He shook his head. “Gloves.”
“They’ve been in my house,” she said.
She moved away from the rear door and stopped at the kitchen counter. Glanced down at something and snatched open a drawer.
“They took my gun,” she said. “I had a backup gun in here.”
“I know,” Reacher said. “An old Beretta.”
She opened the drawer next to it.
“The magazines are gone too,” she said. “I had ammo in here.”
“I know,” Reacher said again. “Under an oven glove.”
“How do you know?”
“I checked, Monday night.”
“Why would you?”
“Habit,” he said. “Don’t take it personally.”
She stared at him and then opened the wall cupboard with the money stash in it. He saw her check the earthenware pot. She said nothing, so he assumed the cash was still there. He filed the observation away in the professional corner of his mind, as confirmation of a long-held belief: people don’t like searching above head height.
Then she stiffened. A new thought.
“They might still be in the house,” she said, quietly.
But she didn’t move. It was the first sign of fear he had ever seen from her.
“I’ll check,” he said. “Unless that’s an unhealthy response to a challenge.”
She just handed him her pistol. He turned out the kitchen light so he wouldn’t be silhouetted on the basement stairs and walked slowly down. Listened hard past the creaks and sighs of the house, and the hum and trickle of the heating system. Stood still in the dark and let his eyes adjust. There was nobody there. Nobody upstairs, either. Nobody hiding and waiting. People hiding and waiting give off human vibrations. Tiny hums and quivers. And he wasn’t feeling anything. The house was empty and undisturbed, apart from the displaced telephone and the missing Beretta and the message on the hallway floor. He came back to the kitchen and held out the SIG, butt-first.
“Secure,” he said.
“I better make some calls,” she said.
Special Agent Bannon showed up forty minutes later in a Bureau sedan with three members of his task force. Stuyvesant arrived five minutes after them in a department Suburban. They left both vehicles double-parked in the street with their strobes going. The neighboring houses were spattered with random bursts of light, blue and red and white. Stuyvesant stood still in the open doorway.
“We weren’t supposed to get any more messages,” he said.
Bannon was on his knees, looking at the sheet of paper.
“This is generic,” he said. “We predicted we wouldn’t get specificity. And we haven’t. The word soon is meaningless as to time and place. It’s just a taunt. We’re supposed to be impressed with how smart they are.”
“I was already impressed with how smart they are,” Stuyvesant said.
Bannon looked up at Froelich. “How long have you been out?”
“All day,” Froelich said. “We left at six-thirty this morning to meet with you.”
“We?”
“Reacher’s staying here,” she said.
“Not anymore, he’s not,” Bannon said. “Neither of you is staying here. It’s too dangerous. We’re putting you in a secure location.”
Froelich said nothing.
“They’re in D.C. right now,” Bannon said. “Probably regrouping somewhere. Probably got in from North Dakota a couple hours after you did. They know where you live. And we need to work here. This is a crime scene.”
“This is my house,” Froelich said.
“It’s a crime scene,” Bannon said again. “They’ve been here. We’ll have to rip it up some. Better that you stay away until we put it back together.”
Froelich said nothing.
“Don’t argue,” Stuyvesant said. “I want you protected. We’ll put you in a motel. Couple of U.S. marshals outside the door, until this is over.”
“Neagley, too,” Reacher said.
Froelich glanced at him. Stuyvesant nodded.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I already sent somebody to pick her up.”
“Neighbors?” Bannon asked.
“Don’t really know them,” Froelich answered.
“They might have seen something,” Bannon said. He checked his watch. “They might still be up. At least I hope so. Dragging witnesses out of bed generally makes them very cranky.”
“So get what you need, people,” Stuyvesant called. “We’re leaving, right now.”
Reacher stood in Froelich’s guest room and had a strong feeling he would never come back to it. So he took his things from the bathroom and his garbage bag of Atlantic City clothes and all of Joe’s suits and shirts that were still clean. He stuffed clean socks and underwear into the pockets. Carried all the clothes in one hand and Joe’s cardboard box under the other arm. He came down the stairs and stepped out into the night air and it hit him that for the first time in more than five years he was leaving a place carrying baggage. He loaded it into the Suburban’s trunk and then walked around and climbed into the backseat. Sat still and waited for Froelich. She came out of her house carrying a small valise. Stuyvesant took it from her and stowed it and they climbed into the front together. Took off down the street. Froelich didn’t look back.
They drove due north and then turned west all the way through the tourist sites and out again on the other side. They stopped at a Georgetown motel about ten blocks shy of Armstrong’s street. There was an old-model Crown Vic parked outside, with a new Town Car next to it. The Town Car had a driver in it. The Crown Vic was empty. The motel itself was a small neat place with dark wood all over it. A discreet sign. It was hemmed in by three embassies with fenced grounds. The embassies belonged to new countries Reacher had never heard of, but their fences were OK. It was a very protected location. Only one way in, and a marshal in the lobby would take care of that. An extra marshal in the corridor would be icing on the cake.
