A second date. Possibly delicate. He didn’t want to ruin their evening. They would feel obliged to ask him to join them at their table. Saying no wouldn’t help. Then he would be eating two tables away, and they would feel self conscious and scrutinized. The whole atmosphere would feel weird and strained and artificial.
But he owed Amos. She was out on a limb. You don’t leave your room at any point. No one ever sees you. How much more walking around could he afford to do?
In the end the decision made itself. For some reason Elizabeth Castle looked up. She saw him. Her mouth opened in a little O of surprise, which then changed instantly to a smile, which looked totally genuine, and then she waved, at first just an excited greeting, but then an eager come-in-and-join-us gesture.
He went in. At that point it was the path of least resistance. He crossed the room. Carrington stood up to shake hands, courteous, a little old-fashioned. Elizabeth Castle leaned across and scraped out a third chair. Carrington held out his palm toward it, like a maître d’, and said, “Please.”
Reacher sat down, his back to the door, facing a wall.
The path of least resistance.
He said, “I don’t want to wreck your evening.”
Elizabeth Castle said, “Don’t be silly.”
“Then congratulations,” he said. “To both of you.”
“For what?”
“Your second date.”
“Fourth,” she said.
“Really?”
“Dinner last night, coffee break this morning, lunch break, dinner tonight. And it was your predicament that introduced us. So it’s lovely you were passing by. It’s like an omen.”
“That sounds bad.”
“Whatever the good version is.”
“A good omen,” Carrington said.
“I found Ryantown,” Reacher said. “It all matched up with the census. The occupation was listed as tin mill foreman, and the address was right across the street from a tin mill. Which was mothballed for a spell, which explains why later he was laboring for the county. I assume he went back to being foreman when the mill started up again. I didn’t look at the next census. My father had left home by then.”
Carrington nodded, and said nothing, in a manner Reacher thought deliberate and reluctant, as if actually he had plenty to say, but he wasn’t going to, because of some fine point of manners or etiquette.
Reacher said, “What?”
“Nothing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“OK, something.”
“What kind of something?”
“We were just discussing it.”
“On a date?”
“We’re dating because of you. Obviously we’re going to discuss it. No doubt we’ll discuss your case forever. It will be of sentimental value.”
“What were you discussing?”
“We don’t really know,” Carrington said. “We’re a little embarrassed. We can’t pin it down. We looked at the original documents. They’re both lovely censuses. You develop a feel. You can see patterns. You can recognize the good takers, and the lazy ones. You can spot mistakes. You can spot lies. Mostly about reading and writing for men, and age for women.”
“You found a problem with the documents?”
“No,” Carrington said. “They rang true. They were beautifully done. Among the best I ever saw. The 1940 in particular was a hall of fame census. We believed every word.”
“Then it sounds pinned down pretty good to me.”
“Like I said, you develop a feel. You’re in their world, right there with them. You become them, through the documents. Except you know what happens next, and they don’t. You stand a little apart. You know the end of the movie. So you’re thinking like them, but you’re also noticing which ones will be proved wise or foolish by future events.”
“And?”
“There’s something wrong with the story you told me.”
“But not in the documents.”
“Some other part.”
“But you don’t know what.”
“Can’t pin it down.”
Then the waitress came by and took their orders, and the conversation moved on to other things. Reacher didn’t turn it back. He didn’t want to ruin their evening. He let them talk about whatever they felt like, and he joined in wherever he could.
* * *
—
He ate a main course only, and got up to go. He wanted them to have dessert on their own. It seemed the least he could do. They didn’t object. He made them take a twenty. They said it was too much. He said tell the waitress to keep the change.
He stepped out the door, and turned right, back the way he had come. The dark was noticeably darker. The streets were noticeably quieter. Traffic was light. No one was walking. The stores were all closed. A car came by from behind, and it drove on ahead, maybe a little slower than it wanted to, like nighttime cars in towns everywhere. Nothing to worry about, the back part of his brain told him, after computing a thousand points of instinctive data about speed and direction and intent and consistency, and coming up with a result right in the center of normal.
Then it saw something that wasn’t.
Headlights, coming toward him. A hundred yards away. Big and blinding and spaced high and wide. A large vehicle. Dead level, as if it was driving in the middle of the road. As if it was straddling the line. And it was driving slow. Which is what rang the bell. Neither one speed or another. Wrong for the context. Like a cautious rush hour creep, but one click slower, as if the driver was also preoccupied with something else. A modern person might have guessed his phone, but Reacher thought the guy was searching for something. Visually. Hence the central position. Hence the bright lights. He was sweeping both sidewalks at once.
Searching for what?
Or searching for who?
It was a large vehicle. Maybe a cop car. Cops were allowed to drive slow in the middle of the road. They were allowed to search for whatever or whoever they wanted.
He was pinned by the lights. They washed over him, hard and blue and bright, and then they slid past him, and suddenly he was in a half gray world, half lit by the bright lights’ reflection off the night mist ahead. He turned and saw a pick-up truck, high and shiny and handsome, immensely long, with two rows of seats and a long, long bed, and big chrome wheels turning slow, just rolling along, relaxed as can be.