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Because they were so neat. They all had new clothes, plain chain store cottons and poplins, fresh haircuts. Their weapons were fresh out of the box. The Glocks were brand-new. The shotgun was brand-new, packing grease still visible. Those factors meant they weren't any kind of professionals. Because professionals do this stuff every day. Whoever they are, Special Forces, CIA, FBI, detectives, it's their job. They wear working clothes. They use weapons they signed out last year, the year before, tried and trusted weapons, chipped weapons, scratched weapons, working tools. Put three professionals together on any one day, and you'll see last night's pizza on one guy's shirt, another guy won't have shaved, the third guy will be wearing the awful old pants his buddies make jokes about behind his back. It's possible you'll see a new jacket once in a while, or a fresh gun, or new shoes, but the chances of seeing everything new all at once on three working professionals on the same day are so slim as to be absurd.
And their attitude betrayed them. Competent, but jumpy, uptight, hostile, rude, tense. Trained to some degree, but not practiced. Not experienced. They'd rehearsed the theory, and they were smart enough to avoid any gross errors, but they didn't have the habituation of professionals. Therefore these three were some kind of amateurs. And they had kidnaped a brand-new FBI agent. Why? What the hell could a brand-new FBI agent have done to anybody? Reacher had no idea. And the brand-new FBI agent in question wasn't saying. Just another component he couldn't begin to figure. But not the biggest component. The biggest component he couldn't begin to figure was why the hell he was still there.
He had no problem with how he had gotten grabbed up in the first place. Just a freak of chance had put him alongside Holly Johnson at the exact time the snatch was going down. He was comfortable with that. He understood freak chances. Life was built out of freak chances, however much people would like to pretend otherwise. And he never wasted time speculating about how things might have been different, if this and if that. Obviously if he'd been strolling on that particular Chicago street a minute earlier or a minute later, he'd have been right past that dry-cleaners and never known a damn thing about all this. But he hadn't been strolling a minute earlier or a minute later, and the freak chance had happened, and he wasn't about to waste his time wondering where he'd be now if it hadn't.
But what he did need to pin down was why he was still there, just over fourteen hours later, according to the clock inside his head. He'd had two marginal chances and one cast-iron certainty of getting out. Right away, on the street, he could have made it. Probably. The possibility of collateral damage had stopped him. Then in the abandoned lot, getting into the white truck, he might have made it. Probably. Three against one, both times, but they were three amateurs against Jack Reacher, and he felt comfortable enough about those odds.
The cast-iron certainty was he could have been out of the cow barn, say an hour after the three guys returned from the gas station with the truck. He could have slipped the cuff again, climbed the wall and dropped down into the barnyard and been away. Just jogged over to the road and walked away and disappeared. Why hadn't he done that?
He lay there in the huge inky blackness of relaxation and realized it was Holly that was keeping him there. He hadn't bailed out because he couldn't take the risk. The three guys could have panicked and wasted her and run. Reacher didn't want that to happen. Holly was a smart, spirited woman. Sharp, impatient, confident, tough as hell. Attractive, in a shy, unforced sort of a way. Dark, slim, a lot of intelligence and energy.
Great eyes. Eyes were Reacher's thing. He was lost in a pair of pretty eyes.
But it wasn't her eyes that were doing it to him. Not her looks. Or her intelligence or her personality. It was her knee. That's what was doing it to him. Her guts and her dignity. The sight of a good-looking spirited woman cheerfully fighting an unaccustomed disability seemed like a brave and noble thing to Reacher. It made her his type of person. She was coping with it. She was doing it well. She wasn't complaining. She wasn't asking for his help. And because she wasn't asking for it, she was going to get it.
10
11
12
13
And their attitude betrayed them. Competent, but jumpy, uptight, hostile, rude, tense. Trained to some degree, but not practiced. Not experienced. They'd rehearsed the theory, and they were smart enough to avoid any gross errors, but they didn't have the habituation of professionals. Therefore these three were some kind of amateurs. And they had kidnaped a brand-new FBI agent. Why? What the hell could a brand-new FBI agent have done to anybody? Reacher had no idea. And the brand-new FBI agent in question wasn't saying. Just another component he couldn't begin to figure. But not the biggest component. The biggest component he couldn't begin to figure was why the hell he was still there.
He had no problem with how he had gotten grabbed up in the first place. Just a freak of chance had put him alongside Holly Johnson at the exact time the snatch was going down. He was comfortable with that. He understood freak chances. Life was built out of freak chances, however much people would like to pretend otherwise. And he never wasted time speculating about how things might have been different, if this and if that. Obviously if he'd been strolling on that particular Chicago street a minute earlier or a minute later, he'd have been right past that dry-cleaners and never known a damn thing about all this. But he hadn't been strolling a minute earlier or a minute later, and the freak chance had happened, and he wasn't about to waste his time wondering where he'd be now if it hadn't.
But what he did need to pin down was why he was still there, just over fourteen hours later, according to the clock inside his head. He'd had two marginal chances and one cast-iron certainty of getting out. Right away, on the street, he could have made it. Probably. The possibility of collateral damage had stopped him. Then in the abandoned lot, getting into the white truck, he might have made it. Probably. Three against one, both times, but they were three amateurs against Jack Reacher, and he felt comfortable enough about those odds.
