The Hard Way Part 13

"Where was the other guy during all of this? Hobart?"

"n.o.body knows for sure. He was off duty. He said he was in Philadelphia. But obviously he had been in the store, just waiting for Anne to show. He was the other half of the equation."

"Did you go to the cops at the time?"

"They ignored me," Patti said. "Remember, this all was five years ago, not long after the Twin Towers. Everyone was preoccupied. And the military was suddenly back in fashion. You know, everyone was looking for their daddy, so people like Lane were the flavour of the month. Ex-Special Forces soldiers were pretty cool back then. I was fighting an uphill battle."

"What about this cop Brewer? Now?"

"He tolerates me. What else can he do? I'm a taxpayer. But I don't suppose he's doing anything about it. I'm realistic."

"You got any evidence against Lane at all?"

"No," Patti said. "None at all. All I've got is context and feeling and intuition. That's all I can share."

"Context?"

"Do you know what a private military corporation is really for? Fundamentally?"

"Fundamentally its purpose is to allow the Pentagon to escape Congressional oversight."

"Exactly," Patti said. "They're not necessarily better fighters than people currently enlisted. Often they're worse, and they're certainly more expensive. They're there to break the rules. Simple as that. If the Geneva Conventions get in the way, it doesn't matter to them, because n.o.body can call them on it. The government is insulated."

"You've studied hard," Reacher said.

"So what kind of a man is Lane to partic.i.p.ate?"

"You tell me."

"He's a sordid egomaniac weasel."

"What do you wish you had done? To keep Anne alive?"

"I should have convinced her. I should have just gotten her out of there, penniless but alive."

"Not easy," Reacher said. "You were the kid sister."

"But I knew."

"When did you move here?"

"About a year after Anne died. I couldn't let it rest."

"Does Lane know you're here?"

She shook her head. "I'm very careful. And this city is incredibly anonymous. You can go years without ever laying eyes on your neighbour."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Do?"

"You brought me here for a purpose. And you took a h.e.l.l of a risk doing it."

"I think it's time for me to take risks."

"What do you want me to do?" Reacher repeated.

"I want you to just walk away from him. For your own sake. Don't dirty your hands with his business. No possible good can come of it."

Silence for a moment.

"And he's dangerous," Patti said. "More dangerous than you can know. It's not smart to be anywhere near him."

"I'll be careful," Reacher said.

"They're all dangerous."

"I'll be careful," Reacher said again. "I always am. But I'm going back there now. I'll walk away on my own schedule."

Patti Joseph said nothing.

"But I'd like to meet with this guy Brewer," Reacher said.

"Why? Because you want to trade guy jokes about the nutty little sister?"

"No," Reacher said. "Because if he's any kind of a cop at all he'll have checked with the original detectives and the FBI agents. He might have a clearer picture."

"Clearer which way?"

"Whichever way," Reacher said. "I'd like to know."

"He might be here later."

"Here?"

"He usually comes over after I phone in a report."

"You said he wasn't doing anything."

"I think he just comes for the company. I think he's lonely. He drops by, at the end of his shift, on his way home."

"Where does he live?"

"Staten Island."

"Where does he work?"

"Midtown."

"So this isn't exactly on his way home."

Patti Joseph said nothing.

"When does his shift end?" Reacher asked.

"Midnight."

"He visits you at midnight? Way out of his way?"

"I'm not involved with him or anything," Patti said. "He's lonely. I'm lonely. That's all."

Reacher said nothing.

"Make an excuse to get out," Patti said. "Check my window. If Brewer's here, the light will be on. If he isn't, it won't be."

CHAPTER 19

PATTI JOSEPH WENT back to her lonely vigil at the window and Reacher let himself out and left her there. He walked clockwise around her block for caution's sake and came up on the Dakota from the west. It was a quarter to ten in the evening. It was warm. There was music somewhere in the Park. Music and people, far away. It was a perfect late-summer night. Probably baseball up in the Bronx or out at Shea, a thousand bars and clubs just warming up, eight million people looking back on the day or looking forward to the next.

Reacher stepped inside the building.

The lobby staff called up to the apartment and let him go ahead to the elevator. He got out and turned the corner and found Gregory in the corridor, waiting for him.

"We thought you'd quit on us," Gregory said.

"Went for a walk," Reacher said. "Any news?"

"Too early."

Reacher followed him into the apartment. It smelled sour. Chinese food, sweat, worry. Edward Lane was in the armchair next to the phone. He was staring up at the ceiling. His face was composed. Next to him at the end of a sofa was an empty place. A dented cushion. Recently occupied by Gregory, Reacher guessed. Then came Burke, sitting still. And Addison, and Perez, and Kowalski. Carter Groom was leaning on the wall, facing the door, vigilant. Like a sentry. I'm all business, he had said.

"When will they call?" Lane asked.

Good question, Reacher thought. Will they call at all? Or will you call them? And give them the OK to pull the triggers?

