Gone Forever Page 8

  I stopped and shrugged, alone and to no one but myself.

  I’m hungrier than I thought. I need to eat.

  I abandoned my survey of the town and decided to go straight to breakfast. So far I had seen a diner that was about three blocks in the opposite direction. I turned back, pivoted on my right foot, and swung around like a drill instructor had shouted, “ ‘BOUT FACE!”

  Then I headed back in the other direction, back to the diner.

  On the way, I searched the landscape for an electronics department store where I could buy a new phone charger. The only thing I found was a cell phone payment center, but it was not the service provider that my mother had used. I doubted that they carried the phone charger that I needed or any phone accessories for that matter. It didn’t look like a store, just a place for people to pay their phone bills.

  I walked on until I returned to the corner where I had seen the diner.

  The sign on top of the building read:

  Roy’s Red Dinner

  The spelling was wrong. Diner is spelled with one “n,” not two. When I entered, sat down, and opened my menu, I realized that they knew that it was spelled incorrectly, part of their gimmick I supposed. The first page in the menu had a cartoon drawing of a short, fat, bald, white man with a pitch-black mustache, the owner and founder. The caption beside his character read:

  Roy

  Next to Roy’s cartoon picture was a story entitled “The Red Dinner.”

  It went on to explain that when it first opened, the diner’s sign was spelled wrong and it stuck. Originally it was called the Red Dinner because the outside of the building was a bright red color. The paint had been recently redone as far as I could tell because it was still bright red.

  The story said that Roy had owned the diner for 25 years until five years ago when he passed away. His daughter now ran the place.

  I skimmed past the rest of the story and gazed at the food options. They had lots of breakfast items to choose from. They were all egg based, which was fine by me because all I was in the mood for was eggs and bacon. My mother was a great parent, but she wasn’t good at feeding me breakfast when I was a kid. We ate a lot of hamburgers for breakfast until I was old enough to learn my way around the kitchen; then I began cooking our meals. I wasn’t a gourmet chef, but I liked to think that I could make a good breakfast.

  My cooking philosophy was simple: foods with only one or two ingredients and make it taste good. The problem with the American diet was that everything was processed, refined, and altered long before it ever hit the shelves. That was something that the general public was aware of, but it never affected sales.

  Being that I had done our grocery shopping, I made it a habit to read the nutrient panel that was printed on every label, item, and box in the store. The main things that I always looked for were not the calories, sugars, or fats. The main things that I paid attention to were the ingredients. Most everything that was shelved in the American grocery store had multiple ingredients of chemicals that I had never heard of and were not taught in school except in AP Chemistry classes. I would think to myself, if I can’t pronounce it, then my liver has no idea what it is—best to avoid.

  Eggs were an item that whenever you went to buy them, you probably never read the ingredients. Why should you? Eggs come from chickens. The ingredients should read “eggs” and nothing else, but that wasn’t always the case. On today’s grocery stores, eggs that you buy are usually enhanced or processed in some way. They are injected with who knows what kind of chemicals and the chickens are fed all kinds of crap. On the typical label of an egg carton, you will often find more ingredients than just eggs.

  I had to go out of my way to find a place where I could purchase real organic, unprocessed foods to cook for us. I found that the best thing to do was to always be on the lookout for farmers markets or to look for a local farmer who pulled over to the side of the road and sold his crops out of the back of his truck. Nine times out of ten that was safer than buying the processed foods from the store.

  When I turned 15, I was happy that there was a local woman, Betsy Shoemaker, who had opened up an organic foods store. The prices were high, but worth it for our health, and the food tasted better, at least to me it did.

  I went shopping there twice a week, sometimes three times. The problem with organic, real food was that it went bad quickly. Unprocessed food had a natural expiration date like nature was saying, “This food is bad now.”

  I believed in eating clean. I knew that my mom didn’t always follow this same belief. She loved hamburgers and pizza. Being away from home all of the time as a sheriff meant that she was eating out a lot: fast food, gas stations, or the diner in the local hotel. She went there a lot. She often would eat there alone. It was more than just a routine; it was more like a ritual.

  She had taken me there every year around March. I never really knew why, but it became our tradition. We would go to the diner at the old hotel. That was our thing. We ordered coffee and hamburgers. I never drank coffee and she knew that, but she’d ordered me a cup anyway and I never touched it.

  We’d speak casually, but for the most part she was quiet like she was somewhere else. My mom was good with me. We had a good relationship. Whenever we went hunting, fishing, or solved crimes, we talked and laughed. I remembered one time she had taken me to a murder scene; the body of an old man was sprawled out underneath a white sheet.

  “Who killed him?” she had asked.

  I said, “I don’t know.”

  She never got mad at me.

  She said, “Look around the room.”

  I said, “I can’t see the body.”

  She said, “You don’t need to. More often than not the details in your surroundings give away more clues than a dead body does.”

  I tried and then I said, “I can’t.”

  She said, “Yes, you can. You can do anything that you want.”