The cast-iron certainty was he could have been out of the cow barn, say an hour after the three guys returned from the gas station with the truck. He could have slipped the cuff again, climbed the wall and dropped down into the barnyard and been away. Just jogged over to the road and walked away and disappeared. Why hadn't he done that?
He lay there in the huge inky blackness of relaxation and realized it was Holly that was keeping him there. He hadn't bailed out because he couldn't take the risk. The three guys could have panicked and wasted her and run. Reacher didn't want that to happen. Holly was a smart, spirited woman. Sharp, impatient, confident, tough as hell. Attractive, in a shy, unforced sort of a way. Dark, slim, a lot of intelligence and energy.
Great eyes. Eyes were Reacher's thing. He was lost in a pair of pretty eyes.
But it wasn't her eyes that were doing it to him. Not her looks. Or her intelligence or her personality. It was her knee. That's what was doing it to him. Her guts and her dignity. The sight of a good-looking spirited woman cheerfully fighting an unaccustomed disability seemed like a brave and noble thing to Reacher. It made her his type of person. She was coping with it. She was doing it well. She wasn't complaining. She wasn't asking for his help. And because she wasn't asking for it, she was going to get it.
10
Five-thirty Tuesday morning FBI special agent Brogan was alone in the third-floor meeting room, using one of the newly installed phone lines for an early call to his girlfriend. Five-thirty in the morning is not the best time to deliver an apology for a broken date from the night before, but Brogan had been very busy, and he anticipated being busier still. So he made the call. He woke her and told her he had been tied up, and probably would be for the rest of the week. She was sleepy and annoyed, and made him repeat it all twice. Then she chose to interpret the message as a cowardly prelude to some kind of a brush-off. Brogan got annoyed in turn. He told her the Bureau had to come first. Surely she understood that? It was not the best point to be making to a sleepy, annoyed woman at five-thirty in the morning. They had a short row and Brogan hung up, depressed. His partner Milosevic was alone in his own office cubicle. Slumped in his chair, also depressed. His problem was a lack of imagination. It was his biggest weakness. McGrath had told him to trace Holly Johnson's every move from noon yesterday. But he hadn't come up with anything. He had seen her leaving the FBI Building. Stepping out of the door, onto the street, forearm jammed into the curved-metal clip of her hospital cane. He had seen her getting that far. But then the picture just went blank. He'd thought hard all night, and told McGrath nothing.
Five-forty, he went to the bathroom and got more coffee. Still miserable. He walked back to his desk. Sat down, lost in thought for a long time. Then he glanced at the heavy gold watch on his wrist. Checked the time. Smiled. Felt better. Thought some more. Checked his watch again. He nodded to himself. Now he could tell McGrath where Holly Johnson had gone at twelve o'clock yesterday.
With half his time gone, he burst into frantic action. But he knew it was hopeless. The irony was crushing him. They had worked hard on this room. They had built it right. Dollar signs had danced in front of their eyes. They had cut no corners. They had left out all their usual shoddy carpenters' tricks. Every single board was straight and tight. Every single nail was punched way down below the grain. There were no windows. The door was solid. It was hopeless. He spent an hour running around the room like a madman. He ran his rough palms over every square inch of every surface. Floor, ceiling, walls. It was the best job they had ever done. He ended up crouched in a corner, staring at his hands, crying.
He was in the third-floor conference room. Head of the table, seven o'clock, Tuesday morning. Opening a fresh pack of cigarettes.
"She did?" Brogan said. "The dry-cleaner's?"
McGrath nodded.
"Tell him, Milo," he said.
Milosevic smiled.
"I just remembered," he said. "I've worked with her five weeks, right? Since she bust up her knee? Every Monday lunchtime, she takes in her cleaning. Picks up last week's stuff. No reason for it to be any different yesterday."
"OK," Brogan said. "Which cleaners?"
Milosevic shook his head.
"Don't know," he said. "She always went on her own. I always offered to do it for her, but she said no, every time, five straight Mondays. OK if I helped her out on Bureau business, but she wasn't about to have me running around after her cleaning. She's a very independent type of a woman."
"But she walked there, right?" McGrath said.
"Right," Milosevic said. "She always walked. With maybe eight or nine things on hangers. So we're safe to conclude the place she used is fairly near here."
Brogan nodded. Smiled. They had some kind of a lead. He pulled the Yellow Pages over and opened it up to D. "What sort of a radius are we giving it?" he said.
McGrath shrugged.
"Twenty minutes there, twenty minutes back," he said. "That would be about the max, right? With that crutch, I can't see her doing more than a quarter-mile in twenty minutes. Limping like that? Call it a square, a half-mile on a side, this building in the center. What does that give us?"
Brogan used the AAA street map. He made a crude compass with his thumb and forefinger. Adjusted it to a half-mile according to the scale in the margin. Drew a square across the thicket of streets. Then he flipped back and forth between the map and the Yellow Pages. Ticked off names with his pencil. Counted them up.
"Twenty-one establishments," he said.
McGrath stared at him.
"Twenty-one?" he said. "Are you sure?"
Brogan nodded. Slid the phone book across the shiny hardwood.
"Twenty-one," he said. "Obviously people in this town like to keep their clothes real clean."
"OK," McGrath said. "Twenty-one places. Hit the road, guys."
