Without Fail (22 page)

"How much is all this costing?" Reacher asked her.

"You don't want to know," she said. "You really don't."

Neagley came down off the staircase and joined them by the pillar. "Is he here yet?" she asked.

Froelich shook her head. "We're compressing his exposure time. He's arriving late and leaving early."

Then she stiffened and listened to her earpiece. Put her finger on it to cut out the background noise. She raised her other wrist and spoke into the microphone. "Copy, out," she said. She was pale. "What?" Reacher asked.

She ignored him. Spun round and called to the last remaining agent free in the lobby. Told him he was acting on-site team leader for the rest of the night. Spoke into her microphone and repeated that information to all the agents on the local net. Told them to double their vigilance, halve their perimeters, and further compress exposure time wherever possible.

"What?" Reacher asked again.

"Back to base," Froelich said. "Now. That was Stuyvesant. Seems like we've got a real big problem."

NINE

She used the red strobes behind the Suburban's grille and barged through the evening traffic like it was life and death. She lit up the siren at every light. Pushed through and accelerated hard into gaps. Didn't talk at all. Reacher sat completely still in the front passenger seat and Neagley leaned forward from the back with her eyes locked on the road ahead. The three-ton vehicle bucked and swayed. The tyres fought for grip on the slick tarmac. They made it back to the garage inside four minutes. They were in the elevator thirty seconds later. In Stuyvesant's office less than one minute after that.

He was sitting motionless behind his immaculate desk. Slumped in his chair like he had taken a punch to the stomach. He was holding a sheaf of papers. The light shone through them and showed the kind of random coded headings you get by printing from a database. There were two blocks of dense text under the headings. His secretarywas standing next to him, handing him more paper, sheet by sheet. She was white in the face. She left the room without saying a single word. Closed the door, which intensified the silence.

"What?" Reacher said.

Stuyvesant glanced up at him. "Now I know."

"Know what?"

"That this is an outside job. For sure. Without any possible doubt."

"How?"

"You predicted theatrical," Stuyvesant said. "Or spectacular. Those were your predictions. To which we might add dramatic, or incredible, or whatever."

"What was it?"

"Do you know what the homicide rate is, nationally?"

Reacher shrugged. "High, I guess."

"Almost twenty thousand every year."

"OK."

"That's about fifty-four homicides every day."

Reacher did the arithmetic in his head. "Nearer fifty-five," he said. "Except in leap years."

"Want to hear about two of today's?" Stuyvesant asked.

"Who?" Froelich asked.

"Small sugar beet farm in Minnesota," Stuyvesant said. "The farmer walks out his back gate this morning and gets shot in the head. For no apparent reason. Then this afternoon there's a small strip mall outside Boulder, Colorado. A CPA's office in one of the upstairs rooms. The guy comes down and walks out of the rear entrance and gets killed with a machine gun in the service yard. Again, no apparent reason."

"So?"

"The farmer's name was Bruce Armstrong. The accountant's was Brian Armstrong. Both of them were white men about Brook Armstrong's age, about his height, about his weight, similar appearance, same colour eyes and hair."

"Are they family? Are they relatedF

"No," Stu.vvesant said. "Not in any way. Not to each other, not to the VP. So therefore I'm asking myself, what are the odds? That two random men whose last name is Armstrong and whose first names both begin with BR are going to get senselessly killed the same day we're facing a serious threat against our guy? And I'm thinking, the answer.is about a trillion billion to one."

Silence in the office.

"The demonstration," Reacher said.

Yes," Stuyvesant said. "That was the demonstration. Coldblooded murder. Two innocent men. So I agree with you. These are not insiders having a joke." Neagley and Froelich made it to Stuyvesant's visitor chairs and just sat down without being asked. Reacher leaned on a tall filing cabinet and stared out of the window. The blinds were still open, but it was full dark outside. Washington's orange nighttime glow was the only thing he could see.

"How were you notified?" he asked. "Did they call in and claim responsibility?"

Stuyvesant shook his head. "FBI alerted us. They've got software that scans the NCIC reports. Armstrong is one of the names that they flag up."

"So now they're involved anyway."

Stuyvesant shook his head again. "They passed on some information, is all. They don't understand its significance."

The room stayed quiet. Just four people breathing, lost in sombre thoughts.

"We got any details from the scenes?" Neagley asked.

"Some," Stuyvesant said. "The first guy was a single shot to the head. Killed him instantly. They can't find the bullet. The guy's wife didn't hear anything."

"Where was she?"

"About twenty feet away in the kitchen. Doors and windows shut because of the weather. But you'd expect her to hear something. She hears hunters all the time."

"How big was the hole in his head?" Reacher asked.

"Bigger than a.22," Stuyvesant said. "If that's what you're thinking."

Reacher nodded. The only handgun inaudible from twenty feet would be a silenced.22. Anything bigger than that, you'd probably hear something, suppressor or no suppressor, windows or no windows.

"So it was a rifle," he said.

"Trajectory looks like it," Stuyvesant said. "Medical examiner figures the bullet was travelling downward. It went through his head front to back, high to low."

"Hilly country?"

"All around."

"So it was either a very distant rifle or a silenced rifle. And I don't like either one. Distant rifle means somebody's a great shooter, silenced rifle means somebody owns a bunch of exotic weapons."

"What about the second guy?" Neagley asked.

"It was less than eight hours later," Stuyvesant said. "But more than eight hundred miles away. So most likely the team split up for the day."

"Details?"

