Make Me

Why would he make a call? Was seeing a stranger such an extraordinary event it required instant sharing?

Maybe he suddenly remembered something. Maybe he was due a sales call. Maybe he was supposed to send a package.

Or maybe he had been told to call in sightings.

Of what?

Strangers.

Told by who?

Maybe the weird kid, too. Maybe that was an attempt at actual surveillance. There’s a fine line between showy shyness and sheer incompetence.

Reacher stood in the plaza and turned a full circle.

No one there.

At that point he figured a cup of coffee would be a good idea, so he walked back to the diner. Chang was still in there, at the same table. Late morning. She had swapped seats, so her back was to the angle. Where his had been. He threaded his way through the room and sat down at the table next to hers, side by side, so his back was to the wall, too. Habit, mostly.

“Nice morning?” he asked.

She said, “Feels like a Sunday from my freshman year in college. No cell phone and nothing to do.”

“Doesn’t your guy at least check in with his office?”

She started to say something, but stopped. She looked all around the room, and at the people in it, as if counting the number of potential witnesses to what might turn out to be an embarrassing admission. Then she smiled a complex and expressive smile, part bold, part rueful, maybe even a little conspiratorial, and she said, “I might have glamorized our situation slightly.”

Reacher said, “In what way?”

“Our Oklahoma City office is Keever’s spare bedroom. Like our Seattle office is my spare bedroom. Our web site says we have offices everywhere. Which is true. Everywhere there’s an out-of-work ex — FBI agent with a spare bedroom and bills to pay. We’re not a multilayered organization. In other words, we have no support staff. Keever has no one to check in with.”

“But he has big things going on.”

Chang nodded. “We’re the real deal and we do good work. But we’re a business. Low overhead is the key to everything. And a good web site. No one knows exactly what you are.”

“What kind of a thing would he take on as a hobby case?”

“I’ve been thinking about that, obviously. Nothing corporate. There’s no such thing as a small corporate case. Some of them are like a license to print money. They go straight on the computer, believe me. It’s like giving yourself a gold star. This one has to be a private client, paying in cash, or handwriting checks. Nothing shady, necessarily, but probably dull and possibly nuts.”

“Except now Keever needs back-up.”

“Like I said, it started small, and then it got bigger.”

“Or the nuts part suddenly wasn’t nuts anymore.”

“Or got even crazier.”

The waitress came by and started Reacher’s second bottomless cup of the day. He pre-paid upfront, about four times the check. He liked coffee, and he liked waitresses.

Chang said, “How was your morning?”

He said, “I couldn’t find the old woman’s grave or any kind of information about the baby.”

“You think either one would still be around?”

“I’m pretty sure. There’s plenty of space. They’re not going to pave over someone’s grave. And there’s always room for a historical plaque. You see them all over. Some kind of cast metal, painted brown. I don’t know who makes them. Department of the Interior, maybe. But there isn’t one.”

“Have you talked to the locals?”

“Next on the list.”

“You should start with the waitress.”

“She has a professional obligation to give me the showbusiness answer. So the good word can get around, and then suddenly her diner is a tourist attraction.”

“Hasn’t worked so far.”

“You think many people ask?”

“Probably about five out of ten,” she said. “Except that’s about eleven years’ worth of visitors, right there. So it’s a high-percentage, low-frequency proposition. Depends what you mean by many.”

And right then the waitress set off toward them with the Bunn flask, for Reacher’s first refill of the session, and Chang asked her, “Why is this town called Mother’s Rest?”

The waitress stood back, favoring one hip over the other, like tired women do, with the coffee mid-air and level with her waist. She had hair the color of the wheat outside, and a red face, and she could have been thirty-five or fifty, and a thin person bulking up with age, or a heavy person burning down with work. It was impossible to tell. She looked very happy to take a minute, because Reacher was already her best friend forever, because of the tip, and because she’d just been asked a question that was neither offensive nor boring.