Without Fail

"They were at a pay phone with caller ID blocked. Somewhere in the Midwest. Think about it, Stuyvesant. They were in Bismarck today with heavy weapons. Therefore they’re driving. They’re on a four-hundred-mile radius by now. They’re somewhere in one of about six huge states, in a bar or a country store, using the pay phone. And anybody smart enough to use faucet water to seal an envelope knows exactly how short to keep a phone call to make it untraceable."

"You don’t know they’re driving."

"No," Reacher said. "You’re quite right. I don’t know for sure. There is a slight possibility that they were frustrated about today’s outcome. Annoyed, even. And they know from the website that there’s another chance tomorrow, right here. And then nothing much for a spell. So it’s possible they ditched their weapons and aimed to fly in tonight. In which case they might be at O’Hare right now, waiting for a connection. It might have been worthwhile putting some cops in place to see who’s using the pay phones. But I only had eight minutes. If you had thought about it earlier it might have been practical. You had a whole half hour. They gave you notice, for God’s sake. You could have arranged something easily. In which case I would have talked their damn ears off, to let the cops get a good look around. But you didn’t think about it. You didn’t arrange it. You didn’t arrange anything. So don’t talk to me about sabotage. Don’t be telling me I’m the one who blew something here."

Stuyvesant looked down. Said nothing.

"Now ask him why he wanted the weather report," Neagley said.

Stuyvesant said nothing.

"Why did you want the weather report?" Froelich asked.

"Because there might still have been time to get something together. If the weather was bad the night before Thanksgiving in Chicago the airport would be so backed up they’d be sitting around there for hours. In which case I would have provoked some kind of a call-back later, for after we got some cops in place. But the weather was OK. Therefore no delays, therefore no time."

Stuyvesant said nothing.

"Accent?" Froelich asked, quietly. "Did the thirteen words you granted them give you a chance to pick anything out?"

"You made a recording," Reacher said. "But nothing jumped out at me. Not foreign. Not Southern, not East Coast. Probably one of those other places where they don’t have much of an accent."

The room was quiet for a long moment.

"I apologize," Stuyvesant said. "You probably did the right thing."

Reacher shook his head. Breathed out.

"Don’t worry about it," he said. "We’re clutching at straws here. Million to one we were ever going to get a location. It was a snap decision, really. Just a gut thing. If they’re puzzled about me, I want to keep them puzzled. Keep them guessing. And I wanted to make them mad at me. I wanted to take some focus off Armstrong. Better that they focus on me for a spell."

"You want these people coming after you personally?"

"Better than have them coming after Armstrong personally."

"Are you nuts? He’s got the Secret Service around him. You haven’t."

Reacher smiled. "I’m not too worried about them."

Froelich moved in her chair.

"So this is a pissing contest," she said. "God, you’re just like Joe, you know that?"

"Except I’m still alive," Reacher said.

There was a knock at the door. The duty officer put his head into the room.

"Special Agent Bannon is here," he said. "Ready for the evening meeting."

Stuyvesant briefed Bannon privately in his office about the telephone communications. They came back into the conference room together at ten past ten. Bannon still looked more like a city cop than a federal agent. Donegal tweed, gray flannel, stout shoes, red face. Like a wise old high-mileage detective from Chicago or Boston or New York. He was carrying a thin file folder, and he was acting somber.

"Nendick is still unresponsive," he said.

Nobody spoke.

"He’s no better and no worse," Bannon said. "They’re still worried about him."

He sat heavily in the chair opposite Neagley’s. Opened his file folder and took out a thin stack of color photographs. Dealt them like cards around the table. Two each.

"Bruce Armstrong and Brian Armstrong," he said. "Late of Minnesota and Colorado, respectively."

The photographs were large inkjet prints done on glossy paper. Not faxes. The originals must have been borrowed from the families and then scanned and e-mailed. They were snapshots, basically, each blown up and then cropped down to a useful head-and-shoulders format in the local FBI lab, presumably. The results looked artificial. Two bluff open faces, two innocent smiles, two fond gazes directed toward something that should have been there in the shot with them. Their names were neatly written in ballpoint pen in the bottom border. By Bannon himself, maybe. Bruce Armstrong, Brian Armstrong.

