“What?” Reacher said.
Stuyvesant glanced up at him. “Now I know.”
“Know what?”
“That this is an outside job. For sure. Without any possible doubt.”
“How?”
“You predicted theatrical,” Stuyvesant said. “Or spectacular. Those were your predictions. To which we might add dramatic, or incredible, or whatever.”
“What was it?”
“Do you know what the homicide rate is, nationally?”
Reacher shrugged. “High, I guess.”
“Almost twenty thousand every year.”
“OK.”
“That’s about fifty-four homicides every day.”
Reacher did the math in his head.
“Nearer fifty-five,” he said. “Except in leap years.”
“Want to hear about two of today’s?” Stuyvesant asked.
“Who?” Froelich asked.
“Small sugar beet farm in Minnesota,” Stuyvesant said. “The farmer walks out his back gate this morning and gets shot in the head. For no apparent reason. Then this afternoon there’s a small strip mall outside of Boulder, Colorado. A CPA’s office in one of the upstairs rooms. The guy comes down and walks out of the rear entrance and gets killed with a machine gun in the service yard. Again, no apparent reason.”
“So?”
“The farmer’s name was Bruce Armstrong. The accountant’s was Brian Armstrong. Both of them were white men about Brook Armstrong’s age, about his height, about his weight, similar appearance, same color eyes and hair.”
“Are they family? Are they related?”
“No,” Stuyvesant said. “Not in any way. Not to each other, not to the VP. So therefore I’m asking myself, what are the odds? That two random men whose last name is Armstrong and whose first names both begin with BR are going to get senselessly killed the same day we’re facing a serious threat against our guy? And I’m thinking, the answer is about a trillion billion to one.”
Silence in the office.
“The demonstration,” Reacher said.
“Yes,” Stuyvesant said. “That was the demonstration. Cold-blooded murder. Two innocent men. So I agree with you. These are not insiders having a joke.”
Neagley and Froelich made it to Stuyvesant’s visitor chairs and just sat down without being asked. Reacher leaned on a tall file cabinet and stared out the window. The blinds were still open, but it was full dark outside. Washington’s orange nighttime glow was the only thing he could see.
“How were you notified?” he asked. “Did they call in and claim responsibility?”
Stuyvesant shook his head. “FBI alerted us. They’ve got software that scans the NCIC reports. Armstrong is one of the names that they flag up.”
“So now they’re involved anyway.”
Stuyvesant shook his head again. “They passed on some information, is all. They don’t understand its significance.”
The room stayed quiet. Just four people breathing, lost in somber thoughts.
“We got any details from the scenes?” Neagley asked.
“Some,” Stuyvesant said. “The first guy was a single shot to the head. Killed him instantly. They can’t find the bullet. The guy’s wife didn’t hear anything.”
“Where was she?”
“About twenty feet away in the kitchen. Doors and windows shut because of the weather. But you’d expect her to hear something. She hears hunters all the time.”
“How big was the hole in his head?” Reacher asked.
“Bigger than a .22,” Stuyvesant said. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”
Reacher nodded. The only handgun inaudible from twenty feet would be a silenced .22. Anything bigger than that, you’d probably hear something, suppressor or no suppressor, windows or no windows.
“So it was a rifle,” he said.
“Trajectory looks like it,” Stuyvesant said. “Medical examiner figures the bullet was traveling downward. It went through his head front to back, high to low.”
“Hilly country?”
“All around.”
“So it was either a very distant rifle or a silenced rifle. And I don’t like either one. Distant rifle means somebody’s a great shooter, silenced rifle means somebody owns a bunch of exotic weapons.”
“What about the second guy?” Neagley asked.
“It was less than eight hours later,” Stuyvesant said. “But more than eight hundred miles away. So most likely the team split up for the day.”
“Details?”
“Coming through in bits and pieces. First impression from the locals is the weapon was some kind of machine gun. But again, nobody heard anything.”
“A silenced machine gun?” Reacher said. “Are they sure?”
“No question it was a machine gun,” Stuyvesant said. “The corpse was all chewed up. Two bursts, head and chest. Hell of a mess.”
“Hell of a demonstration,” Froelich said.
Reacher stared through the window. There was light fog in the air.
“But what exactly does it demonstrate?” he said.
“That these are not very nice people.”
He nodded. “But not very much more than that, does it? It doesn’t really demonstrate Armstrong’s vulnerability as such, not if they weren’t connected to him in any way. Are we sure they weren’t related? Like very distant cousins or something? At least the farmer? Minnesota is next to North Dakota, right?”
Stuyvesant shook his head.
“My first thought, obviously,” he said. “But I double-checked. First, the VP isn’t from North Dakota originally. He moved in from Oregon. Plus we have the complete text of his FBI background check from when he was nominated. It’s pretty exhaustive. And he doesn’t have any living relatives that anybody’s aware of except an elder sister who lives in California. His wife has got a bunch of cousins but none of them are called Armstrong and most of them are younger. Kids, basically.”