  I was only 10 years old the first time that she took me to a crime scene like that. Looking back on it, I understood how someone could see it as unorthodox, even borderline immoral. But my mom was training me for something. She had seen more of life and death than most people. She had three decades of experience solving murders. She had the insight into a world that most people didn’t know about and I think that she wanted me to be prepared for it.

  The same way that Robbie Mile’s father had taught him about tires and cars, my mom taught me about solving crimes, about righting wrongs.

  I was 10 years old and I was looking at a murder scene after the fact. I looked at the room. It was a motel room way off Interstate 72, exit 131B to the north. We were almost at the end of my mother’s jurisdiction. The Tennessee border was only seven and a half miles away.

  I remembered closing my eyes and reenacting the crime scene in my head. Without any of the details of the dead man’s appearance, I saw a man, two empty beer bottles, and a glass of wine on the tabletop. I saw a condom wrapper on the floor near the trashcan. I saw the dried suds of shampoo or shower gel still near the drain in the tub. I saw a toilet seat that had been left in the down position.

  I saw a piece of wadded tissue paper in the trashcan. Inside it was a chewed-up stick of gum.

  There were subtle signs of a struggle—disheveled furniture, lamp shade skewed, and someone had been rolling around on the bed. The only thing that indicated definitively that a struggle had occurred was the bathroom mirror. It was cracked like someone had been slammed into it.

  My mother said, “What happened here?”

  I kept my eyes closed, still scanning over the room in my mind. I said, “The guy was shot.”

  I pointed at the wall behind my mother and opposite the bed. Blood was splattered high up on the wall and on the corner of the ceiling. I never opened my eyes.

  I said, “There is blood splattered on that wall. The guy was shot from someone lying underneath him on the bed. The bullet was fired close range and diagonally, probably through his gut. It exited thr
ough his back and sprayed blood in an upward angle. That was why it was so high up on the wall.

  “And there is stippling.”

  My mother asked, “And what is that?”

  I said, “Burns on his skin from gunpowder. That’s how I know that he was shot in the gut. It also means that it was a close-range shot.”

  She asked, “What kind of bullet? What kind of gun?”

  I shook my head. Then I said, “I have no idea.”

  I heard her frustration, but she hadn’t made any remarks. It was just there in her breathing.

  She asked, “So, who killed him?”

  I opened my eyes and asked, “Where’s his wallet?”

  “We found it outside in the bushes.”

  “His car?”

  “Gone.”

  I asked, “Was the money gone?”

  She nodded and then she asked, “So, who killed him?”

  I said, “A prostitute. He wanted to go straight to sex after they had had a few drinks. He drank beer out of the bottle and she drank wine by the glass. He refused to pay her upfront so she pulled a small caliber gun out of her stocking, probably, or a nearby purse or wherever a woman might hide a small handgun. She shot him right in the gut—point blank.”

  My mom asked, “And then?”

  I said, “Then she rolled him off her and grabbed his car keys and his wallet. She ran outside, took money out of the wallet, and stole his car.”

  “Any chance that it was self-defense? Maybe the guy refused to pay and then decided to force himself on her?”

  “Maybe. But either way. That’s up to the prosecution. And this guy’s dead. The woman is not. I doubt that the prosecutor will let it go as self-defense.”

  She nodded. “My job is to solve, not to judge. Always remember that, Reacher. I don’t want you to act outside of the law.”

  I stayed quiet.

  She paused and then she said, “Good job. Every man is innocent until proven guilty. Judgment is up to a judge and jury, not a single man.”

  “Did you want a coffee?” a voice asked.

  I looked up from the menu. An older waitress with deep-set brown eyes and a warm smile on her face stood over me, gazing down.

  She held a pitcher of steaming coffee in her right hand and had an old, white coffee mug in her left. The mug looked like it had seen its fair share of dishwashers. It was worn, faded, and had tiny razor cracks on the exterior. They weren’t deep enough to affect the sturdiness of the mug, but they had cracked the paint.

  I looked up at her with a smile and said, “No thanks. I don’t drink coffee. Let me just get a glass of organic milk and two eggs, four pieces of bacon, and four pieces of toast.”

  I ordered organic milk because I liked organic milk. Didn’t like coffee.

  The waitress smiled and turned and then disappeared behind a counter piled with beverage machines. Menu items like pies and cookies were displayed in glass containers. Soon she came out from behind the display with a glass of white organic milk and placed it in front of me. She handed me a set of silverware in a napkin that was rolled tight and held together by a thin sticker like a seal on an envelope. I ripped through the sticker and placed the silver in front of me.

  I put my lips to the glass of milk and drank. It was good. Cold.

  Exactly 12 minutes later, the food came. Smelled good.

  The food had arrived on a red ceramic dish. I guessed that the whole theme behind the red diner was all of the red dishes as well as the red painted walls, everything red. I wondered why the coffee mugs were white and not red, but I dismissed my curiosity almost as fast as I had raised the question.

  I was more interested in eating.

  After I finished my breakfast, I asked the waitress about the area. She explained that the town’s economy was based on the lake, which was obvious. It was the next part that I was more interested in. She told me that there was a medical research facility that played a smaller role in the town’s economy and then she didn’t say another word about it. She went on to tell me that she had grown up here in Black Rock and that she was retiring in a few years here.