Brogan took ten addresses and Milosevic took eleven. McGrath issued them both with large color blow-ups of Holly Johnson's file photograph. Then he nodded them out and waited in his chair at the head of the conference-room table, next to the telephones, slumped, staring into space, smoking, drumming a worried little rhythm with the blunt end of his pencil.
"You ever see this person?" he asked her.
The Korean woman looked at the picture, politely, with concentration, her hands clasped together behind her back.
"Sure," she said. "That's Miss Johnson, comes in every Monday."
Milosevic stepped closer to the counter. He leaned up close to the woman.
"She come in yesterday?" Milosevic asked her.
The woman thought about it and nodded.
"Sure," she said. "Like I told you, she comes in every Monday."
"What kind of time?" he asked.
"Lunch hour," the woman said. "Always lunch hour."
"About twelve?" he said. "Twelve-thirty, something like that?"
"Sure," the woman said. "Always lunch hour on a Monday."
"OK, yesterday," Milosevic said. "What happened?"
The woman shrugged.
"Nothing happened," she said. "She came in, she took her garments, she paid, she left some garments to be cleaned."
"Anybody with her?" he asked.
"Nobody with her," the woman said. "Nobody ever with her."
"Which direction was she headed?" Milosevic asked.
The woman pointed back towards the Federal Building.
"She came from that direction," she said.
"I didn't ask you where she came from," Milosevic said. "Where did she head when she left?"
The woman paused.
"I didn't see," she said. "I took her garments through to the back. I heard the door open, but I couldn't see where she went. I was in back."
"You just grabbed her stuff?" Milosevic said. "Rushed through to the back before she was out of here?"
The woman faltered, like she was being accused of an impolite lies.
"Not rushed," she said. "Miss Johnson was walking slow. Bad leg, right? I felt I shouldn't stare at her. I felt she was embarrassed. I walked her clothes through to the back so she wouldn't feel I was watching her."
Milosevic nodded and tilted his head back and sighed up at the ceiling. Saw a video camera mounted high above the counter.
"What's that?" he said.
The Korean woman twisted and followed his gaze.
"Security," she said. "Insurance company says we got to have it."
"Does it work?" he asked.
"Sure it works," the woman said. "Insurance company says it's got to."
"Does it run all the time?" Milosevic asked.
The woman nodded and giggled.
"Sure it does," she said. "It's running right now. You'll be on the tape."
Milosevic checked his watch.
"I need yesterday's tape," he said. "Immediately."
The woman faltered again. Milosevic pulled his shield for the second time.
"This is an FBI investigation," he said. "Official federal business. I need that tape, right now, OK?"
The woman nodded and held up her hand to make him wait. Stepped through a door to the rear of the establishment. Came back out after a long moment with a blast of chemical smell and a video cassette in her hand.
"You let me have it back, OK?" she said. "Insurance company says we got to keep them for a month."
Milosevic took it straight in and by eight-thirty the Bureau technicians were swarming all over the third-floor conference room again, hooking up a standard VHS player to the bank of monitors piled down the middle of the long table. There was a problem with a fuse, and then the right wire proved too short, so a computer had to be moved to allow the video player to get nearer to the center of the table. Then the head tech handed McGrath the remote and nodded.
"All yours, chief," he said.
McGrath sent him out of the room and the three agents crowded around the screens, waiting for the picture to roll. The screens faced the wall of windows, so they all three had their backs to the glass. But at that time of day, there was no danger of anybody getting uncomfortable because right then the bright morning sun was blasting the other side of the building.
His fingernails were gone. He had found a gap where two boards were not hard together. He had forced his fingertips down and levered with all his strength. His nails had torn off, one after the other. The board had not moved. He had scuttled backward into a corner and curled up on the floor. He had sucked his bloodied fingers and now his mouth was smeared all around with blood, like a child's with cake.
He heard footsteps on the staircase. A big man, moving lightly. The sound halted outside the door. The lock clicked back. The door opened. The employer looked in at him. Bloated face, two nickel-sized red spots burning high on his cheeks.
"You're still here," he said.
The carpenter was paralyzed. Couldn't move, couldn't speak.
"You failed," the employer said.
There was silence in the room. The only sound was the slow ticking of the wood frame as the morning sun slid over the roof.
"So what shall we do now?" the employer asked.
The carpenter just stared blankly at him. Didn't move. Then the employer smiled a relaxed, friendly smile. Like he was suddenly surprised about something.
"You think I meant it?" he said, gently.
The carpenter blinked. Shook his head, slightly, hopefully.
"You hear anything?" the employer asked him.
The carpenter listened hard. He could hear the quiet ticking of the wood, the song of the forest birds, the silent sound of sunny morning air.
"You were just kidding around?" he asked.
His voice was a dry croak. Relief and hope and dread were jamming his tongue into the roof of his mouth.
"Listen," the employer said.
The carpenter listened. The frame ticked, the birds sang, the warm air sighed. He heard nothing else. Silence. Then he heard a click. Then he heard a whine. It started slow and quiet and stabilized up at a familiar loud pitch. It was a sound he knew. It was the sound of a big power saw being run up to speed.
"Now do you think I meant it?" the employer screamed.
Five-forty, he went to the bathroom and got more coffee. Still miserable. He walked back to his desk. Sat down, lost in thought for a long time. Then he glanced at the heavy gold watch on his wrist. Checked the time. Smiled. Felt better. Thought some more. Checked his watch again. He nodded to himself. Now he could tell McGrath where Holly Johnson had gone at twelve o'clock yesterday.
