“No choice,” he said, and braked and steered and turned in to the tunnel. Up close they saw the plastic letters on the sign had been painted gold, with a narrow brush and a steady hand, like a promise, like the motel was a high-class place. There was a second sign, identical, facing drivers coming the other way.
“OK?” Shorty said.
The air felt cold in the tunnel. Easily ten degrees colder than the main drag. Last fall’s leaf litter and last winter’s mud were mashed together on the shoulders.
“OK?” Shorty asked again.
They drove over a wire laid across the road. A fat rubbery thing, not much smaller than a garden hose. Like they had at gas stations, to ding a bell in the kiosk, to get the pump jockey out to help you.
Patty didn’t answer.
Shorty said, “How bad can it be? It’s marked on the map.”
“The track is marked.”
“The sign was nice.”
“I agree,” Patty said. “It was.”
They drove on.
Chapter 2
The trees cooled and freshened the air, so Reacher was happy to keep up a steady four miles an hour, which for his length of leg was exactly eighty-eight beats a minute, which was exactly the tempo of a whole bunch of great music, so it was easy time to pass. He did thirty minutes, two miles, seven classic tracks in his head, and then he heard real sounds behind him, and turned around to see an ancient pick-up coming crabwise toward him, as if each of the wheels wanted to go in a different direction.
Reacher stuck out his thumb.
The truck stopped. An old guy with a long white beard leaned across inside and wound down the passenger window.
He said, “I’m going to Laconia.”
“Me, too,” Reacher said.
“Well, OK.”
Reacher got in, and wound the window back up. The old guy pulled out and wobbled back up to speed.
He said, “I guess this is the part where you tell me I need new tires.”
“It’s a possibility,” Reacher said.
“But at my age I try to avoid large capital expenditures. Why invest in the future? Do I even have one?”
“That argument is more circular than your tires.”
“Actually the frame is bent. I was in a wreck.”
“When?”
“Close on twenty-three years ago.”
“So this is normal to you now.”
“Keeps me awake.”
“How do you know where to point the steering wheel?”
“You get used to it. Like sailing a boat. Why are you going to Laconia?”
“I was passing by,” Reacher said. “My father was born there. I want to see it.”
“What’s your last name?”
“Reacher.”
The old guy shook his head.
He said, “I never knew anyone in Laconia named Reacher.”
* * *
—
The reason for the previous Y-shaped fork in the road turned out to be a lake, wide enough to make north-south drivers pick a side, right bank or left bank. Reacher and the old guy squirmed and shuddered along the right bank, which was mechanically stressful, but visually beautiful, because the view was stunning and the sun was less than an hour from setting. Then came the town of Laconia itself. It was a bigger place than Reacher expected. Fifteen or twenty thousand people. A county seat. Solid and prosperous. There were brick buildings and neat old-fashioned streets. The low red sun made them look like they were in an old-time movie.
The squirming pick-up truck wobbled to a stop at a downtown corner. The old guy said, “This is Laconia.”
Reacher said, “How much has it changed?”
“Around here, not much.”
“I grew up thinking it was smaller than this.”
“Most people remember things bigger.”
Reacher thanked the guy for the ride, and got out, and watched the truck squeal away, each tire insisting the other three were wrong. Then he turned away and walked random blocks, getting a sense for what might be where, in particular two specific destinations for start of business the next day, and two for immediate attention that evening, the first being a place to eat, and the second being a place to sleep.
Both were available, in a historic-downtown kind of way. Healthy food, no place more than two tables wide. No hotels in town, but plenty of inns and plenty of bed and breakfasts. He ate at a narrow bistro, because a waitress smiled at him through the window, after a moment of embarrassment when she brought his order. Which was some kind of salad with roast beef in it, which was the menu choice he felt would be most nutritious. But when it came it was tiny. He asked for a second order, and a bigger plate. At first the waitress misunderstood. She thought there was something wrong with the first order. Or the size of the plate. Or both. Then she caught on. He was hungry. He wanted two portions. She asked if there was anything else he needed. He asked for a bigger cup for his coffee.
Afterward he tracked back to lodgings he had seen, on a side street near the city offices. There was room at the inn. Vacation time was over. He paid a premium price for what the innkeeper called a suite, but what he called a room with a sofa and way too many floral patterns and feather pillows. He shoveled a dozen off the bed and put his pants under the mattress to press. Then he took a long hot shower, and climbed under the sheets, and went to sleep.
* * *
—
The tunnel through the trees turned out to be more than two miles long. Patty Sundstrom traced its curves with her finger on the map. Under the Honda’s wheels was grayed and pitted blacktop, the finished surface completely washed away in places by runoff water, leaving shallow potholes the size of pool tables, some of them bare ribbed concrete, some of them graveled, some of them full of leaf mold slop still wet from springtime, because overhead the leafy canopy was thick and unbroken, apart from one spot where no trees grew for twenty-some yards. There was a bar of bright pink open sky. Maybe a narrow seam of different dirt, or a sudden underground escarpment of solid rock, or a hydraulic oddity with no ground water, or too much. Then the sliver of sky was behind them. They were back in the tunnel. Shorty Fleck was going slow, to save the shocks and nurse the motor. He wondered if he should put his headlights on.
Then the canopy thinned for a second time, with the promise of more to come, like a big clearing was on its way, like they were arriving somewhere. What they saw was the road ahead coming out of the trees and running in a straight line through a couple acres of flat grassland, the thin gray ribbon suddenly naked and exposed in the last of the daylight. Its destination was a group of three substantial wooden buildings, laid out one after the other on a sweeping right-hand curve, maybe fifty yards between the first and the last. All three were painted dull red, with bright white trim. Set against the green grass they looked like classic New England structures.