He showered, and retrieved his pants from under the mattress, and dressed, and walked out in search of breakfast. He found coffee and muffins close by, which sustained him through a longer reconnaissance, which brought him to a place he figured might have good food hiding under multiple layers of some kind of faux-retro irony. He figured it would take a smarter guy than him to decode them all. The basic idea seemed to be someone’s modern-day notion of where old-time lumberjacks might have dined, on whatever it was that old-time lumberjacks ate, which in the modern day seemed to be interpreted as one of every fried item on the menu. In Reacher’s experience lumberjacks ate the same as any other hard-working person, which was all kinds of different things. But he had no ideological objection to fried food as such, especially not in generous quantities, so he played along. He went in and sat down, briskly, he hoped, as if he had thirty minutes before he had a tree to fell.
The food was fine, and the coffee kept on coming, so he lingered longer than thirty minutes, watching out the window, timing the hustle and the bustle, waiting until the people in the suits and the skirts were safely at work. Then he got up and left his tip and paid his check, and walked two of the blocks he had scouted the night before, toward the place he guessed he should start. Which was the records department of the city offices. Which had a suite number all its own, on a crowded multi-line floor directory, outside a brick-built multi-purpose government building, which because of its age and its shape Reacher figured had once contained a courtroom. Maybe it still did.
The suite he was looking for turned out to be one of many small rooms opening off a grand mezzanine hallway. Like a corridor in an expensive hotel. Except the doors were half glass, which was reeded in an old-fashioned style, with the department name painted on it in gold. Over two lines, in the case of the records department. Inside the door was an empty room with four plastic chairs and a waist-high inquiry counter. Like a miniature version of any government office. There was an electric bell push screwed to the counter. It had a thin wire that ran away to a nearby crack, and a handwritten sign that said If Unattended Ring For Service. The message was carefully lettered and protected by many layers of clear tape, applied in strips of generous length, some of which were curled at the corners, and dirty, as if picked at by bored or anxious fingers.
Reacher rang for service. A minute later a woman came through a door in the rear wall, looking back as she did so, with what Reacher thought was regret, as if she was leaving a space dramatically larger and more exciting. She was maybe thirty, slim and neat, in a gray sweater and a gray skirt. She stepped up to the counter but she glanced back at the door. Either her boyfriend was waiting, or she hated her job. Maybe both. But she did her best. She cranked up a warm and welcoming manner. Not exactly like in a store, where the customer was always right, but more as an equal, as if she and the customer were just bound to have a good time together, puzzling through some ancient town business. There was enough light in her eyes Reacher figured she meant at least some of it. Maybe she didn’t hate her job after all.
He said, “I need to ask you about an old real estate record.”
“Is it for a title dispute?” the woman asked. “In which case you should get your attorney to request it. Much faster that way.”
“No kind of dispute,” he said. “My father was born here. That’s all. Years ago. He’s dead now. I was passing by. I thought I would stop in and take a look at the house he grew up in.”
“What’s the address?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you remember roughly where it is?”
“I’ve never been there.”
“You didn’t visit?”
“No.”
“Perhaps because your father moved away when he was young.”
“Not until he joined the Marines when he was seventeen.”
“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.”