The Hard Way

“What happened on your birthday?”

“They gave me a present.”

“Which was?”

“A choice.”

“Of what?”

“They hauled out about a dozen guys. I guess we all shared the same birthday. They took us to a courtyard. First thing I noticed was a big bucket of tar on a propane burner. It was bubbling away. Real hot. I remembered the smell from when I was a kid, from when they were blacktopping roads where I lived. My mother believed some old superstition that said if a kid sniffed the tar smell it would protect him from getting coughs and colds. She would send us out to chase the trucks. So I knew the smell real well. Then I saw next to the bucket was a big stone block, all black with blood. Then some big guard grabbed a machete and started screaming at the first guy in line. I had no idea what he was saying. The guy next to me spoke a little English and translated for me. He said we had a choice. Three choices, actually. To celebrate our birthdays we were going to lose a foot. First choice, left or right. Second choice, long pants or short pants. That was a kind of joke. It meant we could be cut above the knee or below. Our choice. Third choice, we could use the bucket or not. Our choice. You plunge the stump in there, the boiling tar seals the arteries and cauterizes the wound. Choose not to, and you bleed out and die. Our choice. But the guard said we had to choose fast. We weren’t allowed to mess around and hold up the queue behind us.”

Silence in the tiny room. Nobody spoke. There was no sound at all, except faint incongruous New York City sirens in the far distance.

Hobart said, “I chose left, long pants, and yes to the bucket.”

CHAPTER 41

FOR A LONG time the small room stayed quiet as a tomb. Hobart rolled his head from side to side to ease his neck. Reacher sat down in a small chair near the window.

Hobart said, “Twelve months later on my next birthday I chose right, long pants, and yes to the bucket.”

Reacher said, “They did this to Knight, too?”

Hobart nodded. “We thought we had been close before. But some things really bring you together.”

Pauling was leaning up in the kitchen doorway, white as a sheet. “Knight told you about A

“He told me about a lot of things. But remember, we were doing seriously hard time. We were sick and starving. We had infections. We had malaria and dysentery. We were out of our heads for weeks at a time with fevers.”

“What did he tell you?”

“He told me he shot A

“Did he tell you why?”

“He gave me a whole bunch of different reasons. Different day, different reason. Sometimes it was that he had been having an affair with her, and she broke it off, and he got mad. Other times it was that Lane was mad at her and asked him to do it. Other times he said he was working for the CIA. Once he said she was an alien from another planet.”

“Did he kidnap her?”

Hobart nodded, slowly, painfully. “Drove her to the store, but didn’t stop there. Just pulled a gun and kept on going, all the way to New Jersey. Killed her there.”

“Immediately?” Pauling asked.

Hobart said, “Yes, immediately. She was dead a day before you ever even heard of her. There was nothing wrong with your procedures. He killed her that first morning and drove back and waited outside the store until it was time to sound the alarms.”

“Not possible,” Pauling said. “His EZ-Pass records showed he hadn’t used a bridge or a tu

“Give me a break,” Hobart said. “You pull the tag off the windshield and put it in the foil packet they mailed it in. Then you use a cash lane.”

“Were you really in Philadelphia?” Reacher asked.

“Yes, I really was,” Hobart said.

“Did you know what Knight was doing that day?”

“No, I really didn’t.”

“Who faked A

“Sometimes Knight would say it was a couple of his buddies. Sometimes he would say Lane took care of all of that.”

“Which version did you believe?”

Hobart’s head dropped to his chest and canted left. He stared toward the floor. Reacher asked, “Can I get you something?”

“I’m just looking at your shoes,” Hobart said. “I like nice shoes, too. Or at least I did.”

“You’ll get prosthetics. You can wear shoes with them.”

“Can’t afford them. Prosthetics, or shoes.”

Pauling said, “What was the truth about A

Hobart pulled his head back to the cushion so he could look straight up at Pauling. He smiled, sadly.

“The truth about A

Silence in the room.

“The things you remember,” Hobart said. “I remember the stink of the blood and the tar bucket and the pile of severed hands behind that big stone block. A bunch of black ones and one little white one.”

Pauling asked, “What was the truth about A

“The waiting was the hardest part. I spent a year looking at my right hand. Doing things with it. Making a fist, spreading my fingers, scratching myself with my nails.”

“Why did Knight kill A

“They weren’t having an affair. Not possible. Knight wasn’t that type of a guy. I’m not saying he had scruples. He was just a little timid around women, that’s all. He did OK with trash in bars or with hookers, but A

“You sure?”

“I knew him very well. And he didn’t have the kind of buddies that could have faked the voices. Certainly not a woman’s voice. He had no women friends. He didn’t have any friends outside of me and the unit. Not really. Not close enough for work like that. What Marine does? That’s when I knew he was bullshitting. There was nobody he knew where he could just walk up to them and say, hey, help me out with this phony kidnap thing, why don’t you?”

“So why did he even try bullshitting you?”

“Because he understood better than me that reality was over for us. There was really no difference between truth and fantasy for us at that point. They were of absolutely equal value. He was just amusing himself. Maybe he was trying to amuse me, too. But I was still analyzing stuff. He gave me a whole rainbow of reasons and details and facts and scenarios and I checked them over very carefully in my mind for five long years and the only story I really believed was that Lane set the whole thing up because A

“Why would Lane want Knight dead if all he had done was act on Lane’s own orders?”

“Lane was covering his ass. Tying up the loose ends. And he was avoiding being in someone else’s debt. That was the main thing, really. Ultimately that was the true reason. A guy like Lane, his ego couldn’t take that, either. Being grateful to someone.”