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[ 1770] “I need a gun,” I said again. “This is a big deal, right? So I’ll need a weapon. I can’t just go to the store and buy one. No ID, no address.”

[ 1771] “OK,” she said. “I’ll get you one.”

[ 1772] “I’ve got no permit,” I said. “You’ll have to do it on the quiet, OK?”

She nodded.

[ 1773] “That’s OK,” she said. “There’s one nobody else knows about.”

[ 1774] WE KISSED A LONG HARD KISS IN THE STATION HOUSE LOT. Then we got out of the car and went in through the heavy glass door. More or less bumped into Finlay rounding the reception counter on his way out.

[ 1775] “Got to go back to the morgue,” he said. “You guys come with me, OK? We need to talk. Lot to talk about.”

[ 1776] So we went back out into the dull morning. Got back into Roscoe’s Chevy. Same system as before. She drove. I sat across the back. Finlay sat in the front passenger seat, twisted around so he could look at the both of us at once. Roscoe started up and headed south.

[ 1777] “Long call from the Treasury Department,” Finlay said. “Must have been twenty minutes, maybe a half hour. I was nervous about Teale.”

[ 1778] “What did they say?” I asked him.

“Nothing,” he said. “They took a half hour to tell me nothing.”

“Nothing?” I said. “What the hell does that mean?”

[ 1779] “They wouldn’t tell me anything,” he said. “They want a shitload of formal authorization from Teale before they say word one.”

“They confirmed Joe worked there, right?” I said.

[ 1780] “Sure, they went that far,” he said. “He came from Military Intelligence ten years ago. They headhunted him. Recruited him specially.”

“What for?” I asked him.

Finlay just shrugged.

[ 1781] “They wouldn’t tell me,” he said. “He started some new project exactly a year ago, but the whole thing is a total secret. He was some kind of a very big deal up there, Reacher, that’s for sure. You should have heard the way they were all talking about him. Like talking about God.”

[ 1782] I went quiet for a while. I had known nothing about Joe. Nothing at all.

“So that’s it?” I said. “Is that all you got?”

[ 1783] “No,” he said. “I kept pushing until I got a woman called Molly Beth Gordon. You ever heard that name?”

“No,” I said. “Should I have?”

[ 1784] “Sounds like she was very close to Joe,” Finlay said. “Sounds like they may have had a thing going. She was very upset. Floods of tears.”

“So what did she tell you?” I asked him.

[ 1785] “Nothing,” Finlay said. “Not authorized. But she promised to tell you what she can. She said she’ll step out of line for you, because you’re Joe’s little brother.”

I nodded.

[ 1786] “OK,” I said. “That’s better. When do I speak to her?”

[ 1787] “Call her about one thirty,” he said. “Lunch break, when her office will be empty. She’s taking a big risk, but she’ll talk to you. That’s what she said.”

[ 1788] “OK,” I said again. “She say anything else?”

[ 1789] “She let one little thing slip,” Finlay said. “Joe had a big debrief meeting scheduled. For next Monday morning.”

[ 1790] “Monday?” I said. “As in the day after Sunday?”

[ 1791] “Correct,” he said. “Looks like Hubble was right. Something is due to happen on or before Sunday. Whatever the hell he was doing, it looks like Joe knew he would have won or lost by then. But she wouldn’t say anything more. She was out of line talking to me at all and she sounded like she was being overheard. So call her, but don’t pin your hopes on her, Reacher. She may not know anything. Left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing up there. Big-time secrecy, right?”

[ 1792] “Bureaucracy,” I said. “Who the hell needs it? OK, we have to assume we’re on our own here. At least for a while. We’re going to need Picard again.”

Finlay nodded.

[ 1793] “He’ll do what he can,” he said. “He called me last night. The Hubbles are secure. Right now, he’s sitting on it, but he’ll stand up for us if we need him.”

[ 1794] “He should start tracing Joe,” I said. “Joe must have used a car. Probably flew down from Washington, into Atlanta, got a hotel room, rented a car, right? We should look for the car. He must have driven it down here Thursday night. It must have been dumped somewhere in the area. It might lead us back to the hotel. Maybe there would be something in Joe’s hotel room. Files, maybe.”

[ 1795] “Picard can’t do that,” Finlay said. “FBI isn’t equipped to go looking for abandoned rental cars. And we can’t do it ourselves, not with Teale around.”

I shrugged.

[ 1796] “We’ll have to,” I said. “No other way. You can sell Teale some story. You can double bluff him. Tell him you figure the escaped con who he says did the Morrison thing must have been in a rental car. Tell him you need to check it out. He can’t say no to that, or else he’s undermining his own cover story, right?”

[ 1797] “OK,” Finlay said. “I’ll try it. Might work, I guess.”

[ 1798] “Joe must have had phone numbers,” I said. “The number you found in his shoe was torn off a computer printout, right? So where’s the rest of the printout? I bet it’s in his hotel room, just sitting there, covered with phone numbers, with Hubble’s number torn off the top. So you find the car, then you twist Picard’s arm to trace the hotel through the rental company, OK?”

[ 1799] “OK,” he said. “I’ll do my best.”

[ 1800] IN YELLOW SPRINGS WE SLIPPED INTO THE HOSPITAL ENTRANCE lane and slowed over the speed bumps. Nosed around to the lot in back. Parked near the morgue door. I didn’t want to go inside. Joe was still in there. I started to think vaguely about funeral arrangements. I’d never had to do it before. The Marine Corps handled my father’s. Joe arranged my mother’s.

[ 1801] But I got out of the car with the two of them and we walked through the chill air to the door. Found our way back to the shabby office. The same doctor was at the desk. Still in a white coat. Still looking tired. He waved us in and we sat down. I took one of the stools. I didn’t want to sit next to the fax machine again. The doctor looked at all of us in turn. We looked back at him.

[ 1802] “What have you got for us?” Finlay said.

The tired man at the desk prepared to answer. Like preparing for a lecture. He picked up three files from his left and dropped them on his blotter. Opened the top one. Pulled out the second one and opened that, too.

[ 1803] “Morrison,” he said. “Mr. and Mrs.”

He glanced around the three of us again. Finlay nodded to him.

[ 1804] “Tortured and killed,” the pathologist said. “The sequence is pretty clear. The woman was restrained. Two men, I’d say, one on each arm, gripping and twisting. Heavy bruising on the forearms and the upper arms, some ligament damage from twisting the arms up her back. Obviously the bruising continued to develop from the time she was first seized until the time she died. The bruising stops developing when the circulation stops, you understand?”

[ 1805] We nodded. We understood.

“I’d put it at about ten minutes,” he said. “Ten minutes, beginning to end. So the woman was being held. The man was being nailed to the wall. I’d guess both were naked by then. They were in nightwear before the attack, right?”

[ 1806] “Robes,” Finlay said. “They were having breakfast.”

[ 1807] “OK, the robes came off early on,” the doctor said. “The man was nailed to the wall, technically to the floor also, through the feet. His genital area was attacked. The scrotum was severed. Postmortem evidence suggests that the woman was persuaded to swallow the amputated testicles.”