by Lee Child
Mauney said, “I made the IDs by comparing a bunch of old snapshots from a shoe box in Franz’s bedroom closet.” Then he passed the photograph to his right, to Neagley. She studied it for a moment, nothing in her face except light reflected off the shiny plastic. She passed it counterclockwise, to Dixon. Dixon looked at it for ten long seconds and blinked once and passed it to O’Donnell. O’Donnell took it and studied it and shook his head and passed it to Reacher.
Manuel Orozco was on the left of the frame, glancing to his right, caught by the camera in his perpetual state of restlessness. Then came Calvin Franz, hands in his pockets, patience on his face. Then came Tony Swan, front and center, looking straight ahead. On the right was Jorge Sanchez, in a buttoned-up shirt, no tie, with a finger hooked under his collar. Reacher knew that pose. He had seen it a thousand times before. It meant that Sanchez had shaved about ten hours previously, and the stubble on his throat was growing back and beginning to irritate him. Even without the time code burned into the lower right of the shot Reacher would have known he was looking at a picture taken early in the evening.
They all looked a little older. Orozco’s hair was gray at the temples and his eyes were lined and weary. Franz had maybe lost a little weight. Some of the muscle was gone from his shoulders. Swan was as wide as ever, barrel-chested, thicker in the gut. His hair was short and had crept backward maybe half an inch. Sanchez’s scowl had settled into a tracery of permanent down-turned lines running from his nose to his chin and framing his mouth.
Older, but maybe a little wiser, too. There was a lot of talent and experience and capability right there in the picture. And an easy camaraderie and a mutual trust still floating on recent renewal. Four tough guys. In Reacher’s opinion, four of the best eight in the world.
Who or what had beaten them?
Behind them, running away from the camera, were narrow store aisles that looked familiar.
“Where is this?” Reacher asked.
Mauney said, “The pharmacy in Culver City. Next to Franz’s office. The guy behind the counter remembered them. Swan was buying aspirin.”
“That doesn’t sound like Swan.”
“For his dog. It had arthritis in its hips. He gave it a quarter-tab of aspirin a day. The pharmacist said that’s a pretty common practice with dogs. Especially big dogs.”
“How much aspirin did he buy?”
“The economy bottle. Ninety-six pills, generic.”
Dixon said, “At a quarter-tab a day, that’s a year and nineteen days’ worth.”
Reacher looked at the picture again. Four guys, relaxed poses, no urgency, all the time in the world, a routine purchase, a provision on behalf of a pet animal designed to stretch more than a year into the future.
They never even saw it coming.
Who or what had beaten them?
“Can I keep this picture?” he asked.
“Why?” Mauney said. “You see something in it?”
“Four of my old friends.”
Mauney nodded. “So keep it. It’s a copy.”
“What next?”
“Stay here,” Mauney said. He dropped the lid of his case and clicked the latches, loud in the silence. “Stay visible, and call me if you see anyone sniffing around. No more independent action, OK?”
“We’re just here for the funeral,” Reacher said.
“But whose funeral?”
Reacher didn’t reply to that. Just stood up and turned and looked at Raquel Welch’s picture again. The glass in the frame was reflective and behind him he saw Mauney getting out of his chair, and the others standing up with him. When a seated person stands up, he slides forward to do it, so that when a seated group stands up they all end up temporarily closer to one another than they were when they were sitting down. Therefore their next communal move is to shuffle backward, turning, dispersing, widening the circle, respecting space. Neagley was first and fastest, of course. Mauney turned toward the door and set himself to thread through the limited space between the chairs. O’Donnell stepped the other way, toward the interior of the hotel. Dixon paralleled him, small, deft, nimble, side-stepping a coffee table.
But Thomas Brant moved the other way.
Inward.
Reacher kept his eye on the glass in front of Raquel. Watched Brant’s tan reflection. He knew instantly what was going to happen. Brant was going to tap him on his right shoulder with his left hand. Whereupon Reacher was supposed to turn inquiringly and take a massive straight right to the face.
Brant stepped closer. Reacher focused on the gold ring between the two halves of Raquel’s bikini top. Brant’s left hand snaked forward and his right hand eased back. His left hand had the index finger extended and his right hand was bunched into a fist the size of a softball. Good but not great technique. Reacher sensed that Brant’s feet were not perfectly placed. Brant was a brawler, not a fighter. He was hobbling himself about fifty percent.
Brant tapped Reacher on the shoulder.
Because he was expecting it Reacher turned much faster than he might have done and caught the incoming straight right in his left palm a foot in front of his face. Like snaring a line drive barehanded in the infield. It was a hefty blow. A lot of weight behind it. It made a hell of a smack. It stung Reacher’s palm all the way down to the tendons.
Then it was all about superhuman self-control.
Every ounce of Reacher’s animal instinct and muscle memory dictated a head butt to Brant’s damaged nose. It was a no-brainer. Use the adrenaline. Jerk forward from the waist, plenty of snap, bury that forehead deep. A move that Reacher had perfected at the age of five. A reaction that was almost mandatory a lifetime later.
