, and helicopters.
And Reacher had seen a helicopter, a thousand feet up, with a searchlight.
Second question: what were the odds against two sets of roadblock-worthy and helicopter-worthy and FBI-worthy fugitives being on the loose on the same winter night in the same lonely place? Answer: very long odds indeed. Very unlikely. Coincidences happened, but to be there to witness one was a coincidence in itself, and two simultaneous coincidences was one too many.