* * *
Seventeen hundred and two miles away panic had set in. Numb shock had carried the carpenter through the first hours. It had made him weak and acquiescent. He had let the employer hustle him up the stairs and into the room. Then numb shock had made him waste his first hours, just sitting and staring. Then he had started up with a crazy optimism that this whole thing was some kind of a bad Halloween joke. That made him waste his next hours convinced nothing was going to happen. But then, like prisoners everywhere locked up alone in the cold small hours of the night, all his defenses stripped away and left him shaking and desperate with panic.With half his time gone, he burst into frantic action. But he knew it was hopeless. The irony was crushing him. They had worked hard on this room. They had built it right. Dollar signs had danced in front of their eyes. They had cut no corners. They had left out all their usual shoddy carpenters' tricks. Every single board was straight and tight. Every single nail was punched way down below the grain. There were no windows. The door was solid. It was hopeless. He spent an hour running around the room like a madman. He ran his rough palms over every square inch of every surface. Floor, ceiling, walls. It was the best job they had ever done. He ended up crouched in a corner, staring at his hands, crying.
* * *
"The dry-cleaner's," McGrath said. "That's where she went."He was in the third-floor conference room. Head of the table, seven o'clock, Tuesday morning. Opening a fresh pack of cigarettes.
"She did?" Brogan said. "The dry-cleaner's?"
McGrath nodded.
"Tell him, Milo," he said.
Milosevic smiled.
"I just remembered," he said. "I've worked with her five weeks, right? Since she bust up her knee? Every Monday lunchtime, she takes in her cleaning. Picks up last week's stuff. No reason for it to be any different yesterday."
"OK," Brogan said. "Which cleaners?"
Milosevic shook his head.
"Don't know," he said. "She always went on her own. I always offered to do it for her, but she said no, every time, five straight Mondays. OK if I helped her out on Bureau business, but she wasn't about to have me running around after her cleaning. She's a very independent type of a woman."
"But she walked there, right?" McGrath said.
"Right," Milosevic said. "She always walked. With maybe eight or nine things on hangers. So we're safe to conclude the place she used is fairly near here."
Brogan nodded. Smiled. They had some kind of a lead. He pulled the Yellow Pages over and opened it up to D. "What sort of a radius are we giving it?" he said.
McGrath shrugged.
"Twenty minutes there, twenty minutes back," he said. "That would be about the max, right? With that crutch, I can't see her doing more than a quarter-mile in twenty minutes. Limping like that? Call it a square, a half-mile on a side, this building in the center. What does that give us?"
Brogan used the AAA street map. He made a crude compass with his thumb and forefinger. Adjusted it to a half-mile according to the scale in the margin. Drew a square across the thicket of streets. Then he flipped back and forth between the map and the Yellow Pages. Ticked off names with his pencil. Counted them up.
"Twenty-one establishments," he said.
McGrath stared at him.
"Twenty-one?" he said. "Are you sure?"
Brogan nodded. Slid the phone book across the shiny hardwood.
"Twenty-one," he said. "Obviously people in this town like to keep their clothes real clean."
"OK," McGrath said. "Twenty-one places. Hit the road, guys."
Brogan took ten addresses and Milosevic took eleven. McGrath issued them both with large color blow-ups of Holly Johnson's file photograph. Then he nodded them out and waited in his chair at the head of the conference-room table, next to the telephones, slumped, staring into space, smoking, drumming a worried little rhythm with the blunt end of his pencil.
* * *
He heard faint sounds much earlier than he thought he should. He had no watch and no windows, but he was certain it was not yet morning. He was certain he had another hour. Maybe two. But he could hear noise. People moving in the street outside. He held his breath and listened. Maybe three or four people. He quartered the room again. Frozen with indecision. He should be pounding and kicking at the new pine boards. He knew that. But he wasn't. Because he knew it was hopeless, and because he felt in his gut he must be silent. He had become sure of that. Convinced. If he was silent, they might leave him alone. They might forget he was in there.* * *
Milosevic found the right place, the seventh of the eleven establishments on his list. It was just opening up for business, seven-forty in the morning. Just a storefront place, but elegant, not really aimed at the typical commuter's cheap worsteds. It advertised all kinds of specialized processes and custom treatments. There was a Korean woman in charge of the store. Milosevic showed her his FBI shield and placed Holly's file picture flat on the counter in front of her."You ever see this person?" he asked her.
The Korean woman looked at the picture, politely, with concentration, her hands clasped together behind her back.
"Sure," she said. "That's Miss Johnson, comes in every Monday."
Milosevic stepped closer to the counter. He leaned up close to the woman.
"She come in yesterday?" Milosevic asked her.
The woman thought about it and nodded.
"Sure," she said. "Like I told you, she comes in every Monday."
"What kind of time?" he asked.
"Lunch hour," the woman said. "Always lunch hour."
"About twelve?" he said. "Twelve-thirty, something like that?"
"Sure," the woman said. "Always lunch hour on a Monday."
"OK, yesterday," Milosevic said. "What happened?"
The woman shrugged.
"Nothing happened," she said. "She came in, she took her garments, she paid, she left some garments to be cleaned."
"Anybody with her?" he asked.
"Nobody with her," the woman said. "Nobody ever with her."
"Which direction was she headed?" Milosevic asked.
