Without Fail

"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 someday 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 côte de chez Swann, which was the first volume of Marcel Proust’s A 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.