`You never heard him use that word?’ I asked her again. `Not on the phone, not in his sleep or anything?’
`Never,’ she said.
`What about next Sunday?’ I asked her. `Did he mention next Sunday? Anything about what’s going to happen?’
`Next Sunday?’ she repeated. `I don’t think he mentioned it. Why? What’s going to happen next Sunday?’
`I don’t know,’ I said. `That’s what I’m trying to find out.’
She pondered it again for a long moment, but just shook her head and shrugged, palms upward, like it meant nothing to her.
`I’m sorry,’ she said.
`Don’t worry about it,’ I said. `Now you’ve got to do something.’
`What do I have to do?’ she said.
`You’ve got to get out of here,’ I said.
Her knuckles were still white, but she was stay
ing in control.
`I’ve got to run and hide?’ she said. `But where to?’
`An FBI agent is coming here to pick you up,’ I said.
She stared at me in panic.
`FBI?’ she said. She went paler still. `This is really serious, isn’t it?’
`It’s deadly serious,’ I said. `You need to get ready to leave right now.’
`OK,’ she said, slowly. `I can’t believe this is happening.’
I walked out of her kitchen and into the garden room where we had drunk iced tea the day before. Stepped through the French doors and strolled a slow circuit outside the house. Down the driveway, through the banks of greenery, out onto Beckman Drive. Leaned up on the white mailbox on the shoulder. It was silent. I could hear nothing at all except the dry rustle of the grass cooling under my feet.
Then I could hear a car coming west out of town. It slowed just before the crest of the rise and I heard the automatic box slur a change down as the speed dropped. The car rose up over the crest into view. It was a brown Buick, very plain, two guys in it. They were small dark guys, Hispanic, loud shirts. They were slowing, drifting to the left of the road, looking for the Hubble mailbox. I was leaning on the Hubble mailbox, looking at them. Their eyes met mine. The car accelerated again and swerved away. Blasted on into the empty peach country. I
stepped out and watched them go. I saw a dust plume rising as they drove off Margrave’s immaculate blacktop onto the dusty rural roadway. Then I sprinted back up to the house. I wanted Charlie to hurry.
She was inside, flustered, chattering away like a kid going on vacation. Making lists out loud. Some kind of a mechanism to burn off the panic she was feeling. On Friday she’d been a rich idle woman married to a banker. Now on Monday a stranger who said the banker was dead was telling her to hurry up and run for her life.
`Take the mobile phone with you,’ I called to her.
She didn’t reply. I just heard a worried silence. Footsteps and closet doors banging. I sat in her kitchen with the rest of the coffee for most of an hour. Then I heard a car horn blow and the crunch of heavy steps on the gravel. A loud knock on the front door. I put my hand in my pocket and closed it around the ebony handle of Morrison’s switchblade. Walked out into the hallway and opened up.
There was a neat blue sedan next to the Bentley and a gigantic black guy standing back from the doorstep. He was as tall as me, maybe even taller, but he must have outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds. Must have been three-ten, threetwenty. Next to him, I was a featherweight. He stepped forward with the easy elastic grace of an athlete.
`Reacher?’ the giant said. `Pleased to meet you. I’m Picard, FBI.’
He shook hands with me. He was enormous. He had a casual competence about him which made me glad he was on my side. He looked like my type of a guy. Like he could be very useful in a tight corner. I suddenly felt a flood of encouragement.
I stood aside to let him into Charlie’s house.