Without Fail

"I liked Mr. Galvez," he said. "He seemed really happy to be a father, didn’t he? All those lunch boxes lined up? I bet they get whole wheat bread. Fruit, too, probably. All kinds of good nutrition."

They all looked at him.

"I was an Army kid," he said. "I had a lunch box. Mine was an old ammunition case. We all had them. It was considered the thing back then, on the bases. I stenciled my name on it, with a real Army stencil. My mother hated it. Thought it was way too militaristic, for a kid. But she gave me good stuff to eat anyway."

Neagley stared at him. "Reacher, we’ve got big problems here, two people are dead, and you’re talking about lunch boxes?"

He nodded. "Talking about lunch boxes, and thinking about haircuts. Mr. Galvez had just been to the barber, you notice that?"

"So?"

"And with the greatest possible respect, Neagley, I’m thinking about your ass."

Froelich stared at him. Neagley blushed.

"Your point being?" she said.

"My point being, I don’t think there is anything more important to Julio and Anita than their children."

"So why are they still clamming up?"

Froelich sat forward and pressed her finger on her earpiece. Listened for a second and raised her wrist.

"Copy," she said. "Good work, everybody, out."

Then she smiled.

"Armstrong’s home," she said. "Secure."

Reacher looked at his watch again. Nine o’clock exactly. He glanced across at Stuyvesant. "Can I see your office again? Right now?"

Stuyvesant looked blank, but he stood up and led the way out of the room. They followed the corridors and arrived at the rear of the floor. The secretarial station was quiet and deserted. Stuyvesant’s door was closed. He pushed it open and hit the lights.

There was a sheet of paper on the desk.

They all saw it. Stuyvesant stood completely still for a second and then walked across the floor and stared down at it. Swallowed. Breathed out. Picked it up.

"Fax from Boulder PD," he said. "Preliminary ballistics. My secretary must have left it."

He smiled with relief.

"Now check," Reacher said. "Concentrate. Is this how your office usually looks?"

Stuyvesant held the fax and glanced around the room.

"Exactly," he said.

"So this is how the cleaners see it every night?"

"Well, the desk is usually clear," Stuyvesant said. "But otherwise, yes."

"OK," Reacher said. "Let’s go."

They walked back to the conference room. Stuyvesant read the fax.

"They found six shell cases," he said. "Nine millimeter Parabellums. Strange impact marks on the sides. They’ve sent a drawing."

He slid the paper to Neagley. She read it through. Made a face. Slid it across to Reacher. He looked at the drawing and nodded.

"Heckler amp; Koch MP5," he said. "It punches the empty brass out like nobody’s business. The guy had it set to bursts of three. Two bursts, six cases. They probably ended up twenty yards away."

"Probably the SD6 version," Neagley said. "If it was silenced. That’s a nice weapon. Quality submachine gun. Expensive. Rare, too."

"Why did you want to see my office?" Stuyvesant asked.

"We’re wrong about the cleaners," Reacher said.

The room went quiet.

"In what way?" Neagley asked.

"In every way," Reacher said. "Every possible way we could be. What happened when we talked to them?"

"They stonewalled like crazy."

He nodded. "That’s what I thought too. They went into some kind of a stoic silence. All of them. Almost like a trance. I interpreted that as a response to some kind of danger. Like they were really digging deep and defending against whatever hold somebody had over them. Like it was vitally important. Like they knew they couldn’t afford to say a single word. But you know what?"

"What?"

"They just didn’t have a clue what we were talking about. Not the first idea. We were two crazy white people asking them impossible questions, is all. They were too polite and too inhibited to tell us to get lost. They just sat there patiently while we rambled on."

"So what are you saying?"

"Think about what else we know. There’s a weird sequence of facts on the tape. They look a little tired going into Stuyvesant’s office, and a little less tired coming out. They look fairly neat going in, and a little disheveled coming out. They spend fifteen minutes in there, and only nine in the secretarial area."

"So?" Stuyvesant asked.