The woman pointed back towards the Federal Building.
"She came from that direction," she said.
"I didn't ask you where she came from," Milosevic said. "Where did she head when she left?"
The woman paused.
"I didn't see," she said. "I took her garments through to the back. I heard the door open, but I couldn't see where she went. I was in back."
"You just grabbed her stuff?" Milosevic said. "Rushed through to the back before she was out of here?"
The woman faltered, like she was being accused of an impolite lies.
"Not rushed," she said. "Miss Johnson was walking slow. Bad leg, right? I felt I shouldn't stare at her. I felt she was embarrassed. I walked her clothes through to the back so she wouldn't feel I was watching her."
Milosevic nodded and tilted his head back and sighed up at the ceiling. Saw a video camera mounted high above the counter.
"What's that?" he said.
The Korean woman twisted and followed his gaze.
"Security," she said. "Insurance company says we got to have it."
"Does it work?" he asked.
"Sure it works," the woman said. "Insurance company says it's got to."
"Does it run all the time?" Milosevic asked.
The woman nodded and giggled.
"Sure it does," she said. "It's running right now. You'll be on the tape."
Milosevic checked his watch.
"I need yesterday's tape," he said. "Immediately."
The woman faltered again. Milosevic pulled his shield for the second time.
"This is an FBI investigation," he said. "Official federal business. I need that tape, right now, OK?"
The woman nodded and held up her hand to make him wait. Stepped through a door to the rear of the establishment. Came back out after a long moment with a blast of chemical smell and a video cassette in her hand.
"You let me have it back, OK?" she said. "Insurance company says we got to keep them for a month."
Milosevic took it straight in and by eight-thirty the Bureau technicians were swarming all over the third-floor conference room again, hooking up a standard VHS player to the bank of monitors piled down the middle of the long table. There was a problem with a fuse, and then the right wire proved too short, so a computer had to be moved to allow the video player to get nearer to the center of the table. Then the head tech handed McGrath the remote and nodded.
"All yours, chief," he said.
McGrath sent him out of the room and the three agents crowded around the screens, waiting for the picture to roll. The screens faced the wall of windows, so they all three had their backs to the glass. But at that time of day, there was no danger of anybody getting uncomfortable because right then the bright morning sun was blasting the other side of the building.
* * *
That same sun rolled on seventeen hundred and two miles from Chicago and made it bright morning outside the white building. He knew it had come. He could hear the quiet ticking as the old wood frame warmed through. He could hear muffled voices outside, below him, down at street level. The sound of people starting a new day.His fingernails were gone. He had found a gap where two boards were not hard together. He had forced his fingertips down and levered with all his strength. His nails had torn off, one after the other. The board had not moved. He had scuttled backward into a corner and curled up on the floor. He had sucked his bloodied fingers and now his mouth was smeared all around with blood, like a child's with cake.
He heard footsteps on the staircase. A big man, moving lightly. The sound halted outside the door. The lock clicked back. The door opened. The employer looked in at him. Bloated face, two nickel-sized red spots burning high on his cheeks.
"You're still here," he said.
The carpenter was paralyzed. Couldn't move, couldn't speak.
"You failed," the employer said.
There was silence in the room. The only sound was the slow ticking of the wood frame as the morning sun slid over the roof.
"So what shall we do now?" the employer asked.
The carpenter just stared blankly at him. Didn't move. Then the employer smiled a relaxed, friendly smile. Like he was suddenly surprised about something.
"You think I meant it?" he said, gently.
The carpenter blinked. Shook his head, slightly, hopefully.
"You hear anything?" the employer asked him.
The carpenter listened hard. He could hear the quiet ticking of the wood, the song of the forest birds, the silent sound of sunny morning air.
"You were just kidding around?" he asked.
His voice was a dry croak. Relief and hope and dread were jamming his tongue into the roof of his mouth.
"Listen," the employer said.
The carpenter listened. The frame ticked, the birds sang, the warm air sighed. He heard nothing else. Silence. Then he heard a click. Then he heard a whine. It started slow and quiet and stabilized up at a familiar loud pitch. It was a sound he knew. It was the sound of a big power saw being run up to speed.
"Now do you think I meant it?" the employer screamed.
11
Holly Johnson had been mildly disappointed by Reacher's assessment of the cash value of her wardrobe. Reacher had said he figured she had maybe fifteen or twenty outfits, four hundred bucks an outfit, maybe eight grand in total. Truth was she had thirty-four business suits in her closet. She'd worked three years on Wall Street. She had eight grand tied up in the shoes alone. Four hundred bucks was what she had spent on a blouse, and that was when she felt driven by native common sense to be a little economical.
She liked Armani. She had thirteen of his spring suits. Spring clothes from Milan were just about right for most of the Chicago summer. Maybe in the really fierce heat of August she'd break out her Moschino shifts, but June and July, September too if she was lucky, her Armanis were the thing. Her favorites were the dark-peach shades she'd bought in her last year in the brokerage house. Some mysterious Italian blend of silks. Cut and tailored by people whose ancestors had been fingering fine materials for hundreds of years. They look at it and consider it and cut it and it just falls into marvelous soft shapes. Then they market it and a Wall Street broker buys it and loves it and is still wearing it two years into the future when she's a new FBI agent and she gets snatched off a Chicago street. She's still wearing it eighteen hours later after a sleepless night on the filthy straw in a cow barn. By that point, the thing is no longer something that Armani would recognize.