But he said: "They won't call before eight in the morning. Drive time and counting time, it won't be any faster than that."

Lane glanced at his watch.

"Ten hours from now," he said.

"Yes," Reacher said.

Somebody will call somebody ten hours from now. The first of the ten hours pa.s.sed in silence. The phone didn't ring. n.o.body said a word. Reacher sat still and felt the chance of a happy outcome receding fast. He pictured the bedroom photograph in his mind and felt Kate and Jade moving away from him. Like a comet that had come close enough to Earth to be faintly visible but had then flung itself into a new orbit and was hurtling away into the frozen wastes of s.p.a.ce and dwindling to a faint speck of light that would surely soon vanish forever.

"I did everything they asked," Lane said, to n.o.body except himself.

n.o.body replied.

The lone man surprised his temporary guests by moving toward the window, not the door. Then he surprised them more by using his fingernails to pick at the duct tape seam that held the cloth over the gla.s.s. He peeled the tape away from the wall until he was able to fold back a narrow rectangle of fabric and reveal a tall slim sliver of New York City at night. The famous view. A hundred thousand lit windows glittering against the darkness like tiny diamonds on a field of black velvet. Like nowhere else in the world.

He said, "I know you love it."

Then he said, "But say goodbye to it."

Then he said, "Because you're never going to see it again." Halfway through the second hour Lane looked at Reacher and said, "There's food in the kitchen, if you want some." Then he smiled a thin humourless smile and said, "Or to be technically accurate there's food in the kitchen whether you want some or not."

Reacher didn't want food. He wasn't hungry. He had eaten a hot dog not long before. But he wanted to get the h.e.l.l out of the living room. That was for sure. The atmosphere was like eight men sitting around a deathbed. He stood up.

"Thanks," he said.

He walked quietly into the kitchen. n.o.body followed him. There were dirty plates and a dozen open containers of Chinese food on the countertop. Half-eaten and cold and pungent and congealed. He left them alone and sat on a stool. Glanced to his right at the open office door. He could see the photographs on the desk. Anne Lane, identical to her sister Patti. Kate Lane, gazing fondly at the child that had been cut out of the picture.

He listened hard. No sound from the living room. n.o.body coming. He got off the stool and stepped inside the office. Stood still for a moment. Desk, computer, fax machine, phones, file cabinets, shelves.

He started with the shelves.

There were maybe eighteen linear feet of them. There were phone books on them, and manuals for firearms, and a one-volume history of Argentina, and a book called Glock: The New Wave in Combat Handguns, and an alarm clock, and mugs full of pens and pencils, and an atlas of the world. The atlas was old. The Soviet Union was still in it. And Yugoslavia. Some of the African countries still had their former colonial ident.i.ties. Next to the atlas there was a fat Rolodex full of five hundred index cards with names and phone numbers and MOS codes on them. Military Occupational Specialties. Most of them were 11-Bravo. Infantry. Combat arms. At random Reacher flipped to G and looked for Carter Groom. Not there. Then B for Burke. Not there, either. So clearly this was the B-team candidate pool. Some names had black lines through them with KIA or MIA notations written on the corners of the cards. Killed in Action, Missing in Action. But the rest of the names were still in the game. Nearly five hundred guys, and maybe some women, ready and available and looking for work.

Reacher put the Rolodex back and touched the computer mouse. The hard drive started up and a dialog box on the screen asked for a pa.s.sword. Reacher glanced at the open door and tried Kate. Access was denied. He tried O5LaneE for Colonel Edward Lane. Same result. Access denied. He shrugged and gave it up. The pa.s.sword was probably the guy's birthday or his old service number or the name of his high school football team. No way of knowing, without further research.

He moved on to the file cabinets.

There were four of them, standard store-bought items made of painted steel. Maybe thirty inches high. Two drawers in each of them. Eight drawers total. Unlabeled. Unlocked. He stood still and listened again and then slid the first drawer open. It moved quietly on ball bearing runners. It had twin hanging rails with six file dividers made of thin yellow cardboard slung between them. All six were full of paperwork. Reacher used his thumb and riffled through. Glanced down, obliquely. Financial records. Money moving in and out. No amount bigger than six figures and none smaller than four. Otherwise, incomprehensible. He closed the drawer.

He opened the bottom drawer on the left. Same hanging rails. Same yellow dividers. But they were bulky with the kind of big plastic wallets that come in the glove boxes of new cars. Instruction books, warranty certificates, service records. t.i.tles. Insurance invoices. BMW, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes Benz, Land Rover. Some had valet keys in see-through plastic envelopes. Some had spare keys and remote fobs on the kind of promotional keyrings that dealers give away. There were EZ-Pa.s.s toll records. Receipts from gas stations. Business cards from salesmen and service managers.

Reacher closed the drawer. Glanced back at the door. Saw Burke standing there, silent, just watching him.

CHAPTER 20

BURKE DIDN'T SPEAK for a long moment. Then he said, "I'm going for a walk."