They unlocked the Chrysler and lined up the bags on the rear seat. There was no sound from the trunk. No commotion. Nothing at all. Abby wanted to check if the guy was OK.
“What if he isn’t?” Reacher said. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
“No point checking, then.”
“How long are we going to leave him in there?”
“As long as it takes. He should have thought about all this before. I don’t see how his welfare suddenly becomes my responsibility, just because he chose to attack my welfare first. I’m not clear how that works exactly. They started it. They can’t expect me to provide a health plan.”
“We should be magnanimous in victory. Someone said that.”
“Full disclosure,” Reacher said. “I told you before. I’m a certain kind of person. Is the guy in the trunk still breathing?”
“I don’t know,” Abby said.
“But there’s a possibility.”
“Yes, there’s a possibility.”
“That’s me being magnanimous in victory. Normally I kill them, kill their families, and piss on their ancestors’ graves.”
“I never know when you’re kidding me.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“Are you saying you’re not kidding me now?”
“I’m saying in my case magnanimity is in short supply.”
“You’re taking food to an old couple in the middle of the night.”
“That’s a different word than magnanimous.”
“Still a nice gesture.”
“Because one day I could be them. But I’ll never be the guy in the trunk.”
“So it’s purely tribal,” Abby said. “Your kind of people, or the other kind.”
“My kind of people, or the wrong kind.”
“Who’s in your tribe?”
“Almost nobody,” Reacher said. “I live a lonely life.”
They drove the Chrysler back toward town, and took the left that led them into the east side hinterland, through the original city blocks, and out toward where the Shevicks lived. The old postwar development lay up ahead. By that point Reacher felt he knew it well enough. He figured they could get to a parallel street without the Ukrainians ever seeing them pass by, even at a distance. They could sneak around to the rear of the block and park outside the Shevicks’ back-to-back neighbor’s house. The Chrysler would be lined up with the Lincoln, more or less exactly, nose to nose and tail to tail, but about two hundred feet apart. The depth of two small residential lots. Two buildings in the way.
They cut the lights and idled through the narrow streets, slowly, in the dark. They took a right, ahead of their usual turn, and a left, and they eased to a stop in what they were sure was the right spot. Outside the Shevicks’ back-to-back neighbor. A ranch house with pale siding and an asphalt roof. The same but different. The front half of the structure butted out into an open front yard. The rear half of the structure was included in a large rectangle of head-high fence that ran all around the back yard. To get a mower from front to back, there was a fold-back section of fence, like a gate.
The house had five windows facing the street. One had drapes closed tight behind it. Probably a bedroom. People sleeping.
Abby said, “Suppose they see us?”
Reacher said, “They’re asleep.”
“Suppose they wake up?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“They’ll call the cops.”
“Probably not. They’ll look out the window and see a gangster car. They’ll close their eyes and hope it goes away again. By morning, if anyone were to ask them, they’ll have decided the safest approach is to have forgotten all about it. They’ll say, what car?”
Reacher turned the motor off.
He said, “A dog would be a bigger problem. It might start barking. There might be others around. They could set up a big commotion. The Ukrainians might get out to check. Out of sheer boredom, if nothing else.”
“We bought steaks,” Abby said. “We have raw meat in those bags.”
“Is a dog’s sense of smell better than its hearing, or is it the other way around?”
“They’re both pretty good.”
“About a third of U.S. households own a dog. Just over thirty-six percent, to be precise. Which gives us a little worse than a two in three chance of being OK. Plus maybe it won’t bark anyway. Maybe the neighborhood dogs are calm. Maybe the Ukrainians are too lazy to get out to check. Too warm, too comfortable. Maybe they’re fast asleep. I think it’s safe enough.”
“What time is it?” Abby asked.
“Just past twenty after five.”
“I was thinking about that line I told you, about doing something that scares you, every day. Except it’s only twenty past five in the morning, and I’m already on my second thing.”
“This one doesn’t count,” Reacher said. “This one is a walk in the park. Maybe literally. Maybe their landscaping is nice.”
“Also on the subject of twenty past five in the morning, surely the Shevicks won’t be up yet.”
“They might be. I can’t imagine they’re sleeping well at the moment. If I’m wrong and they are sleeping well, you can wake them up. You can call them on your phone when we get there. You can tell them we’re right outside their kitchen window. Tell them not to turn on any lights at the front of the house. An undisturbed visit is what we want.”
They got out of the car and stood for a second in the silence. The night was gray and the air was damp with mist. Still no noise from the trunk. No kicking, no banging, no yelling. Nothing. They hauled the grocery bags off the rear bench and divided them up. Two and two for Reacher, one and one for Abby. Neither one of them overburdened or lopsided. Good to go.
They stepped into the neighbor’s front yard.
Chapter 32
It was too dark to tell whether the landscaping was nice, but by smell and feel and inadvertent physical contact they could tell it was conventionally planted, with the normal kind of stuff in the normal kind of places. At first underfoot was a lawn of tough, springy grass, maybe some new hybrid strain, slick and cold with nighttime damp. Then came a crunchy area, some kind of broken slate or shale, maybe a path, maybe a mulch, and beyond it came spiky and coniferous foundation plantings, that scratched loudly at the grocery bags as they brushed by.