“So how can I help you?”

“We figured you might know a bunch of names around here. I imagine most folks must come through this office at one time or another.”

The guy nodded, like a vital and unanticipated connection had been made. He hit the space bar on a keyboard and a screen lit up. He maneuvered a mouse and clicked on something and a list appeared, long and dense. A bunch of names. He said, “These are the folks pre-cleared for using the weighbridge. Goes faster that way. Which we need, at busy times. I guess this would be all the grain people in the neighborhood. From the owners to the workers and back again. Men, women, and children. This business is all-hands-on-deck, at certain times of the year.”

Chang said, “You see a Maloney in there? We’d certainly appreciate a first name and an address.”

The guy used the mouse again and the list scrolled upward. Alphabetical. He stopped halfway down and said, “There’s a Mahoney. But he passed on, I think. Two or three years ago, if I remember right. The cancer got him. No one knew what kind.”

Chang said, “No one named Maloney?”

“Not on the list.”

“Suppose he’s not a grain worker? Would you know him anyway?”

“Maybe socially. But I don’t. I don’t know anyone named Maloney.”

“Is there anyone else we could ask?”

“You could try the Western Union store. With the FedEx franchise. It’s more or less our post office.”

“OK,” Reacher said. “Thanks.”

The guy nodded and looked away and said nothing, as if both enchanted and annoyed by the break in his routine.

Reacher remembered where the Western Union store was. He had seen it before, twice, on his block-by-block explorations. A small place, with a window crowded by neon signs, for MoneyGram, and faxing, and photocopying, and FedEx, and UPS, and DHL. They went in, and the guy behind the counter looked up. He was about forty, tall and well built, not fat but certainly fleshed out, with a full head of hair, and a guileless face.

He was the Cadillac driver.

Chapter 20

The store was as plain as the receiving office, all dust and unpainted wood, with worn beige machines for faxing and photocopying, and untidy piles of address forms for the parcel services, and teetering stacks of packages, some presumably incoming, and some presumably outgoing. Some packages were small, barely larger than the address labels stuck to them, and some were large, including two that were evidently drop-shipped direct from foreign manufacturers in their original cartons, one being German medical equipment made from sterile stainless steel, if Reacher could trust his translation skills, and the other being a high-definition video camera from Japan. There were sealed reams of copy paper on open shelves, and ballpoint pens on strings, and a cork noticeboard on a wall, covered with thumbtacked fliers for all kinds of neighborhood services, including guitar lessons and yard sales and rooms to rent. It’s more or less our post office, the guy in the receiving hut had said, and Reacher saw why.

The Cadillac driver said, “Can I help you?”

He was behind a plywood counter, counting dollar bills.

Reacher said, “I recognize you from somewhere.”

The guy said, “Do you?”

“You played college football. For Miami. 1992, right?”

“Not me, pal.”

“Was it USC?”

“You got the wrong person.”

Chang said, “Then you’re the taxi driver. We saw you at the motel this morning.”

The guy didn’t answer.

“And yesterday morning,” Chang said.

No reply.

There was a small wire-mesh holder on the counter, full of business cards supplied by the MoneyGram franchise. A side benefit, presumably, along with the commission. Reacher took a card and read it. The guy’s name was not Maloney. Reacher asked him, “You got a local phone book?”

“What for?”

“I want to balance it on my head to improve my deportment.”

“What?”

“I want to look up a number. What else is a phone book for?”

The guy paused a long moment, as if searching for a legitimate reason to deny the request, but in the end he couldn’t find one, apparently, because he dipped down and hauled a slim volume from a shelf under the counter, and rotated it 180 degrees, and slid it across the plywood.

Reacher said, “Thank you,” and thumbed it open, to where L changed to M.

Chang leaned in for a look.

No Maloney.

Reacher said, “Why is this town called Mother’s Rest?”

The guy behind the counter said, “I don’t know.”

Chang said, “How old is your Cadillac?”

“How is that your business?”

“It isn’t, really. We’re not from the DMV. We don’t care about the license plates. We’re interested, is all. It looks like a fine automobile.”

“It does its job.”

“Which is what?”

The guy paused a beat.

“Taxi,” he said. “Like you figured.”

Reacher said, “You know anyone named Maloney?”

“Should I?”

“You might.”

“No,” the guy said, with a measure of certainty, as if glad to be on solid ground. “There’s no one named Maloney in this county.”

Reacher and Chang walked back to the wide street and stood in the morning sun. Chang said, “He was lying about the Cadillac. It’s not a taxi. A place like this doesn’t need a taxi.”

Reacher said, “So what is it?”

“It felt like a club car, didn’t it? Like a golf cart at a resort. To take guests from one place to another. From reception to their rooms. Or from their rooms to the spa. As a courtesy. Especially without the license plates.”

“Except this place isn’t a resort. It’s a giant wheat field.”

“Whatever, he didn’t go far. He was there and back in the time it took us to shower and eat breakfast. An hour, maybe. Thirty minutes there, thirty minutes back. A maximum twenty-mile radius, on these roads.”

“That’s more than a thousand square miles,” Reacher said. “Pi times the radius squared. More than twelve hundred square miles, actually. Connected with Keever’s thing, or separate?”

“Connected, obviously. At the motel the guy acted the same way as the spare parts guy who met the train. Like a lackey. And the spare parts guy dimed you out because you look a bit like Keever. So it’s connected.”

Reacher said, “We’d need a helicopter to search twelve hundred square miles.”

“And no Maloney,” Chang said. She stuck her hand in her back pocket and came out with Keever’s bookmark. Mother’s Rest—Maloney. “Unless the guy is lying about that too. Not being in the phone book doesn’t necessarily prove anything. He could be unlisted. Or new in town.”

“Would the waitress lie too?”

“We should try the general store. If he exists, and he isn’t eating in the diner, then he’s buying food there. He has to be feeding himself somehow.”

They set out walking, south on the wide street.

Meanwhile the Cadillac driver was busy calling it in. Such as it was. He said, “They’re nowhere.”

In the motel office the one-eyed guy said, “How do you figure that?”

“You ever heard of a guy named Maloney?”

“No.”

“That’s who they’re looking for.”

“A guy named Maloney?”

“They checked my phone book.”

“There is no guy named Maloney.”

“Exactly,” the Cadillac driver said. “They’re nowhere.”

The general store looked like it might not have changed in fifty years, except for brand names and prices. Beyond the entrance vestibule it was dark and dusty and smelled of damp canvas. It had five narrow aisles piled high with stuff ranging from woodworking tools to packaged cookies, and candles to canning jars, and toilet paper to light bulbs. There was a rail of work clothes that caught Reacher’s eye. His own duds were four days old, and being around Chang made him conscious of it. She smelled of soap and clean skin and a dab of perfume. He had noticed, when she leaned close for a look at the phone book, and he wondered what she had noticed. He picked out pants and a shirt, and found socks and underwear and a white undershirt on a shelf opposite. A dollar per, for the smaller stuff, and less than forty for the main items. Overall a worthwhile investment, he thought. He hauled it all to the counter in back and dumped it all down.