But Reacher held off.
He just stood still, gripping Brant’s bunched fist. He looked into Brant’s eyes, breathed out, and shook his head.
“I apologized once,” he said. “And I’m apologizing again, right now. If that’s not good enough for you, then wait until after this is all over, OK? I’ll stick around. You can get a couple of buddies and jump me three-on-one when I’m not looking for it. That’s fair, right?”
“Maybe I’ll do that,” Brant said.
“You should. But choose your buddies carefully. Don’t pick anyone who can’t afford six months in the hospital.”
“Tough guy.”
“I ain’t the one wearing the splint here.”
Curtis Mauney came over and said, “No fighting. Not now, not ever.” He hauled Brant away by the collar. Reacher waited until they were both out the door and then grimaced and shook his left hand wildly and said, “Damn, that stings.”
“Put some ice on it,” Neagley said.
“Wrap it around a cold beer,” O’Donnell said.
“Get over it and let me tell you about the number six hundred and fifty,” Dixon said.
34
They went up to Dixon’s room and she arranged the seven spreadsheets neatly on the bed. Said, “OK, what we have here is a sequence of seven calendar months. Some kind of a performance analysis. For simplicity’s sake let’s just call them hits and misses. The first three months are pretty good. Plenty of hits, not too many misses. An average success rate of approximately ninety percent. A hair over eighty-nine point five-three percent, to be precise, which I know you want me to be.”
“Move along,” O’Donnell said.
“Then in the fourth month we fall off a cliff and we get worse.”
“We know that already,” Neagley said.
“So for the sake of argument let’s take the first three months as a baseline. We know they can hit ninety percent, give or take. They’re capable of it. Let’s say they could have or should have continued that level of performance indefinitely.”
“But they didn’t,” O’Donnell said.
“Exactly. They could have, but they didn’t. What’s the result?”
Neagley said, “More misses later than earlier.”
“How many more?”
“I don’t know.”
“I do,” Dixon said. “On this volume if they had continued their baseline success rate through the final four months they would have saved themselves exactly six hundred and fifty extra misses.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Dixon said. “Numbers don’t lie, and percentages are numbers. Something happened at the end of month three that went on to cost them six hundred and fifty avoidable future failures.”
Reacher nodded. A total of 183 days, a total of 2,197 events, a total of 1,314 successes and 883 failures. But with markedly unequal distribution. The first three months, 897 events, 802 successes, 95 failures. The next four months, 1,300 events, a miserable 502 successes, a catastrophic 798 failures, 650 of which wouldn’t have happened if something hadn’t changed.
“I wish we knew what we were looking at,” he said.
“Sabotage,” O’Donnell said. “Someone got paid to screw up something.”
“At a hundred grand a time?” Neagley said. “Six hundred and fifty times over? That’s nice work if you can get it.”
“Can’t be sabotage,” Reacher said. “You could get a whole factory or office or whatever torched for a hundred grand, easy. Probably a whole town. You wouldn’t have to pay per occasion.”
“So what is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“But it ties in,” Dixon said. “Doesn’t it? There was a definite mathematical relationship between what Franz knew and what Sanchez knew.”
A minute later Reacher stepped to Dixon’s window and looked out at the view. Asked, “Would it be fair to assume that Orozco knew whatever Sanchez knew?”
“Totally,” O’Donnell said. “And vice versa, certainly. They were friends. They worked together. They must have talked all the time.”
“So all we’re missing is what Swan knew. We’ve got fragments from the other three. Nothing from him.”
“His house was clean. Nothing there.”
“So it’s at his office.”
“He didn’t have an office. He was canned.”
“But only very recently. So his office is just sitting there empty. They’re shedding staff, not hiring. So there’s no pressure on space. His office is mothballed. With his computer still right there on his desk. And maybe there are notes in the desk drawers, stuff like that.”
Neagley said, “You want to go see the dragon lady again?”
“I think we have to.”
“We should call before we drive all the way out there.”
“Better if we just show up.”
“I’d like to see where Swan worked,” O’Donnell said.
“Me too,” Dixon said.
Dixon drove. Her rental, her responsibility. She headed east on Sunset, hunting the 101. Neagley told her what she was going to have to do after that. A complex route. Slow traffic. But the ride through Hollywood itself was picturesque. Dixon seemed to enjoy it. She liked LA.
The man in the dark blue suit in the dark blue Chrysler tailed them all the way. Outside the KTLA studios, just before the freeway, he dialed his phone. Told his boss, “They’re heading east. All four of them together in the car.”
His boss said, “I’m still in Colorado. Watch them for me, OK?”
35
Dixon turned in through New Age’s open gate and parked in the same visitor slot Neagley had used, head-on against the shiny corporate cube. The lot was still half-empty. The specimen trees were motionless in the heavy air. The same receptionist was on duty. Same polo shirt, same slow response. She heard the doors open but didn’t look up until Reacher put his hand on the counter.
“Help you?” she said.
“We need to see Ms. Berenson again,” Reacher said. “The Human Resources person.”
“I’ll see if she’s available,” the receptionist said. “Please take a seat.”