The three kidnapers had returned with the truck and backed it into the cow barn's central concrete aisle. Then they had locked the barn door and disappeared. Holly guessed they had spent the night in the farmhouse. Reacher had slept quietly in his stall, chained to the railing, while she tossed and turned in the straw, sleepless, thinking urgently about him.
His safety was her responsibility. He was an innocent passerby, caught up in her business. Whatever else lay ahead for her, she had to take care of him. That was her duty. He was her burden. And he was lying. Holly was absolutely certain he was not a blues club doorman. And she was pretty certain what he was. The Johnson family was a military family. Because of her father, Holly had lived on army bases her whole life, right up to Yale. She knew the army. She knew soldiers. She knew the types and she knew Reacher was one. To her practiced eye, he looked like one. Acted like one. Reacted like one. It was possible a doorman could pick locks and climb walls like an ape, but if a doorman did go ahead and do that, he would do it with an air of unfamiliarity and daring and breathlessness which would be quite distinctive. He wouldn't do it like it came as naturally as blinking. Reacher was a quiet, contained man, relaxed, fit, clearly trained to the point of some kind of superhuman calm. He was probably ten years older than she was, but somewhere less than forty, about six feet five, huge, maybe two-twenty, blue eyes, thinning fair hair. Big enough to be a doorman, and old enough to have been around, that was for sure, but he was a soldier. A soldier, claiming to be a doorman. But why?
Holly had no idea. She just lay there, uncomfortable, listening to his quiet breathing, twenty feet away. Doorman or soldier, ten years older or not, it was her responsibility to get him to safety. She didn't sleep. Too busy thinking, and her knee was too painful. At eight-thirty on her watch, she heard him wake up. Just a subtle change in the rhythm of his breathing.
"Good morning, Reacher," she called out.
"Morning, Holly," he said. "They're coming back."
It was silent, but after a long moment she heard footsteps outside. Climbs like an ape, hears like a bat, she thought. Some doorman.
"You OK?" Reacher called to her.
She didn't answer. His welfare was her responsibility, not the other way around. She heard a rattle as the barn door was unlocked. It rolled open and daylight flooded in. She caught a glimpse of empty green country. Pennsylvania, maybe, she thought. The three kidnapers walked in and the door was pulled shut.
"Get up, bitch," the leader said to her.
She didn't move. She was seized by an overpowering desire not to be put back inside the truck. Too dark, too uncomfortable, too tedious. She didn't know if she could take another day in there, swaying, jolting, above all totally unaware of where the hell she was being taken, or why, or by who. Instinctively she grabbed the metal railing and held on, arm tensed, like she was going to put up a struggle. The leader stood still and pulled out his Glock. Looked down at her.
"Two ways of doing this," he said. "The easy way, or the hard way."
She didn't reply. Just sat there in the straw and held on tight to the railing. The ugly driver took three steps nearer and started smiling, staring at her breasts again. She felt naked and revolted under his gaze.
"Your choice, bitch," the leader said.
She heard Reacher moving in his stall.
"No, it's your choice," she heard him call to the guy. "We need to be a little mutual here. Co-operative, right? You want us to get back in your truck, you need to make it worth our while."
His voice was calm and low. Holly stared across at him. Saw him sitting there, chained up, unarmed, facing a loaded automatic weapon, totally powerless by any reasonable definition of the word, three hostile men staring down at him.
"We need some breakfast," Reacher said. "Toast, with grape jelly. And coffee, but make it a lot stronger than last night's crap, OK? Good coffee is very important to me. You need to understand that. Then put a couple of mattresses in the truck. One queen size, one twin. Make us a sofa in there. Then we'll get in."
There was total silence. Holly glanced between the two men. Reacher was fixing the leader with a calm, level gaze from the floor. His blue eyes never blinked. The leader was staring down at him. Tension visible in the air. The driver had torn his gaze away from her body and was looking at Reacher. Anger in his eyes. Then the leader snapped around and nodded the other two out of the barn with him. Holly heard the door locking behind them.
"You eat toast?" Reacher said to her.
She was too breathless to answer.
"When they bring it, send it back," he said. "Make them do it over. Say it's too pale or too burnt or something."
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she asked.
"Psychology," Reacher said. "We need to start getting some dominance here. Situation like this, it's very important."
She stared at him.
"Just do it, OK?" he said, calmly.
She did it. The jumpy guy brought the toast. It was just about perfect, but she rejected it. She looked at it with the disdain she'd use on a sloppy balance sheet and said it was too well done. She was standing with all her weight on one foot, looking like a mess, dung all over her peach Armani, but she managed enough haughty contempt to intimidate the guy. He went back to the farmhouse kitchen and made more.
It came with a pot of strong coffee and Holly and Reacher ate their separate breakfasts, chains clanking, twenty feet apart, while the other two guys hauled mattresses into the barn. One queen, one twin. They pulled them up into the back of the truck and laid the queen out on the floor and stood the twin at right angles to it, up against the back of the cab bulkhead. Holly watched them do it and felt a whole lot better about the day. Then she suddenly realized exactly where Reacher's psychology had been aimed. Not just at the three kidnapers. At her too. He didn't want her to get into a fight. Because she'd lose. He'd risked doing what he'd done to defuse a hopeless confrontation. She was amazed. Totally amazed. She thought blankly: for Christ's sake, this guy's got it ass-backward. He's trying to take care of me.
