Then he stopped.
He said, “Here.”
He pulled out a faded sheet of paper. Reacher took it from him. It was a photocopied newsletter, dated eight years previously. Clearly one of a sequence of several, covering an issue in feverish detail, with a clear assumption of some prior knowledge. But it was easy enough to follow. The issue was Ryantown.
A little prior history was referred to, with the first appearance of the mill in the historical record, and then much later its period of peak production, which by implication seemed to be universally accepted as a horrific tableau of clouds of smoke and raging fires and boiling metals, like a miniature hell, like something the old poet Dante would have been proud of. Except that the next sentence, in brackets, was a grudging apology that the photograph used to illustrate the same point in an earlier edition had not actually been of Ryantown itself, but was a stock library image of a mill town in Massachusetts a decade earlier than the newsletter suggested, but which was nevertheless chosen with absolutely no intention to deceive, but rather in a spirit meant to be taken as purely mood-based, as such a tragic subject surely demanded, not literally, as indeed most histories were all too often written, usually to their detriment.
After the apology the narrative cut to the then-current chase, which seemed to be equal parts political, legal, and deranged. Apparently it was not yet definitively proved that the slow decomposition of Ryantown’s ancient mineral runoff had harmed anyone’s ground water. But it surely would be proved, and soon. Some of the world’s top scientists were working on it. It was only a matter of time. Therefore readiness was everything. In which connection there was splendid news. Old Marcus Ryan’s long chain of heirs and assigns had finally been untangled, and it was now certain beyond a reasonable doubt that the remaining stock in his company had been bundled with other near worthless assets and swept up in a sixty-year tornado of big-fish-eat-little-fish deals, which as of that moment had left the stock technically in the hands of a giant mining corporation based in Colorado. It was a breakthrough of enormous significance, because at last the tragic Ryantown ecological disaster had an identifiable owner. The lawsuits were typed up and ready to go.
At the bottom of the newsletter was a call for all concerned citizens to attend a meeting. Below that was an obvious pseudonym as the writer’s name, and an e-mail address.
Reacher handed the paper back to Jones.
He said, “What did you think of this at the time?”
“There’s nothing wrong with our water,” Jones said. “Never has been. I remember at first I figured this guy was probably a lawyer, jumping on a bandwagon. I figured he had identified a big corporation to go after with a class action suit. Maybe the company would settle just to make him go away. Bad ground water is never good PR. The lawyer would get a third. But I never heard about it again. I guess it fizzled out. I guess he never got his proof. Which he couldn’t ever anyway, because the water is fine.”
“You said at first you thought he was a lawyer.”
“Later someone told me he was just a crazy old coot about five miles north of here. Then I met him, and he seemed harmless enough. He’s not looking for money. He wants them to acknowledge their wrongdoing. Like a public confession. That seems to mean a lot to him.”
“You didn’t go to the meeting?”
“Meetings are not my thing.”
“Pity,” Reacher said.
“Why?”
“One very important fact about Ryantown was not in the newsletter.”
“What?”
“Where it is.”
“I thought you knew. You said the side road and the river.”
“That was a best guess. Plus now you tell me it’s going to look like a patch of primeval forest anyway. Which at first glance would seem to include about two-thirds of the state. I don’t want to spend all day.”
“To see the place your father grew up? Some folks would spend all day.”
“Where did your father grow up?”
“Right here.”
“Which is a lovely place, I can see. But we just agreed Ryantown is an overgrown hole in the ground. There’s a difference.”
“It might be of sentimental value. People like to know where they come from.”
“Right now I would rather know what a guy who wants to build a mill would need. He would need the road and the water. Is there anything else he would need?”
“How would I know?”
“You know how land is used.”
“I guess where the river meets the road would make sense. Look for a stand of trees with straight edges. The neighbors would have wanted safe grazing. They would have railed off the falling-down buildings long before the saplings came up, from seeds blowing in. The copse will have grown the same shape as the fences. Usually it’s the other way around.”
“Thank you,” Reacher said.
“Good luck,” Jones said.
The screen door creaked open ahead of him, and slapped shut behind him.
He walked away. All twelve dogs followed him to the picket gate.
Chapter 16
Patty and Shorty had moved out to their lawn chairs. Patty was staring at the view, which contained the dead Honda in the stony lot, and then the flat two acres, and then the dark belt of trees beyond, implacable, like a wall.
She looked at her watch.
She said, “Why is it when someone says between two hours and four hours it’s always nearer four hours than two hours?”
“Parkinson’s disease,” Shorty said. “Work expands to take up as much time as there is.”
“Law,” Patty said. “Not disease. That’s when you get the shakes.”
“I thought that was when you quit drinking.”
“It’s a lot of things.”
“How much longer has he got?”
Patty looked at her watch again, and did a sum in her head.
“Thirty-three minutes,” she said.
“Maybe he didn’t mean to be exactly precise.”
“He said two hours minimum and four hours maximum. That sounds exactly precise to me. Then he said, I promise I’ll get you on your way, cross my heart. With his accent.”
Shorty watched the dark space where the track came out of the woods.
He said, “Tell me about the mechanic things he told you.”
“Best part was he said he had to pay the bills. He said he was going to head out to the highway and maybe he would get lucky with a wreck. The way he said it sounded professional. It was the kind of thing only a mechanic would say. Who else would say lucky about a wreck?”