“Then perhaps because your grandparents moved away before your father had a family of his own. Before visits became a thing.”
“I got the impression my grandparents stayed here the rest of their lives.”
“But you never met them?”
“We were a Marine family. We were always somewhere else.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault.”
“But thank you for your service.”
“Wasn’t my service. My dad was the Marine, not me. I was hoping we could look him up, maybe in a register of births or something, to get his parents’ full names, so we could find their exact address, maybe in property tax records or something, so I could drop by and take a look.”
“You don’t know your grandparents’ names?”
“I think they were James and Elizabeth Reacher.”
“That’s my name.”
“Your name is Reacher?”
“No, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Castle.”
“I’m pleased to meet you,” Reacher said.
“Likewise,” she said.
“I’m Jack Reacher. My dad was Stan Reacher.”
“How long ago did Stan leave to join the Marines?”
“He would be about ninety now, so it was more than seventy years ago.”
“Then we should start eighty years ago, for a safety margin,” the woman said. “At that point Stan Reacher would be about ten years old, living at home with his parents James and Elizabeth Reacher, somewhere in Laconia. Is that a fair summary?”
“That could be chapter one of my biography.”
“I’m pretty sure the computer goes back more than eighty years now,” she said. “But for property taxes that old it might just be a list of names, I’m afraid.”
She turned a key and opened a lid in the countertop. Under it was a keyboard and a screen. Safe from thieves, while unattended. She pressed a button, and looked away.
“Booting up,” she said.
Which were words he had heard before, in a technological context, but to him they sounded military, as if infantry companies were lacing tight ahead of a general advance.
She clicked and scrolled, and scrolled and clicked.
“Yes,” she said. “Eighty years ago is just an index, with file numbers. If you want detail, you need to request the actual physical document from storage. Usually that takes a long time, I’m afraid.”
“How long?”
“Sometimes three months.”
“Are there names and addresses in the index?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s really all we need.”
“I guess so. If all you want to do is take a look at the house.”
“That’s all I’m planning to do.”
“Aren’t you curious?”
“About what?”
“Their lives. Who they were and what they did.”
“Not three months’ worth of curious.”
“OK, then names and addresses are all we need.”
“If the house is still there,” he said. “Maybe someone tore it down. Suddenly eighty years sounds like a real long time.”
“Things change slowly here,” she said.
She clicked again, and scrolled, fast at first, scooting down through the alphabet, and then slowly, peering at the screen, through what Reacher assumed was the R section, and then back up again, just as slowly, peering just as hard. Then down and up again fast, as if trying to shake something loose.
She said, “No one named Reacher owned property in Laconia eighty years ago.”
Chapter 4
Patty Sundstrom also woke again at eight in the morning, later than she would have liked, but finally she had succumbed to exhaustion, and she had slept deeply for almost five more hours. She sensed the space in the bed next to her was empty. She rolled over and saw the door was open. Shorty was out in the lot. He was talking to one of the motel guys. Maybe Peter, she thought. The guy who looked after the quad-bikes. They were standing next to the Honda. Its hood was up. The sun was bright.
She slipped out of bed and crept bent-over to the bathroom. So Peter or whoever it was by the Honda wouldn’t see. She showered, and dressed in the same clothes, because she hadn’t brought enough for an extra day. She came out of the bathroom. She was hungry. The door was still open. The sun was still bright. Now Shorty was there on his own. The other guy had gone.
She stepped out and said, “Good morning.”
“Car won’t start,” Shorty said. “The guy messed with it and now it’s dead. It was OK last night.”
“It was not OK, exactly.”
“It started last night. Now it won’t. The guy must have messed it up.”
“What did he do?”
“He poked around some. He had a wrench and a pair of pliers. I think he made it worse.”
“Was it Peter? The guy that looks after the quad-bikes?”
“So he says. If it’s true, good luck to them. Probably that’s why they need nine bikes in the first place. To make sure they always have one that works.”
“The car started last night because it was hot. Now it’s cold. That makes a difference.”
“You’re a mechanic now?”
“Are you?” she said.
“I think the guy broke something.”
“And I think he’s trying to help us the best he can. We should be grateful.”
“For getting our car broken?”
“It was already broken.”
“It started last night. First turn of the key.”
She said, “Did you have a problem with the room door?”
He said, “When?”
“When you came out this morning.”
“What kind of problem?”
“I wanted some air in the night but I couldn’t get it open. It was jammed.”
“I didn’t have a problem,” Shorty said. “It opened right up.”
Fifty yards away they saw Peter come out of the barn, with a brown canvas bag in his hand. It looked heavy. Tools, Patty thought. To fix their car.
She said, “Shorty Fleck, now you listen to me. These gentlemen are trying to help us, and I want you to act like you appreciate it. At the very minimum l don’t want you to give them a reason to stop helping us before they’re finished. Do I make myself clear?”
“Jesus,” he said. “You’re acting like this is my fault or something.”
“Yeah, something,” she said, and then she shut up and waited for Peter, with the bag of tools. Who clanked up to them with a cheerful smile, as if he was just itching to clap the dust off his hands and get straight to work.
She said, “Thanks so much for your help.”
He said, “No problem at all.”
“I hope it’s not too complicated.”
“Right now it’s dead as a doornail. Which is usually electrical. Maybe a wire melted.”
“Can you fix that?”
“We could splice in a replacement. Just enough to bypass the bad part. Sooner or later you would want to get it properly repaired. It’s the kind of thing that could shake loose eventually.”
“How long does it take to splice?”
“First we need to find where it melted.”
“The engine started last night,” Shorty said. “Then we ran it two minutes and shut it off again. It got cooler and cooler, all night long. How would anything melt?”
Peter said nothing.
“He’s just asking,” Patty said. “In case the melting thing is a wild goose chase. We wouldn’t want to take up more of your time than we had to. It’s very nice of you to help us.”
“It’s OK,” Peter said. “It’s a reasonable question. When you stop the engine you also stop the radiator fan and the water pump. So there’s no forced cooling and no circulation. The hottest water rises passively to the top of the cylinder head. Surface temperatures can actually get worse in the first hour. Maybe there was a wire touching the metal.”