Reacher smiled. "Your office is probably the world’s cleanest room. You could do surgery in there. You keep it that way deliberately. We know about the thing with the briefcase and the wet shoes, by the way."

Froelich looked blank. Stuyvesant’s turn to blush.

"It’s tidy to the point of obsession," Reacher said. "And yet the cleaners spent fifteen minutes in there. Why?"

"They were unpacking the letter," Stuyvesant said. "Placing it in position."

"No, they weren’t."

"Was it just Maria on her own? Did Julio and Anita come out first?"

"No."

"So who put it there? My secretary?"

"No."

The room went quiet.

"Are you saying I did?" Stuyvesant asked.

Reacher shook his head. "All I’m doing is asking why the cleaners spent fifteen minutes in an office that was already very clean."

"They were resting?" Neagley said.

Reacher shook his head again. Froelich smiled suddenly.

"Doing something to make themselves disheveled?" she said.

Reacher smiled back. "Like what?"

"Like having sex?"

Stuyvesant went pale.

"I sincerely hope not," he said. "And there were three of them, anyway."

"Threesomes aren’t unheard of," Neagley said.

"They live together," Stuyvesant said. "They want to do that, they can do it at home, can’t they?"

"It can be an erotic adventure," Froelich said. "You know, making out at work."

"Forget the sex," Reacher said. "Think about the dishevelment. What exactly created that impression for us?"

Everybody shrugged. Stuyvesant was still pale. Reacher smiled.

"Something else on the tape," he said. "Going in, the garbage bag is reasonably empty. Coming out, it’s much fuller. So was there a lot of trash in the office?"

"No," Stuyvesant said, like he was offended. "I never leave trash in there."

Froelich sat forward. "So what was in the bag?"

"Trash," Reacher said.

"I don’t understand," Froelich said.

"Fifteen minutes is a long time, people," Reacher said. "They worked efficiently and thoroughly in the secretarial area and had it done in nine minutes. That’s a slightly bigger and slightly more cluttered area. Things all over the place. So compare the two areas, compare the complexity, assume they work just as hard everywhere, and tell me how long they should have spent in the office."

Froelich shrugged. "Seven minutes? Eight? About that long?"

Neagley nodded. "I’d say nine minutes, tops."

"I like it clean," Stuyvesant said. "I leave instructions to that effect. I’d want them in there for ten minutes, at least."

"But not fifteen," Reacher said. "That’s excessive. And we asked them about it. We asked them, why so long in there? And what did they say?"

"They didn’t answer," Neagley said. "Just looked puzzled."

"Then we asked them whether they spent the same amount of time in there every night. And they said yes, they did."

Stuyvesant looked to Neagley for confirmation. She nodded.

"OK," Reacher said. "We’ve boiled it down. We’re looking at fifteen particular minutes. You’ve all seen the tapes. Now tell me how they spent that time."

Nobody spoke.

"Two possibilities," Reacher said. "Either they didn’t, or they spent the time growing their hair."

"What?" Froelich said.

"That’s what makes them look disheveled. Julio especially. His hair is a little longer coming out than going in."

"How is that possible?"

"It’s possible because we weren’t looking at one night’s activities. We were looking at two separate nights spliced together. Two halves of two different nights."

Silence in the room.

"Two tapes," Reacher said. "The tape change at midnight is the key. The first tape is kosher. Has to be, because early on it shows Stuyvesant and his secretary going home. That was the real thing. The real Wednesday. The cleaners show up at eleven fifty-two. They look tired, because maybe that’s the first night in their shift pattern. Maybe they’ve been up all day doing normal daytime things. But it’s been a routine night at work so far. They’re on time. No spilled coffee anywhere, no huge amount of trash anywhere. The garbage bag is reasonably empty. My guess is they had the office finished in about nine minutes. Which is probably their normal speed. Which is reasonably fast. Which is why they were puzzled when we claimed it was slow. My guess is in reality they came out at maybe one minute past midnight and spent another nine minutes on the secretarial station and left the area at ten past midnight."