They weren’t really similar to each other. And neither of them looked much like Brook Armstrong. Nobody would have had even a moment’s hesitation differentiating between the three of them. Not in the dark, not in a hurry. They were just three American men with fair hair and blue eyes, somewhere in their middle forties, that was all. But therefore, they were alike in another way. If you sliced and diced the human population of the world, you’d use up quite a few distinct divisions before you got around to separating the three of them out. Male or female, black or white, Asian or Caucasian or Mongoloid, tall or short, thin or fat or medium, young or old or middle-aged, dark or fair, blue eyes or brown eyes. You would have to make all those separate distinctions before you could say the three Armstrongs looked different from one another.

"What do you think?" Bannon asked.

"Close enough to make the point," Reacher said.

"We agree," Bannon said. "Two widows and five fatherless children between them. This is fun, isn’t it?"

Nobody replied to that.

"You got anything else for us?" Stuyvesant asked.

"We’re working hard," Bannon said. "We’re running the thumbprint again. We’re trying every database in the known world. But we’re not optimistic. We canvassed Nendick’s neighbors. They didn’t get many visitors to the house. Seems like they socialized as a couple, mostly in a bar about ten miles from their place, out toward Dulles. It’s a cop bar. Seems like Nendick trades on his employment status. We’re trying to trace anybody he was seen talking to more than the average."

"What about two weeks ago?" Stuyvesant said. "When the wife got taken away? Must have been some kind of commotion."

Bannon shook his head. "There’s a fairly high daytime population in his street. Soccer moms all around. But it’s a dry hole. Nobody remembers anything. It could have happened at night, of course."

"No, I think Nendick delivered her somewhere," Reacher said. "I think they made him do it. Like a refinement of the torture. To underline his responsibility. To put an edge on the fear."

"Possible," Bannon said. "He’s afraid, that’s for damn sure."

Reacher nodded. "I think these guys are real good at the cruel psychological nuances. I think that’s why some of the messages came here direct. Nothing worse for Armstrong than to hear from the people paid to protect him that he’s in big trouble."

"Except he’s not hearing from them," Neagley said.

Bannon made no comment on that. Stuyvesant paused a beat.

"Anything else?" he said.

"We’ve concluded you won’t get any more messages," Bannon said. "They’ll strike at a time and place of their own choosing, and obviously they won’t tip you off as to where and when. Conversely if they try and fail, they won’t want you to have known about it ahead of time, otherwise they’d look ineffective."

"Any feeling about where and when?"

"We’ll talk about that tomorrow morning. We’re working on a theory right now. I assume you’ll all be here tomorrow morning?"

"Why wouldn’t we be?"

"It’s Thanksgiving Day."

"Armstrong’s working, so we’re working."

"What’s he doing?"

"Being a nice guy at a homeless shelter."

"Is that wise?"

Stuyvesant just shrugged.

"No choice," Froelich said. "It’s in the Constitution that politicians have to serve turkey dinners on Thanksgiving Day in the worst part of town they can find."

"Well, wait until we talk tomorrow morning," Bannon said. "Maybe you’ll want to change his mind. Or amend the Constitution."

Then he stood up and walked around the table and collected the photographs again, like they were precious to him.

Froelich dropped Neagley at the hotel and then she and Reacher drove home. She was quiet all the way. Conspicuously and aggressively silent. He stood it until they reached the bridge over the river and then he gave in.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said.

"Got to be something," he said.

She didn’t answer. Just drove on and parked as near her place as she could get, which was two streets away. The neighborhood was quiet. It was late at night before a holiday. People were inside, cozy and relaxed. She shut off the engine, but didn’t get out of the car. Just sat there, looking straight ahead through the windshield, saying nothing.

"What?" he asked again.