by Lee Child
“Assume he didn’t,” Reacher said. “How else?”
“I’ll work on it. You work on the shooter.”
He closed his eyes again and looked at the next roof along. Back down at the serving tables. Froelich, in the last minute of her life. He recalled the spray of blood and his immediate instinctive reaction. Incoming lethal fire. Point of origin? He had glanced up and seen . . . what? The curve of a back or a shoulder. It was moving. The shape and the movement were somehow one and the same thing.
“His coat,” he said. “The shape of his coat over his body, and the way it draped when he moved.”
“Seen the coat before?”
“Yes.”
“Color?”
“I don’t know. Not sure it really had a color.”
“Texture?”
“Texture is important. Not thick, not thin.”
“Herringbone?”
Reacher shook his head. “Not the coat we saw on the garage video. Not the guy, either. This guy was taller and leaner. Some length in his upper body. It gave the coat its drape. I think it was a long coat.”
“You only saw his shoulder.”
“It flowed like a long coat.”
“How did it flow?”
“Energetically. Like the guy was moving fast.”
“He would be. Far as he knew he’d just shot Armstrong.”
“No, like he was always energetic. A rangy guy, decisive in his movements.”
“Age?”
“Older than us.”
“Build?”
“Moderate.”
“Hair?”
“Don’t remember.”
He kept his eyes closed and searched his memory for coats. A long coat, not thick, not thin. He let his mind drift, but it always came back to the Atlantic City coat store. Standing there in front of a rainbow of choices, five whole minutes after making a stupid random decision that had led him away from the peace and quiet of a lonely motel room in La Jolla, California.
He gave up on it twenty minutes later and gestured for the duty officer to turn the television sound up for the news. The story led the bulletin, obviously. The coverage opened with a studio portrait of Armstrong in a box behind the anchorman’s shoulder. Then it cut to video of Armstrong handing his wife out of the limo. They stood up together and smiled. Started to walk past the camera. Then the tape cut to Armstrong holding up his ladle and his spoon. A smile on his face. The voice-over paused long enough for the live sound to come up: Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! Then there were seven or eight seconds taken from a little later on when the food line was really moving.
Then it happened.
Because of the silencer there was no gunshot, and because there was no gunshot the cameraman didn’t duck or startle in the usual way. The picture held steady. And because there was no gunshot it seemed completely inexplicable why Froelich was suddenly jumping at Armstrong. It looked a little different, seen from the front. She just took off from her left foot and twisted up and sideways. She looked desperate, but graceful. They ran it once at normal speed, and then again in slow motion. She got her right hand on his left shoulder and pushed him down and herself up. Her momentum carried her all the way around and she drew her knees up and simply knocked him over with them. He fell and she followed him down. She was a foot below her maximum height when the second bullet came in and hit her.
“Shit,” Reacher said.
Neagley nodded, slowly. “She was too quick. A quarter second slower she’d still have been high enough in the air to take it in the vest.”
“She was too good.”
They ran it again, normal speed. It was all over in a second. Then they let the tape run on. The cameraman seemed rooted to the spot. Reacher saw himself barging through the tables. Saw the other agents firing. Froelich was out of sight, on the floor. The camera ducked because of the firing, but then came up level again and started moving in. The picture wobbled as the guy stumbled over something. There were long moments of total confusion. Then the cameraman started forward again, hungry for a shot of the downed agent. Neagley’s face appeared, and the picture went black. Coverage switched back to the anchorman. The anchorman looked straight at the camera and announced that Armstrong’s reaction had been immediate and emphatic.