"You want to tell us your names?" Reacher asked, calmly. "We're spending some time together, we can be a little civilized about it, right?"
Holly saw the leader just looking at him. The guy made no reply.
"We've seen your faces," Reacher said. "Telling us your names isn't going to do you any harm. And we might as well try to get along."
The guy thought about it and nodded.
"Loder," he said.
The little jumpy guy shifted feet.
"Stevie," he said.
Reacher nodded. Then the ugly driver realized all four were looking at him. He ducked his head.
"I'm not telling you my name," he said. "Hell should I?"
"And let's be real clear," the guy called Loder said. "Civilized is not the same thing as friendly, right?"
Holly saw him aim his Glock at Reacher's head and hold it there for a long moment. Nothing in his face. Not the same thing as friendly. Reacher nodded. A small cautious movement. They left their toast plates and their coffee mugs lying on the straw and the guy called Loder unlocked their chains. They met in the central aisle. Two Glocks and a shotgun aimed at them. The ugly driver leering. Reacher looked him in the eye and ducked down and picked Holly up like she weighed nothing at all. Carried her the ten paces to the truck. Put her down gently inside. They crawled forward together to the improvised sofa. Got themselves comfortable.
The truck's rear doors slammed and locked. Holly heard the big barn door open up. The truck's engine turned over and caught. They drove out of the barn and bounced a hundred and fifty yards over the rough track. Turned an invisible right angle and cruised straight and slow down a road for fifteen minutes.
"We aren't in Pennsylvania," Holly said. "Roads are too straight. Too flat."
Reacher just shrugged at her in the dark.
"We aren't in handcuffs anymore, either," he said. "Psychology."
She liked Armani. She had thirteen of his spring suits. Spring clothes from Milan were just about right for most of the Chicago summer. Maybe in the really fierce heat of August she'd break out her Moschino shifts, but June and July, September too if she was lucky, her Armanis were the thing. Her favorites were the dark-peach shades she'd bought in her last year in the brokerage house. Some mysterious Italian blend of silks. Cut and tailored by people whose ancestors had been fingering fine materials for hundreds of years. They look at it and consider it and cut it and it just falls into marvelous soft shapes. Then they market it and a Wall Street broker buys it and loves it and is still wearing it two years into the future when she's a new FBI agent and she gets snatched off a Chicago street. She's still wearing it eighteen hours later after a sleepless night on the filthy straw in a cow barn. By that point, the thing is no longer something that Armani would recognize.
The three kidnapers had returned with the truck and backed it into the cow barn's central concrete aisle. Then they had locked the barn door and disappeared. Holly guessed they had spent the night in the farmhouse. Reacher had slept quietly in his stall, chained to the railing, while she tossed and turned in the straw, sleepless, thinking urgently about him.
His safety was her responsibility. He was an innocent passerby, caught up in her business. Whatever else lay ahead for her, she had to take care of him. That was her duty. He was her burden. And he was lying. Holly was absolutely certain he was not a blues club doorman. And she was pretty certain what he was. The Johnson family was a military family. Because of her father, Holly had lived on army bases her whole life, right up to Yale. She knew the army. She knew soldiers. She knew the types and she knew Reacher was one. To her practiced eye, he looked like one. Acted like one. Reacted like one. It was possible a doorman could pick locks and climb walls like an ape, but if a doorman did go ahead and do that, he would do it with an air of unfamiliarity and daring and breathlessness which would be quite distinctive. He wouldn't do it like it came as naturally as blinking. Reacher was a quiet, contained man, relaxed, fit, clearly trained to the point of some kind of superhuman calm. He was probably ten years older than she was, but somewhere less than forty, about six feet five, huge, maybe two-twenty, blue eyes, thinning fair hair. Big enough to be a doorman, and old enough to have been around, that was for sure, but he was a soldier. A soldier, claiming to be a doorman. But why?
Holly had no idea. She just lay there, uncomfortable, listening to his quiet breathing, twenty feet away. Doorman or soldier, ten years older or not, it was her responsibility to get him to safety. She didn't sleep. Too busy thinking, and her knee was too painful. At eight-thirty on her watch, she heard him wake up. Just a subtle change in the rhythm of his breathing.
"Good morning, Reacher," she called out.
"Morning, Holly," he said. "They're coming back."
It was silent, but after a long moment she heard footsteps outside. Climbs like an ape, hears like a bat, she thought. Some doorman.
"You OK?" Reacher called to her.
She didn't answer. His welfare was her responsibility, not the other way around. She heard a rattle as the barn door was unlocked. It rolled open and daylight flooded in. She caught a glimpse of empty green country. Pennsylvania, maybe, she thought. The three kidnapers walked in and the door was pulled shut.
"Get up, bitch," the leader said to her.
She didn't move. She was seized by an overpowering desire not to be put back inside the truck. Too dark, too uncomfortable, too tedious. She didn't know if she could take another day in there, swaying, jolting, above all totally unaware of where the hell she was being taken, or why, or by who. Instinctively she grabbed the metal railing and held on, arm tensed, like she was going to put up a struggle. The leader stood still and pulled out his Glock. Looked down at her.
"Two ways of doing this," he said. "The easy way, or the hard way."