“OK,” Reacher said. Kids. He had a flash in his mind of a seesaw, and stuffed toys and lurid paintings stuck to a refrigerator with magnets. Cousins.
“It’s weird,” he said. “Killing two random unconnected lookalikes called Armstrong is dramatic enough, I guess, but it doesn’t show any great ingenuity. Doesn’t prove anything. Doesn’t make us worried about our security here.”
“Makes us sad for them,” Froelich said. “And their families.”
“No doubt,” Reacher said. “But two hicks in the sticks going down doesn’t really make us sweat, does it? It’s not like we were protecting them as well. Doesn’t make us doubt ourselves. I really thought it would be something more personal. More intriguing. Like some equivalent of the letter showing up on your desk.”
“You sound disappointed,” Stuyvesant said.
“I am disappointed. I thought they might come close enough to give us a chance at them. But they stayed away. They’re cowards.”
Nobody spoke.
“Cowards are bullies,” Reacher said. “Bullies are cowards.”
Neagley glanced at him. Knew him well enough to sense when to push.
“So?” she asked.
“So we need to go back and rethink a couple of things. Information is stacking up fast and we’re not processing it. Like, now we know these guys are outsiders. Now we know this is not a genteel inside game.”
“So?” Neagley asked again.
“And what happened in Minnesota and Colorado shows us these guys are prepared to do just about anything at all.”
“So?”
“The cleaners. What do we know about them?”
“That they’re involved. That they’re scared. That they’re not saying anything.”
“Correct,” Reacher said. “But why are they scared? Why aren’t they saying anything? Way back we thought they might be playing some cute game with an insider. But they’re not doing that. Because these guys aren’t insiders. And they’re not cute people. And this isn’t a game.”
“So?�
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“So they’re being coerced in some serious way. They’re being scared and silenced. By some serious people.”
“OK, how?”
“You tell me. How do you scare somebody without leaving a mark on them?”
“You threaten something plausible. Serious harm in the future, maybe.”
Reacher nodded. “To them, or to somebody they care about. To the point where they’re paralyzed with terror.”
“OK.”
“Where have you heard the word cousins before?”
“All over the place. I’ve got cousins.”
“No, recently.”
Neagley glanced at the window.
“The cleaners,” she said. “Their kids are with cousins. They told us.”
“But they were a little hesitant about telling us, remember?”
“Were they?”
Reacher nodded. “They paused a second and looked at each other first.”
“So?”
“Maybe their kids aren’t with cousins.”
“Why would they lie?”
Reacher looked at her. “Is there a better way to coerce somebody than taking their kids away as insurance?”
They moved fast, but Stuyvesant made sure they moved properly. He called the cleaners’ lawyers and told them he needed the answer to just one question: the name and address of the children’s baby-sitters. He told them a quick answer would be much better than a delay. He got the quick answer. The lawyers called back within a quarter of an hour. The name was Gálvez and the address was a house a mile from the cleaners’ own.
Then Froelich motioned for quiet and got on the radio net and asked for a complete situation update from the hotel. She spoke to her acting on-site leader and four other key positions. There were no problems. Everything was calm. Armstrong was working the room. Perimeters were tight. She instructed that all agents should accompany Armstrong through the loading bay at the function’s conclusion. She asked for a human wall, all the way to the limo.
“And make it soon,” she said. “Compress the exposure.”
Then they squeezed into the single elevator and rode down to the garage. Climbed into Froelich’s Suburban for the drive Reacher had slept through first time around. This time he stayed awake as Froelich raced through traffic to the cheap part of town. They passed right by the cleaners’ house. Threaded another mile through dark streets made narrow by parked cars and came to a stop outside a tall thin two-family house. It was ringed by a wire fence and had trash cans chained to the gatepost. It was boxed in on one side by a package store and on the other by a long line of identical houses. There was a sagging twenty-year-old Cadillac parked at the curb. Yellow sodium lighting was cutting through the fog.
“So what do we do?” Stuyvesant said.
Reacher looked through the window. “We go talk with these people. But we don’t want a mob scene. They’re scared already. We don’t want to panic them. They might think the bad guys are back. So Neagley should go first.”
Stuyvesant was about to offer an objection but Neagley slid straight out of the car and headed for the gate. Reacher watched her turn a fast circle on the sidewalk before going in, to read the surroundings. Watched her glance left and right as she walked up the path. Nobody was around. Too cold. She reached the door. Searched for a bell. Couldn’t find one, so she rapped on the wood with her knuckles.
There was a one-minute wait and then the door opened and was stopped short by a chain. A bar of warm light flooded out. There was a one-minute conversation. The door eased forward to release the chain. The bar of light narrowed and widened again. Neagley turned and waved. Froelich and Stuyvesant and Reacher climbed out of the Suburban and walked up the path. There was a small dark guy standing in the doorway, waiting for them, smiling shyly.
