Never Go Back

Reacher was distinctive in any context, because of his height, so the first thing he looked for was a bench. He forced himself to walk slow and easy, with his hands in his pockets, without a care in the world, because a running man attracted the eye a hundred times faster than a walking man. Another old evolutionary legacy. Predator and prey, motion and stillness. And he didn’t look back, either. He made no furtive glances. He kept his gaze straight and level, and he walked towards what he saw. Full dark was coming down fast, but the Mall was still busy. Not like summertime, but there were plenty of winter tourists finishing up their days, and up ahead the Wall had its usual crowd of people, some of them there to mourn, some of them to pay more general respects, and some of them the gaggle of weird folks the place always seemed to attract. He couldn’t see Turner anywhere. The siren had stopped, replaced by honking horns. Presumably the cop was out of his car by that point, and presumably his and Sullivan’s stationary vehicles were jamming up the traffic flow.

Reacher saw a bench in the gloom twenty yards away, unoccupied, positioned parallel with the still waters of the Pool, and he strolled on towards it, slow and relaxed, and then he paused as if deciding, and he sat down, and leaned forward, with his elbows on his knees. He looked down, like a contemplative man with things on his mind. A long and careful stare would betray him, but at first glance nothing about his pose would say tall man, and nothing would say fugitive, either. The only notable tell was his lack of a jacket. It wasn’t exactly shirtsleeve weather.

Thirty yards behind him the horns were still sounding.

He waited, head down, still and quiet.

And then forty yards away from the corner of his eye he saw the cop with the fat neck, hustling along on foot, with a flashlight in his hand, but no gun. The guy was twitching left and right, nervous and searching hard, presumably in his boss’s bad books for getting close and getting beat. Reacher heard two new sirens, both of them far away in the distance, one in the south, maybe all the way down on C Street, and one in the north, on 15th possibly, or 14th, maybe level with the White House or the Aquarium.

Reacher waited.

The cop with the fat neck was heading for the Wall, halfway there, but then he stopped and turned a full circle. Reacher felt his gaze pass right over him. A guy sitting still and staring at the water was of no interest at all, when there were plenty of better prospects all around, like a crowd of thirty or forty heading for the base of the Monument, either a tour group or a crowd of strangers all coincidentally drifting in the same direction at the same time, or a mixture of the two. Moving targets. Evolution. The cop set off after them. Not a bad percentage play, Reacher thought. Anyone would expect motion. Sitting still was tough.

The distant sirens came closer, but not very close. Some kind of a centre of gravity seemed to pull them east. Which again was a decent percentage play. The Metro PD knew its own turf, presumably. To the east were the museums and the galleries, and therefore the crowds, and then came the Capitol, and beyond that came the best getaways north and south, by road and rail.

Reacher waited, not moving at all, not looking around, just staring ahead at the water. Then when the stopwatch in his head hit ten minutes exactly, he eased himself to his feet and ran through as many un-fugitive-like motions as he could think of. He yawned, and he put his palms hard on the small of his back, and he stretched, and he yawned again. Then he set off west, just strolling, like he had all the time in the world, with the Pool on his left, in a long leisurely curve through the bare trees that brought him to the Wall four minutes later. He stood on the edge of the crowd, just one pilgrim among many, and looked for Susan Turner.

He couldn’t see her anywhere.

TWENTY-THREE