Blue Moon

“OK,” Reacher said. “Good to know. We’ll go in the back of the pawn shop. We should anyway. We should get Maria’s heirlooms back. They lowballed her, with eighty dollars. I didn’t like that. We should express our disapproval. Maybe their guilty consciences will prompt them to make a generous donation to a medical charity.”

They got out and left the car on the curb next to the fireplug. Reacher figured a parking ticket was the least of Gregory’s problems. They walked the first block. Then the second. Then they got cautious. Maybe no one was posted a block further out, but they could eyeball a block further out. That would be dead easy. They could raise their sight lines from time to time, to stare off into the distance. They could make out faces a block away, and speed, and intent, and body language. Accordingly Reacher kept close to the storefront windows, in the sharp afternoon shadows, widely separated from Abby, who followed twenty feet behind, and then Hogan, all of them strolling, randomly stopping, showing no link between them, in terms of lock step speed or direction or purpose.

Reacher turned left, into the mouth of the cross street. Out of sight. He waited. Abby joined him. Then Hogan. They formed up and walked on together, ten paces on the far sidewalk. Then they stopped again. Geographically speaking, the pawn shop’s rear exit would be ahead on the right. But there were many rear exits ahead on the right, and they were all the same, and they were all unmarked. There were twelve in total. Every establishment had one.

Reacher clicked back in his head to their earlier visit. The search and rescue mission in Abby’s old Toyota. A grimy pawn shop, across a narrow street from a taxi dispatcher and a bail bond operation, Maria coming out the door, Abby pulling over, Aaron winding down his window and calling out her name.

“I remember it as the middle of the block,” he said.

“Except twelve has no middle,” Abby said. “Twelve has six to the left and six to the right and nothing in the actual middle.”

“Because it’s an even number. The middle is a choice of two. The last of the first six or the first of the last six.”

Abby said, “I remember it as not the exact middle of the block.”

“Before the middle or after it?”

“Maybe after it. Maybe even two-thirds of the way along. I remember seeing her, and pulling over. I think it was after the middle of the block.”

“OK,” Reacher said. “We’ll start by taking a look at numbers seven, eight, and nine.”

The buildings were all joined together, and their rear façades were all the same, tall and mean and narrow, built of sullen hundred-year-old brick, pierced here and there randomly by barred windows, festooned all over with wires and cables, drooping and looping from one connection to another. Not always mechanically robust. The rear doors themselves were all the same. All stout identical hundred-year-old items, inward opening, made of wood, but at some point maybe fifty years previously someone had screwed sheets of metal over the lower halves, for durability. Maybe a new landlord, making improvements. The metal sheets showed half a century of wear and tear, from loading and unloading, shipping and receiving, kicking open, kicking shut, banging in and out with hand trucks and trolleys and dollies.

Reacher checked.

Less so on number eight than seven or nine.

In fact much less. In fact not bad at all, for fifty years.

Number eight. The exact definition of two-thirds the way along a block of twelve.

He said, “I think this is the one. Not much comes in or out of a pawn shop on a hand truck or a dolly. Only an occasional item. Like if Barton hocked his speaker cabinet. But most everything else comes in and out in a hand or a pocket.”

The door was locked from the inside. Not a fire exit. Not a bar, not a restaurant. A different regulation. The wood of the door was solid. The frame, maybe not so much. Softer lumber, infrequently painted, maybe a little rotted and spongy.

He asked, “What would the Marine Corps do?”

“Bazooka,” Hogan said. “Best way into any building. Pull the trigger, step through the smoking hole.”

“Suppose you didn’t have a bazooka.”

“Obviously we’ll have to kick the door down. But we better get it done first time. They got a dozen guys within range of a holler for help. We can’t get hung up back here.”

“Did they teach you kicking down doors in the Corps?”

“No, they gave us bazookas.”

“Force equals mass times acceleration. Take a running start, stamp your foot flat through the door.”

“I’m doing this?”

“Below the handle.”

“I thought it was above the handle.”

“Nearest the keyhole. That’s where the tongue of the lock is. That’s where the most amount of wood has been chiseled out of the frame. Hence where it’s weakest. That’s what you’re looking for. It’s always the frame that breaks. Never the door.”

“Now?”

“We’ll be right behind you.”