“This is Mr. Gálvez,” Neagley said. They introduced themselves and Gálvez backed into the hallway and made a follow-me gesture with the whole of his arm, like a butler. He was a small guy dressed in suit pants and a patterned sweater. He had a fresh haircut and an open expression. They followed him inside. The house was small and clearly overcrowded, but it was very clean. There was a line of seven children’s coats hung neatly on a row of pegs inside the door. Some of them were small, some of them were a little bigger. There were seven school backpacks lined up on the floor underneath them. Seven pairs of shoes. There were toys neatly piled here and there. Three women visible in the kitchen. Shy children peering out from behind their skirts. More easing their heads around the living room door. They kept moving. Kept appearing and disappearing in random sequences. They all looked the same. Reacher couldn’t get an accurate count. There were dark eyes everywhere, open wide.
Stuyvesant seemed a little out of his depth, like he didn’t know how to broach the subject. Reacher squeezed past him and moved ahead toward the kitchen. Stopped in the doorway. There were seven school lunch boxes lined up on a counter. The lids were up, like they were ready for assembly-line loading first thing in the morning. He moved back to the hallway. Squeezed past Neagley and looked at the little coats. They were all colorful nylon items, like small versions of the things he had browsed in the Atlantic City store. He lifted one off its peg. It had a white patch inside the collar. Somebody had used a laundry marker and written J. Gálvez on it in careful script. He put it back and checked the other six. Each was labeled with a surname and a single initial. Total of five Gálvez and two Alvárez.
Nobody was speaking. Stuyvesant looked awkward. Reacher caught Mr. Gálvez’s eye and nodded him through to the living room. Two children scuttled out as they stepped in.
“You got five kids?” Reacher asked.
Gálvez nodded. “I’m a lucky man.”
“So who do the two Alvárez coats belong to?”
“My wife’s cousin Julio’s children.”
“Julio and Anita’s?”
Gálvez nodded. Said nothing.
“I need to see them,” Reacher said.
“They’re not here.”
Reacher glanced away.
“Where are they?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” Gálvez said. “At work, I guess. They work nights. For the federal government.”
Reacher glanced back. “No, I mean their kids. Not them. I need to see their kids.”
Gálvez looked at him, puzzled. “See their kids?”
“To check they’re OK.”
“You just saw them. In the kitchen.”
“I need to see which ones they are exactly.”
“We’re not taking money,” Gálvez said. “Except for their food.”
Reacher nodded. “This isn’t about licenses or anything. We don’t care about that stuff. We just need to see their kids are OK.”
Gálvez still looked puzzled. But he called out a long rapid sentence in Spanish and two small children separated themselves from the group in the kitchen and threaded between Stuyvesant and Froelich and trotted into the room. They stopped near the doorway and stood perfectly still, side by side. Two little girls, very beautiful, huge dark eyes, soft black hair, serious expressions. Maybe five and seven years old. Maybe four and six. Maybe three and five. Reacher had no idea.
“Hey, kids,” he said. “Show me your coats.”
They did exactly what they were told, like kids sometimes do. He followed them out to the hallway and watched as they stood up on tiptoe and touched the two little jackets he knew were marked Alvárez.
“OK,” he said. “Now go get a cookie or something.”
They scuttled back to the kitchen. He watched them go. Stood still and quiet for a second and then stepped back to the living room. Got close to Gálvez and lowered his voice again.
“Anybody else been inquiring about them?” he asked.
Gálvez just shook his head.
“You sure?” Reacher asked. “Nobody watching them, no strangers around?”
Gálvez shook his head again.
“We can fix it,” Reacher said. “If you’re
worried about anything, you should go ahead and tell us right now. We’ll take care of it.”
Gálvez just looked blank. Reacher watched his eyes. He had spent his career watching eyes, and these two were innocent. A little disconcerted, a little puzzled, but the guy wasn’t hiding anything. He had no secrets.
“OK,” he said. “We’re sorry to have interrupted your evening.”
He kept very quiet on the drive back to the office.
They used the conference room again. It seemed to be the only facility with seating for more than three. Neagley let Froelich put herself next to Reacher. She sat with Stuyvesant on the opposite side of the table. Froelich got on the radio net and heard that Armstrong was about to leave the hotel. He was cutting the evening short. Nobody seemed to mind. It worked both ways. Spend a lot of time with them, and they’re naturally thrilled about it. Rush it through, and they’re equally delighted such a busy and important guy found any time at all for them. Froelich listened to her earpiece and tracked him all the way out of the ballroom, through the kitchens, into the loading bay, into the limo. Then she relaxed. All that was left was a high-speed convoy out to Georgetown and a transfer through the tent in the darkness. She fiddled behind her back and turned the earpiece volume down a little. Sat back and glanced at the others, questions in her eyes.
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