The picture cut to tape of an outdoors location Reacher recognized as the West Wing’s parking lot. Armstrong was standing there with his wife. They were both still in their casual clothes, but they had taken their Kevlar vests off. Somebody had cleaned Froelich’s blood from Armstrong’s face. His hair was combed. He looked resolute. He spoke in low, controlled tones, like a plain man wrestling with strong emotions. He talked about his extreme sadness that two agents had died. He extolled their qualities as individuals. He offered sincere sympathy to their families. He went on to say he hoped it would be seen that they had died protecting democracy itself, not just himself in person. He hoped their families might take some small measure of comfort from that, as well as a great deal of justified pride. He promised swift and certain retribution against the perpetrators of the outrage. He assured America that no amount of violence or intimidation could deter the workings of government, and that the transition would continue unaffected. But he finished by saying that as a mark of his absolute respect, he was remaining in Washington and canceling all engagements until he had attended a memorial service for his personal friend and protection team leader. He said the service would be held on Sunday morning, in a small country church in a small Wyoming town called Grace, where no finer metaphor for America’s enduring greatness could be found.
“Guy’s full of shit,” the duty officer said.
“No, he’s OK,” Reacher said.
The bulletin cut to first-quarter football highlights. The duty officer muted the sound and turned away. Reacher closed his eyes. Thought of Joe, and then of Froelich. Thought of them together. Then he rehearsed his upward glance once again. The curved spray of Froelich’s blood, the curve of the shooter’s shoulder, retreating, swinging away, swooping away. The coat flowing with him. The coat. He ran it all again, like the TV station had rerun its tape. He froze on the coat. He knew. He opened his eyes wide.
“Figured how yet?” he asked.
“Can’t get past Bannon’s take,” Neagley answered.
“Say it.”
“Crosetti saw somebody he knew and trusted.”
“Man or woman?”
“Man, according to you.”
“OK, say it again.”
Neagley shrugged. “Crosetti saw some man he knew and trusted.”
Reacher shook his head. “Two words short. Crosetti saw some type of man he knew and trusted.”
“Who?” she asked.
“Who can get in and out of anywhere without suspicion?”
Neagley looked at him. “Law enforcement?”
Reacher nodded. “The coat was long, kind of reddish-brown, faint pattern to it. Too thin for an overcoat, too thick for a raincoat, flapping open. It swung as he ran.”
“As who ran?”
“That Bismarck cop. The lieutenant or whatever he was. He ran over to me after I came out of the church. It was him on the warehouse roof.”
“It was a cop?”
“That’s a very serious allegation,” Bannon said. “Based on a quarter-second of observation from ninety yards during extreme mayhem.”
They were back in the FBI’s conference room. Stuyvesant had never left it. He was still in his pink sweater. The room was still impressive.
“It was him,” Reacher said. “No doubt about it.”
“Cops are all fingerprinted,” Bannon said. “Condition of employment.”
“So his partner isn’t a cop,” Reacher said. “The guy on the garage video.”
Nobody spoke.
“It was him,” Reacher said again.
“How long did you see him for in Bismarck?” Bannon asked.
“Ten seconds, maybe,” Reacher said. “He was heading for the church. Mayb
e he’d seen me inside, ducked out, saw me leave, turned around, got ready to go back in.”
“Ten and a quarter seconds total,” Bannon said. “Both times in panic situations. Defense counsel would eat you up.”
“It makes sense,” Stuyvesant said. “Bismarck is Armstrong’s hometown. Hometowns are the places to look for feuds.”
Bannon made a face. “Description?”
“Tall,” Reacher said. “Sandy hair going gray. Lean face, lean body. Long coat, some kind of a heavy twill, reddish-brown, open. Tweed jacket, white shirt, tie, gray flannel pants. Big old shoes.”
“Age?”
“Middle or late forties.”
“Rank?”
“He showed me a gold badge, but he stayed twenty feet away. I couldn’t read it. He struck me as a senior guy. Maybe a detective lieutenant, maybe even a captain.”
“Did he speak?”
“He shouted from twenty feet away. Couple dozen words, maybe.”
“Was he the guy on the phone?”
“No.”
“So now we know both of them,” Stuyvesant said. “A shorter squat guy in a herringbone overcoat from the garage video and a tall lean cop from Bismarck. The squat guy spoke on the phone, and it’s his thumbprint. And he was in Colorado with the machine gun because the cop is the marksman with the rifle. That’s why he was heading for the church tower. He was going to shoot.”
