Nothing to Lose

He took the print from the girl and held it between his own thumb and forefinger. The bright greens in the photograph were in a background expanse of grass and a foreground expanse of T-shirt. The grass looked watered and forced and manicured and was probably in a city park somewhere. The T-shirt was a cheap cotton product being worn by a thin guy of about nineteen or twenty. The camera was looking up at him, as if the photograph was being taken by a much shorter person. The guy was posing quite formally and awkwardly. There was no spontaneity in his stance. Maybe repeated fumbles with the camera’s controls had required him to hold his position a little too long. His smile was genuine but a little frozen. He had white teeth in a brown face. He looked young, and friendly, and amiable, and fun to be around, and completely harmless.

Not thin, exactly.

He looked lean and wiry.

Not short, not tall. About average, in terms of height.

He looked to be about five feet eight.

He looked to weigh about a hundred and forty pounds.

He was Hispanic, but as much Mayan or Aztec as Spanish. There was plenty of pure Indian blood in him. That was for sure. He had shiny black hair, not brushed, a little tousled, neither long nor short. Maybe an inch and a half or two inches, with a clear tendency to wave.

He had prominent cheekbones.

He was casually dressed, and casually turned out.

He hadn’t shaved.

His chin and his upper lip were rough with black stubble.

His cheeks and his throat, not so much.

Young.

Not much more than a boy.

The girl asked, “Did you see him?”

Reacher asked, “What’s your name?”

“Myname?”

“Yes.”

“Maria.”

“What’s his name?”

“Raphael Ramirez.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

“How old is he?”

“Twenty.”

“Did you take this picture?”

“Yes.”

“In a park in San Diego?”

“Yes.”

“With your dad’s camera?”

“My uncle’s,” the girl said. “How did you know?”

Reacher didn’t answer. He looked again at Raphael Ramirez in the photograph. Maria’s boyfriend. Twenty years old. Five-eight, one-forty. The build. The hair, the cheekbones, the stubble.

The girl asked, “Did you see him?”

Reacher shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t see him.”

34

The girl left the diner. Reacher watched her go. He thought that an offer to walk her back to the motel might be misinterpreted, as if he was after something more for his hundred bucks than a feel-good glow. And she was in no kind of danger, anyway. Hope seemed to be a safe enough place. Unlikely to be packs of malefactors roaming the streets, mainly because nobody was roaming the streets. It was the middle of the night in a quiet, decent place in the middle of nowhere. So Reacher let her walk away and sat alone in his booth and roused the college girl from her book and had her bring him more coffee.

“You’ll never sleep,” she said.

“How often does Officer Vaughan swing by during the night?” he asked.

The girl smiled the same smile she had used before, right after she saidI hear things.

“At least once,” she said, and smiled again.

He said, “She’s married.”

She said, “I know.” She took the flask away and headed back to her book and left him with a steaming mug. He dipped his head and inhaled the smell. When he looked up again he saw Vaughan’s cruiser glide by outside. She slowed, as if she was noting that her truck was back. But she didn’t stop. She slid right by the diner’s window and drove on down Second Street.

Reacher left the diner at one o’clock in the morning and walked back to the motel. The moon was still out. The town was still quiet. The motel office had a low light burning. The rooms were all dark. He sat down in the plastic lawn chair outside his door and stretched his legs straight out and put his hands behind his head and listened to the silence, eyes wide open, staring into the moonlight.

It didn’t work. He didn’t relax.

You’ll never sleep,the waitress had said.

But not because of the coffee,he thought.

He got up again and walked away. Straight back to the diner. There were no customers. The waitress was reading her book. Reacher stepped straight to the register and took Vaughan’s truck keys off the counter. The waitress looked up but didn’t speak. Reacher stepped back to the door and caught it before it closed. Headed out across the sidewalk to the truck. Unlocked it, got in, started it up. Five minutes later he thumped over the line and was back in Despair.

The first twelve miles of empty road were predictably quiet. The town was quiet, too. Reacher slowed at the gas station and coasted down to twenty miles an hour and took a good look around. Main Street was deserted and silent. No cars on the streets, nobody on the sidewalks. The police station was dark. The rooming house was dark. The bar was closed up and shuttered. The hotel was just a blank façade, with a closed street door and a dozen dark windows. The church was empty and silent. The green grounding strap from the lightning rod was stained gray by the moonlight.

He drove on until the street petered out into half-colonized scrubland. He pulled a wide circle on the packed sand and stopped and idled with the whole town laid out north of him. It was lit up silver by the moon. It was just crouching there, silent and deserted and insignificant in the vastness.

He threaded his way back to Main Street. Turned left and headed onward, west, toward the metal plant.

The plant was shut down and dark. The wall around it glowed ghostly white in the moonlight. The perso

He heard the plane at five past two in the morning. A single engine, far in the distance, feathering and blipping. He craned his neck and saw a light in the sky, way to the south. A landing light. It looked motionless, like it would be suspended up there forever. Then it grew imperceptibly bigger and started hopping slightly, side to side, up and down, but mostly down. A small plane, on approach, buffeted by nighttime thermals and rocked by a firm hand on nervous controls. Its sound grew closer, but quieter, as the pilot shed power and looked for a glide path.

Lights came on beyond the fieldstone wall. A dull reflected glow. Runway markers, Reacher guessed, one at each end of the strip. He saw the plane move in the air, jumping left, correcting right, lining up with the lights. It was coming in from Reacher’s left. When it was three hundred yards out he saw that it was a smallish low-wing monoplane. It was white. When it was two hundred yards out he saw that it had a fixed undercarriage, with fairings over all three wheels, calledpants by airplane people. When it was a hundred yards out he identified it as a Piper, probably some kind of a Cherokee variant, a four-seater, durable, reliable, common, and popular. Beyond that, he had no information. He knew a little about small planes, but not a lot.