Lee Child: Without Fail

“Peter Wilson,” he said. He checked the driver’s license. “A year younger.”

Peter had three credit cards and nearly two hundred dollars. Reacher put the cash in his pocket and glanced ahead. The snow clouds were behind them and the sky was clear in the east. The sun was out and in their eyes. There was a small black dot in the air. The church tower was barely visible, almost twenty miles away. The Yukon bounced its way toward it, relentlessly. The black dot grew larger. There was a gray blur of rotors above it. It looked motionless in the air. Reacher steadied himself against the dash and looked up through the windshield. There was a tinted band across the top of the glass. The helicopter eased down through it. He could make out its shape. It was fat and bulbous at the front. Probably a Night Hawk. It picked up a visual on the church and turned toward it. It drifted in like a fat insect. The Yukon bounced gently over washboard depressions. The wallets slid off Reacher’s knees and the paper scraps scattered. The helicopter was hovering. Then it was swinging in the air, turning its main door toward the church.

“Golf clubs,” Reacher said. “Not tool samples.”

“What?”

He held up a scrap of paper. “A UPS receipt. Next-day air. From Minneapolis. Addressed to Richard Wilson, arriving guest, at a D.C. motel. A carton, a foot square, forty-eight inches long. Contents, one bag of golf clubs.”

Then he went quiet. Stared at another scrap of paper.

“Something else,” he said. “For Stuyvesant, maybe.”

They watched the distant helicopter land and they stopped right there in the middle of the empty grassland. Got out into the freezing cold sunshine and walked aimless circles and stretched and yawned. The Yukon ticked loudly as it cooled. Reacher piled the badges with the police IDs and the drivers’ licenses on the passenger seat and then hurled the empty wallets far into the landscape.

“We need to sanitize,” he said. They wiped their prints off all four weapons and threw them into the grass, north and south and east and west. Emptied the spare rounds from their pockets and hurled them away in looping brassy swirls through the sunlight. Followed them with the bird watcher’s scope. Reacher kept his hat and gloves. And the ceramic knife. He had grown fond of it.

Then they drove the rest of the way to Grace slow and easy and bumped up out of the grassland and through the wrecked fence and across the graveyard. Parked near the waiting helicopter and got out. They could hear the groan of the organ and the sound of people singing inside the church. No crowds. No media. It was a dignified scene. There was a Casper PD cruiser parked at a discreet distance. There was an Air Force crewman in a flight suit standing next to the helicopter. He was alert and vigilant. Probably not an Air Force crewman at all. Probably one of Stuyvesant’s guys in a borrowed outfit. Probably had a rifle hidden just inside the cabin door. Probably a Vaime Mk2.

“You OK?” Neagley asked.

“I’m always OK,” Reacher said. “You?”

“I’m fine.”

They stood there for fifteen minutes, not really sure if they were hot or cold. There was a loud mournful piece from the distant organ, and then quiet, and then the muffled sound of feet moving on dusty boards. The big oak door opened and a small crowd filtered out into the sunshine. The vicar stood outside the door with Froelich’s parents and spoke to everybody as they left.

Armstrong came out after a couple of minutes with Stuyvesant at his side. They were both in dark overcoats. They were surrounded by seven agents. Armstrong spoke to the vicar and shook hands with the Froelichs and spoke some more. Then his detail brought him away toward the helicopter. He saw Reacher and Neagley and detoured near them, a question in his face.

“We all live happily ever after,” Reacher said.

Armstrong nodded once.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” Reacher said.

Armstrong hesitated a second longer and then turned away without shaking hands and walked on toward the chopper. Stuyvesant came next, on his own.

“Happily?” he repeated.

Reacher gathered the badges and the IDs and the licenses from his pockets. Stuyvesant cupped his hands to take them all.

“Maybe more happily than we thought,” Reacher said. “They weren’t yours, that’s for sure. They were cops, from Idaho, near Boise. You’ve got the addresses there. I’m sure you’ll find what you need. The computer, the paper and the printer, Andretti’s thumb in the freezer. Something else, maybe.”

He took a scrap of paper from his pocket.

“I found this too,” he said. “It was in one of the wallets. It’s a register receipt. They went to the grocery store late on Friday and bought six TV dinners and six big bottles of water.”

“So?” Stuyvesant said.

Reacher smiled. “My guess is they weren’t doing their regular weekly marketing, not in the middle of everything else they were doing. I think maybe they were making sure Mrs. Nendick could eat while they came out here. I think she’s still alive.”

Stuyvesant snatched the receipt and ran for the helicopter.

Reacher and Neagley said their good-byes at the Denver airport late the next morning, Monday. Reacher signed over his fee check to her and she bought him a first-class ticket on United to New York La Guardia. He walked her to the gate for her Chicago flight. People were already boarding. She didn’t say anything. Just placed her bag on the floor and stood still directly in front of him. Then she stretched up and hugged him, fast, like she didn’t really know how to do it. She let go after a second and picked up her bag and walked down the jetway. Didn’t look back.

He made it into La Guardia late in the evening. Took a bus and a subway to Times Square and walked Forty-second Street until he found B. B. King’s new club. A four-piece guitar band was just finishing its first set. They were pretty good. He listened until the set ended and then walked back to the ticket taker.

“Was there an old woman here last week?” he asked. “Sounded a little like Dawn Penn? With an old guy on keyboards?”

The ticket taker shook his head.

“Nobody like that,” the guy said. “Not here.”

Reacher nodded once and stepped out into the shiny darkness. It was cold on the street. He headed west for the Port Authority and a bus out of town.