Bannon opened a file. Pulled a sheet of paper. Studied it carefully.
“Our Bismarck field office listed all attending personnel,” he said. “There were forty-two local cops on the field. Nobody above the rank of sergeant except for two, firstly the senior officer present, who was a captain, and his second-in-command, who was a lieutenant.”
“Might have been either one of them,” Reacher said.
Bannon sighed. “This puts us in a difficult spot.”
Stuyvesant stared at him. “Now you’re worried about upsetting the Bismarck PD? You didn’t worry too much about upsetting us.”
“I’m not worried about upsetting anybody,” Bannon said. “I’m thinking tactically, is all. If it had been a patrolman out there I could call the captain or the lieutenant and ask him to investigate. Can’t do that the other way around. And alibis are going to be all over the place. Senior ranks will be off-duty today for the holiday.”
“Call now,” Neagley said. “Find out who’s not in town. They can’t be home yet. You’re watching the airports.”
Bannon shook his head. “People aren’t home today for lots of reasons. They’re visiting family, stuff like that. And this guy could be home already. He could have gotten through the airports easy as anything. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? Mayhem like we had today, multiple agencies out and looking, nobody knows each other, all he’s got to do is hustle along holding his badge up and he walks straight through anywhere. That’s obviously how they got into the immediate area. And out again. What’s more natural in the circumstances than a cop running full speed with his badge held up?”
The room went quiet.
“Personnel files,” Stuyvesant said. “We should get Bismarck PD to send us their files and let Reacher look at the photographs.”
“That would take days,” Bannon said. “And who would I ask? I might be speaking directly to the bad guy.”
“So speak to your Bismarck field office,” Neagley said. “Wouldn’t surprise me if the local FBI had illicit summaries on the whole police department, with photographs.”
Bannon smiled. “You’re not supposed to know about things like that.”
Then he stood up slowly and went out to his office to make the necessary call.
“So Armstrong made the statement,” Stuyvesant said. “Did you see it? But it’s going to cost him politically, because I can’t let him go.”
“I need a decoy, is all,” Reacher said. “Better for me if he doesn’t really show up. And the last thing I care about right now is politics.”
Stuyvesant didn’t answer. Nobody spoke again. Bannon came back into the room after fifteen minutes. He had a completely neutral look on his face.
“Good news and bad news,” he said. “Good news is that Bismarck isn’t the largest city on earth. Police department employs a hundred thirty-eight people, of which thirty-two are civilian workers, leaving a hundred and six badged officers. Twelve of those are women, so we’re down to ninety-four already. And thanks to the miracles of illicit intelligence and modern technology we’ll have scanned and e-mailed mug shots of all ninety-four of them within ten minutes.”
“What’s the bad news?” Stuyvesant asked.
“Later,” Bannon said. “After Reacher has wasted a little more of our time.”
He looked around the room. Wouldn’t say anything more. In the end the wait was a little less than ten minutes. An agent in a suit hurried in with a sheaf of paper. He stacked it in front of Bannon. Bannon pushed the pile across to Reacher. Reacher picked it up and flicked through. Sixteen sheets, some of them still a little wet from the printer. Fifteen sheets had six photographs each and the sixteenth had just four. Ninety-four faces in total. He started with the last sheet. None of the four faces was even close.
He picked up the fifteenth sheet. Glanced across the next six faces and put the paper down again. Picked up the fourteenth sheet. Scanned all six pictures. He worked fast. He didn’t need to study carefully. He had the guy’s features fixed firmly in his mind. But the guy wasn’t on the fourteenth sheet. Or the thirteenth.
“How sure are you?” Stuyvesant asked.
Nothing on the twelfth sheet.
“I’m sure,” Reacher said. “That was the guy, and the guy was a cop. He had a badge and he looked like a cop. He looked as much like a cop as Bannon.”