  You’re probably going to die here, I thought. Not on purpose, not with any kind of intentional meanness, but thoughts come and go and there’s not anything that we can do about it.

  I glanced at her nametag. It read “Hazel.”

  I asked, “The medical place, is that the compound that’s surrounded by the barbed wire fence?”

  She nodded and said, “It’s called the Eckhart Medical Center. The town’s only clinic is run out of it. Dr. Eckhart has been great to us. Before the doctor, we all had to drive to Oxford for serious inflictions.”

  “Is it a hospital?” I asked.

  “No, it’s a research facility. They do research on animals or something. The north lower wing is set up as a clinic and emergency room. There is a 24-hour staff. The doctor keeps business hours and is always on call.”

  I nodded and stayed quiet.

  She paused and put the check down in front of me and then she asked, “Will there be anything else?”

  “Where is the nearest Radio Shack?”

  She looked at me with a blank expression and then she said, “There’s Cellular Citi. It’s the only electronics store in town. They carry all kinds of stuff. It’s like a small Best Buy. Want me to draw you a map?”

  I smiled and said, “That would be great.”

  She set her tray down on my table, pulled out a pen, tore a clean sheet off a notepad, and began drawing a small map on the paper. It took her 47 seconds to finish. She handed the map to me.

  I accepted it and smiled and then she left.

  I looked at the check. The bill was $9.55. I opened my wallet, pulled out a ten and a five, and left the bills stacked on top of the check. The five made it a 57.1% tip.

  I stood up from the table and held the map up to my line of sight. I stared at it. The sunlight peered in through the diner windows and dulled through the napkin. I memorized the exact route that she had plotted out for me and then I crumbled it up and left it on the table. The map was etched into my memory.

  My mind worked like a computer. It always had. I could visualize anything that I’ve seen before or imagine anything with great detail just by closing my eyes and concentrating. The map was stored with exact precision in my mind.

  I left Roy’s Red Dinner and walked on to the electronics store. I needed to get a charger for my phone.

  It took me 13 minutes to walk to the store, following the map that the waitress had drawn up for me. The store smelled like it was once a Laundromat. Instead of tile, it had carpet. It was a thick blue carpet that was stained from God knows what. Not the cleanest department store ever.

  Suddenly I was glad that I wore shoes. I would’ve never walked on the carpet barefoot. No way.

  I went straight to the counter and pulled my phone out of my pocket. It took the clerk all of two minutes to find the charger that I needed. I paid for it and left the store. Total time spent in there was three minutes and 17 seconds.

  After the store I didn’t have a plan of attack on which direction that I needed to travel. So I let my feet guide me naturally. Left seemed as good a direction as right, so I decided that from now on if I was confused about which way that I wanted to travel I’d pick left.

  I turned left and walked through the town. I have to admit that I was starting to understand my father a little more. Being a stranger in a strange place was appealing, like I was on the frontier. I was an explorer in a place that had already been explored, but never by me.

  Being told of a place and experiencing it for myself were two completely different things.

  During my walk through town—past the bait shops, the bars, two seafood restaurants, a used-car lot, a used-boat lot, and some kind of shabby-looking seafood museum—I found myself in deep thought about all the kids from my generation. I thought about how they all went off to college and studied about foreign places and read books about life and
never experienced any of it on their own. They read from ancient texts written by dead men from long ago. They learned about old philosophies and learned mathematical equations without ever putting them to use for themselves.

  Suddenly, a sense of profound enlightenment washed over me. A sense of purpose came over me that I could barely describe. Academic life or a so-called normal life weren’t right for me. I wanted to discover my own way, my own philosophies, my own path—like my father had.

  I stopped walking and found an outside café. I sat at a table and ordered a water. The waiter offered me a bottle, but I said tap would be fine. He frowned and brought me a to-go cup filled with ice water.

  I sat and opened my cell phone. The battery was down to 40 percent. I swiped the screen and unlocked the phone. I opened up my mother’s notes and began reading.

  It wasn’t long before I saw what my father had done, before I realized and understood the choice that he had made.

  In her biography of him, my mother wrote how he had lived a life of military service. He had grown up on military bases. He had been born on one in West Berlin.

  After traveling the world and attending dozens of schools, he joined the army and went to West Point Military Academy. He became a military cop—one of the best. He spent 13 years in the service where he had quickly risen to rank of major. At one point he had lost it and then regained it. He was the C.O. of his own special unit.

  My mother listed everything in a tidy outline of dates and brief descriptions. There was a list of medals, major incidents, investigations, and other relevant information.

  There was a dated outline of wounds that my father had. One of these involved a bombing in Beirut where he was hit in the abdomen by a piece of another man—a severed jawbone.

  There were medical reports scattered throughout the notes. He had been hospitalized for being shot once in New York City. He had awakened in the hospital after a knife fight in the same city, different occasion. New York City had not been Jack Reacher’s friend; that was my impression.

  He had had it rough. That was for damn sure.