Stuyvesant had booked three rooms. Neagley had already arrived. They found her in the lobby. She was buying soda from a machine and talking to a big guy in a cheap black suit and patrolman’s shoes. A U.S. marshal, without a doubt. The Crown Vic driver. Their vehicle budget must be smaller than the Secret Service’s, Reacher thought. As well as their clothing allowance.
Stuyvesant did the paperwork at the desk and came back with three key cards. Handed them around in an embarrassed little ceremony. Mentioned three room numbers. They were sequential. Then he scrabbled in his pocket and came out with the Suburban’s keys. Gave them to Froelich.
“I’ll ride back with the guy who brought Neagley over,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, seven o’clock in the office, with Bannon, all of you.”
Then he turned and left. Neagley juggled her key card and her soda and a garment bag and went looking for her room. Froelich and Reacher followed behind her, with a key card each. There was another marshal at the head of the bedroom corridor. He was sitting awkwardly on a plain dining chair. He had it tilted back against the wall for comfort. Reacher squeezed his untidy luggage past him and stopped at his door. Froelich was already two rooms down, not looking in his direction.
He went inside and found a compact version of what he had seen a thousand times before. Just one bed, one chair, a table, a normal telephone, a smaller TV screen. But the rest was generic. Floral drapes, already closed. A floral bedspread, Scotchgarded until it was practically rigid. No-color bamboo-weave stuff on the walls. A cheap print over the bed, pretending to be a hand-colored architectural drawing of some part of some ancient Greek temple. He stowed his baggage and arranged his bathroom articles on the shelf above the sink. Checked his watch. Past midnight. Thanksgiving Day, already. He took off Joe’s jacket and dropped it on the table. Loosened his tie and yawned. There was a knock at the door. He opened up and found Froelich standing there.
“Come in,” he said.
“Just for a minute,” she said. He walked back and sat on the end of the bed, to let her take the
chair. Her hair was a mess, like she had just run her fingers through it. She looked good like that. Younger, and vulnerable, somehow.
“I am over him,” she said.
“OK,” he said.
“But I can see how you might think I’m not.”
“OK,” he said again.
“So I think we should be apart tonight. I wouldn’t want you to be worried about why I was here. If I was here.”
“Whatever you want,” he said.
“It’s just that you’re so like him. It’s impossible not to be reminded. You can see that, can’t you? But you were never a substitute. I need you to know that.”
“Still think I got him killed?”
She looked away.
“Something got him killed,” she said. “Something on his mind, in his background. Something made him think he could beat somebody he couldn’t beat. Something made him think he was going to be OK when he wasn’t going to be OK. And the same thing could happen to you. You’re stupid if you don’t see that.”
He nodded. Said nothing. She stood up and walked past him. He caught her perfume as she went by.
“Call me if you need me,” he said.
She didn’t reply. He didn’t get up.
A half hour later there was another knock at the door and he opened it up expecting to find Froelich again. But it was Neagley. Still fully dressed, a little tired, but calm.
“You on your own?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Where is she?” Neagley asked.
“She left.”
“Business or lack of pleasure?”
“Confusion,” he said. “Half the time she wants me to be Joe, the other half she wants to blame me for getting him killed.”
“She’s still in love with him.”
“Evidently.”
“Six years after their relationship ended.”
“Is that normal?”
She shrugged. “You’re asking me? I guess some people carry a torch for a long time. He must have been quite a guy.”
“I didn’t really know him all that well.”
“Did you get him killed?”
“Of course not. I was a million miles away. Hadn’t spoken to him for seven years. I told you that.”
“So what’s her angle?”
“She says he was driven to be reckless because he was comparing himself to me.”
“And was he?”
“I doubt it.”
“You said you felt guilty afterward. You told me that too, when we were watching those surveillance tapes.”
“I think I said I felt angry, not guilty.”
“Angry, guilty, it’s all the same thing. Why feel guilty if it wasn’t your fault?”
“Now you’re saying it was my fault?”
“I’m just asking, what’s the guilt about?”
“He grew up under a false impression.”
He went quiet and moved deeper into the room. Neagley followed him. He lay down on the bed, arms outstretched, hands hanging off the edges. She sat down in the armchair, where Froelich had been.
“Tell me about the false impression,” she said.
“He was big, but he was studious,” Reacher said. “The schools we went to, being studious was like having ‘Kick my ass’ tattooed across your forehead. And he wasn’t all that tough, really, although he was big. So he got his ass kicked, regular as clockwork.”
“And?”
“I was two years younger, but I was big and tough, and not very studious. So I started to look after him. Loyalty, I guess, and I liked fighting anyway. I was about six. I’d wade in anywhere. I learned a lot of stuff. Learned that style was the big thing. Look like you mean it, and people back off a lot. Sometimes they didn’t. I had eight-year-olds all over me the first year. Then I got better at it. I hurt people bad. I was a madman. It got to be a thing. We’d arrive in some new place and pretty quick people would know to lay off Joe, or the psycho would be coming after them.”
“Sounds like you were a lovely little boy.”
“It was the Army. Anyplace else they’d have sent me to reform school.”
“You’re saying Joe grew to rely on it.”