"Coming through in bits and pieces. First impression from the locals is the weapon was some kind of machine gun. But again, nobody heard anything."

"A silenced machine gun?" Reacher said. "Are they sure?"

"No question it was a machine gun," Stuyvesant said. "The corpse was all chewed up. Two bursts, head and chest. Hell of a mess."

"Hell of a demonstration," Froelich said.

Reacher stared through the window. There was light fog in the air. "But what exactly does it demonstrate?" he said.

"That these are not very nice people."

He nodded. "But not very much more than that, does it? It doesn't really demonstrate Armstrong's vulnerability as such, not if they weren't connected to him in any way. Are we sure they weren't related? Like very, distant cousins or something? At least the farmer? Minnesota is next to North Dakota, right?" Stuyvesant shook his head.

"My first thought, obviously," he said. "But I double checked. First, the VP isn't from North Dakota originally. He moved in from Oregon. Plus we have the complete text of his FBI background check from when he was nominated. It's pretty exhaustive. And he doesn't have any living relatives that anybody's aware of except an elder sister who lives in California. His wife has got a bunch of cousins but none of them are called Armstrong and most of them are younger. Kids, basically."

"OK," Reacher said. Kids. He had a flash in his mind of a seesaw, and stuffed toys and lurid paintings stuck to a refrigerator with magnets. Cousins. "It's weird," he said. "Killing two random unconnected looka likes called Armstrong is dramatic enough, I guess, but it doesn't show any great ingenuity. Doesn't prove anything. Doesn't make us worried about our security here."

"Makes us sad for them," Froelich said. "And their families."

"No doubt," Reacher said. "But two hicks in the sticks going down doesn't really make us sweat, does it? It's not like we were protecting them as well. Doesn't make us doubt ourselves. I really thought it would be something more personal. More intriguing. Like some equivalent of the letter showing up on your desk."

"You sound disappointed," Stuyvesant said.

"I am disappointed. I thought they might come close enough to give us a chance at them. But they stayed away. They're cowards."

Nobody spoke.

"Cowards are bullies," Reacher said. "Bullies are cowards."

Neagley glanced at him. Knew him well enough to sense when to push.

"So?" she asked.

"So we need to go back and rethink a couple of things. Information is stacking up fast and we're not processing it. Like, now we know these guys are outsiders. Now we know this is not a genteel inside game."

"So?" Neagley asked again.

"And what happened in Minnesota and Colorado shows us these guys are prepared to do just about anything at all."

"So?"

"The cleaners. What do we know about them?"

"That they're involved. That they're scared. That they're not saying anything."

"Correct," Reacher said. "But why are they scared? Why aren't they saying anything? Way back we thought they might be playing some cute game with an insider. But they're not doing that. Because these guys aren't insiders. And they're not cute people. And this isn't a game."

"So?"

"So they're being coerced in some serious way. They're being scared and silenced. By some serious people."

"OK, how?"

"You tell me. How do you scare somebody without leaving a mark on them?"

"You threaten something plausible. Serious harm in the future, maybe."

Reacher nodded. "To them, or to somebody they care about. To the point where they're paralysed with terror."

"OK."

"Where have you heard the word cousins before?"

"All over the place. I've got cousins."

"No, recently."

Neagley glanced at the window. "The cleaners," she said. "Their kids are with cousins. They told us."

"But they were a little hesitant about telling us, remember?"

"Were they?"

Reacher nodded. "They paused a second and looked at each other first."

"So?"

"Maybe their kids aren't with cousins."

"Why would they lie?"

Reacher looked at her. "Is there a better way to coerce somebody than taking their kids away as insurance?" They moved fast, but Stuyvesant made sure they moved properly. He called the cleaners" lawyers and told them he needed the answer to just one question the name and address of the children's babysitters. He told them a quick answer would be much better than a delay. He got the quick answer. The lawyers called back within a quarter of an hour. The name was Gilvez and the address was a house a mile from the cleaners" own.

Then Froelich motioned for quiet and got on the radio net and asked for a complete situation update from the hotel. She spoke to her acting on-site leader and four other key positions. There were no problems. Everything was calm. Armstrong was working the room. Perimeters were tight. She instructed that all agents should accompany Armstrong through the loading bay at the function's conclusion. She asked for a human wall, all the way to the limo.

"And make it soon," she said. "Compress the exposure."

Then they squeezed into the single elevator and rode down to the garage. Climbed into Froelich's Suburban for the drive Reacher had slept through first time around. This time he stayed awake as Froelich raced through traffic to the cheap part of town. They passed right by the cleaners" house. Threaded another mile through dark streets made narrow by parked cars and came to a stop outside a tall thin two-family house. It was ringed by a wire fence and had trash cans chained to the gatepost. It was boxed in on one side by a package store and on the other by a long line of identical houses. There was a sagging twenty-year-old Cadillac parked at the kerb. Yellow sodium lighting was cutting through the fog.

"So what do we do?" Stuyvesant said.

Reacher looked through the window. "We go talk with these people. But we don't want a mob scene. They're scared already. We don't want to panic them. They might think the bad guys are back. So Neagley should go first."

Stuyvesant was about to offer an objection but Neagley slid straight out of the car and headed for the gate. Reacher watched her turn a fast circle on the sidewalk before going in, to read the surroundings. Watched her glance left and right as she walked up the path. Nobody was around. Too cold. She reached the door. Searched for a bell. Couldn't find one, so she rapped on the wood with her knuckles.