I shook my head.
`How should I have heard of him?’ I said. `I’ve never been here before.’
`He’s a big deal around here,’ Finlay said. `His operation out there pays us a lot of taxes, does us a lot of good. A lot of revenue and a lot of benefit for the town without a lot of mess, because it’s so far away, right? So we try to take care of it for him. But
now it’s a homicide scene, and you’ve got explain
ing to do.’
The guy was doing his job, but he was wasting
my time.
`OK, Finlay,’ I said. `I’ll make a statement describing every little thing I did since I entered your lousy town limits until I got hauled in here in the middle of my damn breakfast. If you can make anything out of it, I’ll give you a damn medal. Because all I did was to place one foot in front of the other for nearly four hours in the pouring rain all the way through your precious fourteen damn miles.’
That was the longest speech I had made for six months. Finlay sat and gazed at me. I watched him struggling with any detective’s basic dilemma. His gut told him I might not be his man. But I was sitting right there in front of him. So what should a detective do? I let him ponder. Tried to time it right with a nudge in the right direction. I was going to say something about the real guy still running around out there while he was wasting time in here with me. That would feed his insecurity. But he jumped first. In the wrong direction.
`No statements,’ he said. `I’ll ask the questions and you’ll answer them. You’re Jack-none-Reacher. No address. No ID. What are you, a vagrant?’
I sighed. Today was Friday. The big clock showed it was already more than half over. This guy Finlay was going to go through all the hoops with this. I was going to spend the weekend in a cell. Probably get out Monday.
`I’m not a vagrant, Finlay,’ I said. `I’m a hobo. Big difference.’
He shook his head, slowly.
`Don’t get smart with me, Reacher,’ he said.
`You’re in deep shit. Bad things happened up there. Our witness saw you leaving the scene. You’re a stranger with no ID and no story. So don’t get smart with me.’
He was still just doing his job, but he was still wasting my time.
`I wasn’t leaving a homicide scene,’ I said. `I was walking down a damn road. There’s a difference, right? People leaving homicide scenes run and hide. They don’t walk straight down the road. What’s wrong about walking down a road? People walk down roads all the damn time, don’t they?’
Finlay leaned forward and shook his head.
`No,’ he said. `Nobody has walked the length of that road since the invention of the automobile. So why no address? Where are you from? Answer the questions. Let’s get this done.’
`OK, Finlay, let’s get it done,’ I said. `I don’t have an address because I don’t live anywhere. Maybe one day I’ll live somewhere and then I’ll have an address and I’ll send you a picture postcard and you can put it in your damn address book, since you seem so damn concerned about it.’
Finlay gazed at me and reviewed his options. Elected to go the patient route. Patient, but stubborn. Like he couldn’t be deflected.
`Where are you from?’ he asked. `What was your last address?’
`What exactly do you mean when you say where am I from?’ I asked.
His lips were clamped. I was getting him badtempered, too. But he stayed patient. Laced the patience with an icy sarcasm.
`OK,’ he said. `You don’t understand my question, so let me try to make it quite clear. What I mean is, where were you born, or where have you
lived for that majority period of your life which you instinctively regard as predominant in a social or cultural context?’
I just looked at him.
`I’ll give you an example,’ he said. `I myself was born in Boston, was educated in Boston and subsequently worked for twenty years in Boston, so I would say, and I think you would agree, that I come from Boston.’