Nothing on the eleventh sheet. Or the tenth.
“I don’t look like a cop,” Bannon said.
Nothing on the ninth sheet.
“You look exactly like a cop,” Reacher said. “You’ve got a cop coat, cop pants, cop shoes. You’ve got a cop face.”
Nothing on the eighth sheet.
“He acted like a cop,” Reacher said.
Nothing on the seventh sheet.
“He smelled like a cop,” Reacher said.
Nothing on the sixth sheet. Nothing on the fifth sheet.
“What did he say to you?” Stuyvesant asked.
Nothing on the fourth sheet.
“He asked me if the church was secure,” Reacher said. “I asked him what was going on. He said some kind of big commotion. Then he yelled at me for leaving the church door open. Just like a cop would talk.”
Nothing on the third sheet. Or the second. He picked up the first sheet and knew instantly that the guy wasn’t on it. He dropped the paper and shook his head.
“OK, now for the bad news,” Bannon said. “Bismarck PD had nobody there in plain clothes. Nobody at all. It was considered a ceremonial occasion. They were all in full uniform. All forty-two of them. Especially the brass. The captain and the lieutenant were in full dress uniform. White gloves and all.”
“The guy was a Bismarck cop,” Reacher said.
“No,” Bannon said. “The guy was not a Bismarck cop. At best he was a guy impersonating a Bismarck cop.”
Reacher said nothing.
“But he was obviously making a pretty good stab at it,” Bannon said. “He convinced you, for instance. Clearly he had the look, and the mannerisms.”
Nobody spoke.
“So nothing’s changed, I’m afraid,” Bannon said. “We’re still looking at recent Secret Service ex-employees. Because who better to impersonate a provincial cop than some other law-enforcement veteran who just worked his whole career alongside provincial cops at events exactly like that one?”
15
A staffer from the Office of Protection Research was waiting when Reacher and Neagley and Stuyvesant got back to the Treasury Building. He was standing in the reception area wearing a knitted sweater and blue pants, like he had run straight in f
rom the family dinner table. He was about Reacher’s age and looked like a university professor except for his eyes. They were wise and wary, like he had seen a few things, and heard about plenty more. His name was Swain. Stuyvesant introduced him all around and disappeared. Swain led Reacher and Neagley through corridors they hadn’t used before to an area that clearly doubled as a library and a lecture room. It had a dozen chairs set facing a podium and was lined on three walls with bookshelves. The fourth wall had a row of hutches with computers on desks. A printer next to each computer.
“I heard what the FBI is saying,” Swain said.
“You believe it?” Reacher asked.
Swain just shrugged.
“Yes or no?” Reacher asked.
“I guess it’s not impossible,” Swain said. “But there’s no reason to believe it’s likely. Just as likely that it’s ex-FBI agents. Or current FBI agents. As an agency we’re better than they are. Maybe they’re trying to bring us down.”
“Think we should look in that direction?”
“You’re Joe Reacher’s brother, aren’t you?”
Reacher nodded.
“I worked with him,” Swain said. “Way back.”
“And?”
“He used to encourage random observations.”
“So do I,” Reacher said. “You got any?”
“My job is strictly academic,” Swain said. “You understand? I’m purely a researcher. A scholar, really. I’m here to analyze.”
“And?”
“This situation feels different from anything else I’ve seen. The hatred is very visible. Assassinations fall into two groups, ideological or functional. A functional assassination is where you need to get rid of a guy for some specific political or economic reason. An ideological assassination is where you murder a guy because you hate him, basically. There have been plenty of attempts along those lines, over the years. I can’t tell you about any of them except to say that most don’t get very far. And that there’s certainly always plenty of hatred involved. But usually it’s well hidden, down at the conspirator level. They whisper among themselves. All we ever see is the result. But this time the hatred is right there in our face. They’ve gone to a lot of trouble and taken a lot of risks to make sure we know all about it.”