O’Donnell and Neagley sat down but Reacher and Dixon stayed on their feet. Dixon was too restless to spend more of the day in a chair. Reacher stood because if he sat next to Neagley he would crowd her and if he sat somewhere else she would wonder why.
They waited the same four minutes before they heard the click of Berenson’s heels on the slate. She came out of the corridor and around the corner and didn’t hesitate. Just gave the receptionist a nod of thanks and passed her by and headed on out. She gave up two types of smiles, one kind to Reacher and Neagley because she had met them before, and another kind to O’Donnell and Dixon because she hadn’t. She shook hands all around. Same scars under the makeup, same icy breath. She opened the aluminum door and stood still until everyone had filed past her into the conference room.
With five people in it the room was short one chair, so Berenson stood by the window. Polite, but also psychologically dominating. It made her visitors look upward at her and it made them squint against the light behind her. She said, “How may I help you today?” There was a little condescension in her voice. A little irritation. A slight emphasis on today.
“Tony Swan is missing,” Reacher said.
“Missing?”
“As in, we can’t find him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s not a difficult concept to grasp.”
“But he could be anywhere. A new job, out of state. Or a long-delayed vacation. Somewhere he always wanted to go. People sometimes do that, in Mr. Swan’s circumstances. Like a silver lining.”
O’Donnell said, “His dog died of thirst, trapped inside his house. No silver lining there. All cloud. Swan didn’t go anywhere he planned to go.”
“His dog? How awful.”
“Roger that,” Dixon said.
“Her name was Maisi,” Neagley said.
“I don’t see how I can help,” Berenson said. “Mr. Swan left here more than three weeks ago. Isn’t this a matter for the police?”
“They’re working on it,” Reacher said. “We’re working on it, too.”
“I don’t see how I can help.”
“We’d like to see his desk. And his computer. And his diary. There might be notes. Or information, or appointments.”
“Notes about what?”
“About whatever has caused him to be missing.”
“He’s not missing because of New Age.”
“Maybe not. But people have been known to conduct private business during office hours. People have been known to jot down notes about things from their outside lives.”
“Not here.”
“Why not? You’re all business all the time?”
“There are no notes here. No paper at all. No pens or pencils. Basic security. This is a completely paperless environment. Much safer. It’s a rule. Anyone even thinks about breaking it, they get fired. Everything is done on computers here. We have an in-house network with secure firewalls and automatic random data monitoring.”
“Can we see his computer, then?” Neagley asked.
“I guess you could see it,” Berenson said. “But it won’t do you any good. Someone leaves here, within thirty minutes their desktop hard drive is taken out and destroyed. Smashed. Physically. With hammers. It’s another security rule.”
“With hammers?” Reacher said.
“It’s the only definitive method. Data can be recovered otherwise.”
“So there’s no trace of him left?”
“None at all, I’m afraid.”
“You’ve got some pretty heavy rules here.”
“I know. Mr. Swan designed them himself. In his first week. They were his first major contribution.”
“Did he talk to anybody?” Dixon asked. “Water cooler buddies? Is there anyone he would have shared a concern with?”
“Personal issues?” Berenson said. “I doubt it. The dynamic wouldn’t have been appropriate. He had to play a cop’s role here. He had to keep himself a little unapproachable, to be effective.”
“What about his boss?” O’Donnell said. “They might have shared. They were in the same boat, professionally.”
“I’ll certainly ask him,” Berenson s
aid.
“What’s his name?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“You’re very discreet.”
“Mr. Swan insisted on it.”
“Can we meet with the guy?”
“He’s out of town right now.”
“So who’s minding the store?”
“Mr. Swan is, in a way. His procedures are all still in place.”
“Did he talk to you?”
“About personal things? No, he really didn’t.”
“Was he upset or worried the week he left?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Was he making a lot of phone calls?”
“I’m sure he was. We all do.”
“What do you think might have happened to him?”
“Me?” Berenson said. “I really have no idea. I walked him to his car, and I said when things pick up again I’ll be on the phone begging him to come back, and he said he’d look forward to my call. That was the last I saw of him.”
They got back in Dixon’s car and reversed away from the mirror glass. Reacher watched the Ford’s reflection get smaller and smaller.
Neagley said, “Wasted trip. I told you we should have called.”
Dixon said, “I wanted to see where he worked.”
O’Donnell said, “Worked is the wrong word. They were using him there, that’s all. They picked his brains for a year and then kicked him out. They were buying his ideas, not giving him a job.”
“Sure looks that way,” Neagley said.
“They’re not making anything there. It’s an unsecured building.”
“Obviously. They must have a third place somewhere. A remote plant for manufacturing.”
“So why didn’t UPS get that address, too?”
“Maybe it’s secret. Maybe they don’t get mail there.”
“I’d like to know what they make.”
“Why?” Dixon asked.
“Just curious. The more we know, the luckier we get.”
Reacher said, “So go ahead and find out.”
“I don’t know anyone to ask.”
“I do,” Neagley said. “I know a guy in Pentagon procurement.”
Reacher said, “Call him.”