Lee Child - Without Fail

“You didn’t strike me as a reader,” Bannon said.

“I get by,” Reacher said.

“And I would caution you against vigilantism.”

“That’s a big word for a Special Agent.”

“Whatever, I don’t want independent action.”

Reacher nodded.

“Noted,” he said.

Bannon smiled. “You done the math puzzle yet?”

“What math puzzle?”

“We’re assuming that Vaime rifle was in Minnesota on Tuesday and North Dakota yesterday. Now it’s here in D.C. today. They didn’t fly it in, that’s for damn sure, because putting long guns on a commercial flight leaves a paper trail a mile long. And it’s too far to drive in the time they had. So either one guy was on his own with the Heckler amp; Koch in Bismarck while the other guy was driving all the way from Minnesota to here with the Vaime. Or if both guys were in Bismarck then they must own two Vaimes, one there, one stashed here. And if both guys were in Bismarck but they own only one Vaime, then somebody else drove it in from Minnesota for them, in which case we’re dealing with three guys, not two.”

Nobody spoke.

“I’m going back to see Swain,” Reacher said. “I’ll walk. It’ll do me good.”

“I’ll come with you,” Neagley said.

It was a fast half mile west on Pennsylvania Avenue. The sky was still cloudless, which made the night air cold. There were some stars visible through the faint city smog and the orange glow of street lighting. There was a small moon, far away. No traffic. They walked past the Federal Triangle and the bulk of the Treasury Building came closer. The White House roadblocks had gone. The city was back to normal. It was like nothing had ever happened.

“You OK?” Neagley asked.

“Facing reality,” Reacher said. “I’m getting old. Slowing up, mentally. I was pretty pleased about getting to Nendick as fast as I did, but I was supposed to get there right away. So in fact I was terrible. Same with the thumbprint. We spent hours boxing around that damn print. Days and days. We twisted and turned to accommodate it. Never saw the actual intention.”

“But we got there in the end.”

“And I’m feeling guilty, as usual.”

“Why?”

“I told Froelich she was doing well,” Reacher said. “But I should have told her to double the sentries on the roof. One guy on the edge, one in the stairwell. Might have saved her.”

Neagley was silent. Six strides, seven.

“It was her job, not yours,” she said. “Don’t feel guilty. You’re not responsible for everybody in the world.”

Reacher said nothing. Just walked.

“And they were masquerading as cops,” Neagley said. “They’d have walked through two sentries just the same as one. They’d have walked through a dozen sentries. Fact is, they did walk through a dozen sentries. More than that. They must have. The whole area was crawling with agents. There’s nothing anybody could have done different. Shit happens.”

Reacher said nothing.

“Two sentries, they’d both have gotten killed,” Neagley said. “Another casualty wouldn’t have helped anybody.”

“You think Bannon looks like a cop?” Reacher asked.

“You think there are three guys?” Neagley asked back.

“No. Not a chance. This is a two-guy thing. Bannon’s missing something very obvious. Occupational hazard with a mind like his.”

“What’s he missing?”

“You think he looks like a cop?”

Neagley smiled, briefly.

“Exactly like a cop,” she said. “He probably was a cop before he joined the Bureau.”

“What makes him look like a cop?”

“Everything. Every single thing. It’s in his pores.”

Reacher went quiet. Walked on.

“Something in Froelich’s pep talk,” he said. “Just before Armstrong showed up. She was warning her people. She said it’s very easy to look a little like a homeless person, but very difficult to look exactly like a homeless person. I think it’s the same with cops. If I put a tweed sport coat on and gray pants and plain shoes and held up a gold badge, would I look like a cop?”

“A little. But not exactly.”

“But these guys do look exactly like cops. I saw one of them and never thought twice. And they’re in and out of everywhere without a single question.”

“It would explain a lot of things,” Neagley said. “They were right at home in the cop bar with Nendick. And with Andretti.”

“Like Bannon’s duck test,” Reacher said. “They look like cops, they walk like cops, they talk like cops.”

“And it would explain how they knew about DNA on envelopes, and the NCIC computer thing. Cops would know that the FBI networks all that information.”

“And the weapons. They might filter through to second-tier SWAT teams or State Police specialists. Especially refurbished items with nonstandard scopes.”

“But we know they aren’t cops. You went through ninety-four mug shots.”

“We know they aren’t Bismarck cops,” Reacher said. “Maybe they’re cops from someplace else.”

Swain was still waiting for them. He looked unhappy. Not necessarily with the waiting. He looked like a man with bad news to hear, and bad news to give. He looked a question at Reacher, and Reacher nodded, once.

“His name was Andretti,” he said. “Same situation as Nendick, basically. He’s holding up better, but he’s not going to talk, either.”

Swain said nothing.

“Your score,” Reacher said. “You made the connection. And the rifle was a Vaime with a Hensoldt scope where a Bushnell should be.”

“I don’t specialize in firearms,” Swain said.

“You need to tell us what you know about the campaign. Who got mad at Armstrong?”

There was a short silence. Then Swain looked away.

“Nobody,” he said. “What I said in there wasn’t true. Thing is, I finished the analysis days ago. He upset people, for sure. But nobody very significant. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“So why say it?”

“I wanted to get the FBI off their track, was all. I don’t think it was one of us. I don’t like to see our agency getting abused that way.”

Reacher said nothing.

“It was for Froelich and Crosetti,” Swain said. “They deserve better than that.”

“So you’ve got a feeling and we’ve got a hyphen,” Reacher said. “Most cases I ever dealt with had stronger foundations than that.”

“What do we do now?”

“We look somewhere else,” Neagley said. “If it’s not political it must be personal.”

“I’m not sure if I can show you that stuff,” Swain said. “It’s supposed to be confidential.”

“Is there anything bad in it?”

“No, or you’d have heard about it during the campaign.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Is he faithful to his wife?” Reacher asked.

“Yes,” Swain said.

“Is she faithful to him?”

“Yes.”

“Is he kosher financially?”

“Yes.”

“So everything else is deep background. How can it hurt to let us take a look?”

“I guess it can’t.”

“So let’s go.”

They headed through the back corridors toward the library, but when they got there the phone was ringing. Swain picked it up and then handed it to Reacher.

“Stuyvesant, for you,” he said.

Reacher listened for a minute and then put the phone down.

“Armstrong’s coming in,” he said. “He’s upset and restless and wants to talk to everybody he can find who was there today.”

They left Swain in the library and walked back to the conference room. Stuyvesant came in a minute later. He was still in his golf clothes. He still had Froelich’s blood on his shoes. It was splashed up on the welts, black and dry. He looked close to exhaustion. And mentally shattered. Reacher had seen it before. A guy goes twenty-five years, and it all falls apart in one terrible day. A suicide bombing will do it, or a helicopter crash or a secrets leak or a furlough rampage. Then the retributive machinery clanks into action and a flawless career spent garnering nothing but praise is trashed at the stroke of a pen, because it all has to be somebody’s fault . Shit happens, but never in an official inquiry commission’s final report.