Reacher nodded. “It was like that for ten years, basically. It came and went, and it happened less as we got older. But more serious when it actually did. I think he internalized it. Ten years is a significant chunk of time when you’re growing up, internalizing things. I think it became part of his mind-set to ignore danger because the psycho always had his back. So I think Froelich’s right, in a way. He was reckless. Not because he was trying to compete, but because deep down he felt he could afford to be. Because I had always looked after him, like his mother had always fed him, like the Army had always housed him.”
“How old was he when he died?”
“Thirty-eight.”
“That’s twenty years, Reacher. He had twenty years to adjust. We all adjust.”
“Do we? Sometimes I still feel like that same six-year-old. Everybody looking out of the corner of their eye at the psycho.”
“Like who?”
“Like Froelich.”
“She been saying things?”
“I disconcert her, clearly.”
“Secret Service is a civilian organization. Paramilitary at best. Nearly as bad as regular citizens.”
He smiled. Said nothing.
“So, what’s the verdict?” Neagley asked. “You going to be walking around from now on thinking you killed your brother?”
“A little bit, maybe,” he said. “But I’ll get over it.”
She nodded. “You will. And you should. It wasn’t your fault. He was thirty-eight. He wasn’t waiting for his little brother to show up.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“About what?”
“Something else Froelich said.”
“She wonders why we aren’t doing it?”
“You’re quick,” he said.
“I could sense it,” Neagley said. “She came across as a little concerned. A little jealous. Cold, even. But then, I’d just kicked her ass with the audit thing.”
“You sure had.”
“We’ve never even touched, you know that, you and me? We’ve never had any physical contact of any kind at all. You’ve never patted me on the back, never even shaken my hand.”
He looked at her, and thought back through fifteen years.
“Haven’t I?” he said. “Is that good or bad?”
“It’s good,” she said. “But don’t ask why.”
“OK,” he said.
“Reasons of my own. Don’t ask what they are. But I don’t like to be touched. And you never touched me. I always figured you could sense it. And I always appreciated that. It’s one of the reasons I always liked you so much.”
He said nothing.
“Even if you should have been in reform school,” she said.
“You probably should have been in there with me.”
“We’d have made a good team,” she said. “We are a good team. You should come back to Chicago with me.”
“I’m a wanderer,” he said.
“OK, I won’t push,” she said. “And look on the bright side with Froelich. Cut her some slack. She’s probably worth it. She’s a nice woman. Have some fun. You’re good together.”
“OK,” he said. “I guess.”
Neagley stood up and yawned.
“You OK?” he asked.
She nodded. “I’m fine.”
Then she put a kiss on the tips of her fingers and blew it to him from six feet away. Walked out of the room without saying another word.
He was tired, but he was agitated and the room was cold and the bed was lumpy and he couldn’t sleep. So he put his pants and shirt back on and walked to the closet and pulled out Joe’s box. He didn’t expect to find anything of interest in it. It would be abandoned stuff, that was all. Nobody leaves important things in a girlfriend’s house when he knows he’s going to skip out som
eday soon.
He put the box on the bed and pulled the flaps open. First thing he saw was a pair of shoes. They were packed heel-to-toe sideways across one end of the box. They were formal black shoes, good leather, reasonably heavy. They had proper stitched welts and toe caps. Thin laces in five holes. Imported, probably. But not Italian. They were too substantial. British, maybe. Like the Air Force tie.
He placed them on the bedcover. Put the heels six inches apart and the toes a little farther. The right heel was worn more than the left. The shoes were fairly old, fairly battered. He could see the whole shape of Joe’s feet in them. The whole shape of his body, towering above them, like he was standing right there wearing them, invisible. They were like a death mask.
There were three books in the box, packed edge-up. One was Du côté de chez Swann, which was the first volume of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. It was a French paperback with a characteristic severe plain cover. He leafed through it. He could manage the language, but the content passed over his head. The second book was a college text about statistical analysis. It was heavy and dense. He leafed through it and gave up on both the language and the content. Piled it on top of Proust on the bed.
He picked up the third book. Stared at it. He recognized it. He had bought it for Joe himself, a long time ago, for his thirtieth birthday. It was Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. It was in English, but he had bought it in Paris at a used bookstore. He could even remember exactly what it had cost, which wasn’t very much. The Paris bookseller had relegated it to the foreign-language section, and it wasn’t a first edition or anything. It was just a nice-looking volume, and a great story.
He opened it to the flyleaf. He had written: Joe. Avoid both, OK? Happy Birthday. Jack. He had used the bookseller’s pen, and the ink had smudged. Now it had faded a little. Then he had written out an address label, because the bookseller had offered to mail it for him. The address was the Pentagon back then, because Joe was still in Military Intelligence when he was thirty. The bookseller had been very impressed. The Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia, USA.
He leafed past the title page to the first line: At the beginning of July, during a spell of exceptionally hot weather, towards evening, a certain young man came down to the street from the room he was renting. Then he leafed ahead, looking for the ax murder itself, and a folded paper fell out of the book. It was there as a bookmark, he guessed, about halfway through, where Raskolnikov is arguing with Svidrigaïlov.
Lee Child - [Jack Reacher 01-16] Page 240