On the phone Dorothy said, 'I'm worried about the gun.'
Reacher said, 'Seth was a lousy shot.'
'Doesn't mean Jacob is.'
'OK,' Reacher said. 'Pull over and wait for me. We'll do this together.'
He clicked off the call and changed course and crossed Jacob's path a hundred yards back and headed straight for Dorothy Coe. When he arrived she got out of her truck and headed for his passenger door. He dropped the window with the switch on his side and said, 'No, you drive. I'll ride shotgun.'
He got out and stepped around and they met where the front of the Yukon's hood was dented. No words were exchanged. Dorothy's face was set with determination. She was halfway between calm and nervous. She got in the driver's seat and motored it forward and checked the mirror, like it was a normal morning and she was heading out to the store for milk. Reacher climbed in beside her and freed the Glock from his pocket.
She said, 'Tell me about the photographs. In their silver frames.'
'I don't want to,' Reacher said.
'No, I mean, I need to know there's no doubt they implicate the Duncans. Jacob in particular. Like evidence. I need you to tell me. Before we do this.'
'There's no doubt,' Reacher said. 'No doubt at all.'
Dorothy Coe nodded and said nothing. She fiddled the selector into gear and the truck took off, rolling slow, jiggling and pattering across the ground. She said, 'We were talking about what comes next.'
Reacher said, 'Call a trucker from the next county. Or do business with Eleanor.'
'No, about the barn. The doctor thinks we should burn it down. But I'm not sure I want to do that.'
'Your call, I think.'
'What would you do?'
'Not my decision.'
'Tell me.'
Reacher said, 'I would nail the judas hole shut, and I would leave it alone and never go there again. I would let the flowers grow right over it.'
There was no more conversation. They got within fifty yards of Jacob Duncan and switched to operational shorthand. Jacob was still running, but not fast. He was just about spent. He was stumbling and staggering, a short wide man limited by bad lungs and stiff legs and the aches and pains that come with age. He had a revolver in his hand, the same dull stainless and the same stubby barrel as Seth's. Probably another Smith 60, and likely to be just as ineffective if used by a weak man all wheezing and gasping and trembling from exertion.
Dorothy Coe asked, 'How do I do this?'
Reacher said, 'Pass him on the left. Let's see if he stands and fights.'
He didn't. Reacher buzzed his window down and hung the Glock out in the breeze and Dorothy swooped fast and close to Jacob's left and he didn't turn and fire. He just flinched away and stumbled onward, a degree or two right of where he had been heading before.
Reacher said, 'Now come around in a big wide circle and aim right for him from behind.'
'OK,' Dorothy said. 'For Margaret.'
She continued the long leftward curve, winding it tighter and tighter until she came back to her original line. She coasted for a second and straightened up and then she hit the gas and the truck leapt forward, ten yards, twenty, thirty, and Jacob Duncan glanced back in horror and darted left, and Dorothy Coe flinched right, involuntarily, a civilian with forty years of safe driving behind her, and she hit Jacob a heavy glancing blow with the left headlight, hard in his back and his right shoulder, sending the gun flying, sending him tumbling, spinning him around, hurling him to the ground.
'Get back quick,' Reacher said.
But Jacob Duncan wasn't getting up. He was on his back, one leg pounding away like a dog dreaming, one arm scrabbling uselessly in the dirt, his head jerking, his eyes open and staring, up and down, left and right. His gun was ten feet away.
Dorothy Coe drove back and stopped and stood off ten yards away. She asked, 'What now?'
Reacher said, 'I would leave him there. I think you broke his back. He'll die slowly.'
'How long?'
'An hour, maybe two.'
'I don't know.'
Reacher gave her the Glock. 'Or go shoot him in the head. It would be a mercy, not that he deserves it.'
'Will you do it?'
'Gladly. But you should. You've wanted to for twenty-five years.'
She nodded slowly. She stared down at the Glock, laid flat like an open book on both her hands, like she had never seen such a thing before. She asked, 'Is there a safety catch?'
Reacher shook his head.
'No safety on a Glock,' he said.
She opened the door. She climbed down, to the sill step, to the ground. She looked back at Reacher.
'For Margaret,' she said again.
'And the others,' Reacher said.
'And for Artie,' she said. 'My husband.'
She stepped sideways around her open door, touching it with one hand as she went, slowly, with reluctance, and then she crossed the open ground, small neat strides on the dirt, ten of them, twelve, turning a short distance into a long journey. Jacob Duncan went still and watched her approach. She stepped up close and pointed the gun straight down and to one side, holding it a little away from herself, making it not part of herself, separating herself from it, and then she said some words Reacher didn't hear, and then she pulled the trigger, once, twice, three four five six times, and then she stepped away.
SIXTY-TWO
THE DOCTOR AND HIS WIFE WERE WAITING IN DOROTHY COE'S truck, back on the two-lane road. Reacher and Dorothy parked ahead of them and they all got out and stood together. The Duncan compound was reduced to three vertical chimneys and a wide horizontal spread of ashy grey timbers that were still burning steadily, but no longer fiercely. Smoke was coming up and gathering into a wide column that seemed to rise for ever. It was the only thing moving. The sun was as high as it was going to get, and the rest of the sky was blue.
Reacher said, 'You've got a lot of work to do. Get everyone on it. Get backhoes and bucket loaders and dig some big holes. Really big holes. Then gather the trash and bury it deep. But save some space for later. Their van will arrive at some point, and the driver is just as guilty as the rest of them.'
The doctor said, 'We have to kill him?'
'You can bury him alive, for all I care.'
'You're leaving now?'
Reacher nodded.
'I'm going to Virginia,' he said.
'Can't you stay a day or two?'
'You all are in charge now, not me.'
'What about the football players at my house?'
'Turn them loose and tell them to get out of town. They'll be happy to. There's nothing left for them here.'
The doctor said, 'But they might tell someone. Or someone might have seen the smoke. From far away. The cops might come.'
Reacher said, 'If they do, blame everything on me. Give them my name. By the time they figure out where I am, I'll be somewhere else.'
Dorothy Coe drove Reacher the first part of the way. They climbed back in the Yukon together and checked the gas gauge. There was enough for maybe sixty miles. They agreed she would take him thirty miles south, and then she would drive the same thirty miles back, and then after that filling the tank would be John's own problem.
They drove the first ten miles in silence. Then they passed the abandoned roadhouse and the two-lane speared onward and empty ahead of them and Dorothy asked, 'What's in Virginia?'
'A woman,' Reacher said.
'Your girlfriend?'
'Someone I talked to on the phone, that's all. I wanted to meet her in person. Although now I'm not so sure. Not yet, anyway. Not looking like this.'
'What's the matter with the way you look?'
'My nose,' Reacher said. He touched the tape, and smoothed it down, two-handed. He said, 'It's going to be a couple of weeks before it's presentable.'
'What's her name, this woman in Virginia?'
'Susan.'
'Well, I think you should go. I think if Susan objects to the way you look, then she isn't worth meeting.'