She didn't reply. Just sat there in the straw and held on tight to the railing. The ugly driver took three steps nearer and started smiling, staring at her breasts again. She felt naked and revolted under his gaze.
"Your choice, bitch," the leader said.
She heard Reacher moving in his stall.
"No, it's your choice," she heard him call to the guy. "We need to be a little mutual here. Co-operative, right? You want us to get back in your truck, you need to make it worth our while."
His voice was calm and low. Holly stared across at him. Saw him sitting there, chained up, unarmed, facing a loaded automatic weapon, totally powerless by any reasonable definition of the word, three hostile men staring down at him.
"We need some breakfast," Reacher said. "Toast, with grape jelly. And coffee, but make it a lot stronger than last night's crap, OK? Good coffee is very important to me. You need to understand that. Then put a couple of mattresses in the truck. One queen size, one twin. Make us a sofa in there. Then we'll get in."
There was total silence. Holly glanced between the two men. Reacher was fixing the leader with a calm, level gaze from the floor. His blue eyes never blinked. The leader was staring down at him. Tension visible in the air. The driver had torn his gaze away from her body and was looking at Reacher. Anger in his eyes. Then the leader snapped around and nodded the other two out of the barn with him. Holly heard the door locking behind them.
"You eat toast?" Reacher said to her.
She was too breathless to answer.
"When they bring it, send it back," he said. "Make them do it over. Say it's too pale or too burnt or something."
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she asked.
"Psychology," Reacher said. "We need to start getting some dominance here. Situation like this, it's very important."
She stared at him.
"Just do it, OK?" he said, calmly.
She did it. The jumpy guy brought the toast. It was just about perfect, but she rejected it. She looked at it with the disdain she'd use on a sloppy balance sheet and said it was too well done. She was standing with all her weight on one foot, looking like a mess, dung all over her peach Armani, but she managed enough haughty contempt to intimidate the guy. He went back to the farmhouse kitchen and made more.
It came with a pot of strong coffee and Holly and Reacher ate their separate breakfasts, chains clanking, twenty feet apart, while the other two guys hauled mattresses into the barn. One queen, one twin. They pulled them up into the back of the truck and laid the queen out on the floor and stood the twin at right angles to it, up against the back of the cab bulkhead. Holly watched them do it and felt a whole lot better about the day. Then she suddenly realized exactly where Reacher's psychology had been aimed. Not just at the three kidnapers. At her too. He didn't want her to get into a fight. Because she'd lose. He'd risked doing what he'd done to defuse a hopeless confrontation. She was amazed. Totally amazed. She thought blankly: for Christ's sake, this guy's got it ass-backward. He's trying to take care of me.
"You want to tell us your names?" Reacher asked, calmly. "We're spending some time together, we can be a little civilized about it, right?"
Holly saw the leader just looking at him. The guy made no reply.
"We've seen your faces," Reacher said. "Telling us your names isn't going to do you any harm. And we might as well try to get along."
The guy thought about it and nodded.
"Loder," he said.
The little jumpy guy shifted feet.
"Stevie," he said.
Reacher nodded. Then the ugly driver realized all four were looking at him. He ducked his head.
"I'm not telling you my name," he said. "Hell should I?"
"And let's be real clear," the guy called Loder said. "Civilized is not the same thing as friendly, right?"
Holly saw him aim his Glock at Reacher's head and hold it there for a long moment. Nothing in his face. Not the same thing as friendly. Reacher nodded. A small cautious movement. They left their toast plates and their coffee mugs lying on the straw and the guy called Loder unlocked their chains. They met in the central aisle. Two Glocks and a shotgun aimed at them. The ugly driver leering. Reacher looked him in the eye and ducked down and picked Holly up like she weighed nothing at all. Carried her the ten paces to the truck. Put her down gently inside. They crawled forward together to the improvised sofa. Got themselves comfortable.
The truck's rear doors slammed and locked. Holly heard the big barn door open up. The truck's engine turned over and caught. They drove out of the barn and bounced a hundred and fifty yards over the rough track. Turned an invisible right angle and cruised straight and slow down a road for fifteen minutes.
"We aren't in Pennsylvania," Holly said. "Roads are too straight. Too flat."
Reacher just shrugged at her in the dark.
"We aren't in handcuffs anymore, either," he said. "Psychology."
12
"Hell is this?" agent-in-charge McGrath said. He thumbed the remote and rewound the tape. Then he pressed play and watched it again. But what he saw meant nothing at all. The video screens were filled with jerky speeding images and shashy white snow.
"Hell is going on here?" he asked again.
Brogan crowded in and shook his head. Milosevic pushed closer to look. He'd brought the tape in, so he felt personally responsible for it. McGrath hit rewind again and tried once more. Same result. Just a blur of disjointed flashing pictures.
"Get the damn tech guy back in here," he shouted.
Milosevic used the phone on the credenza next to the coffee pot. Called upstairs to tech services. The head tech was in the room within a minute. The tone of Milosevic's voice had told him to hurry more effectively than any words could have.
"Damn tape won't run properly," McGrath told him.
The technician took the remote in his hand with that blend of familiarity and unfamiliarity that tech guys use the world over. They're all at home with complex equipment, but each individual piece has its own peculiarities. He peered at the buttons and pressed rewind, firmly, with a chewed thumb. The tape whirred back and he pressed play and watched the disjointed stream of flashing images and video snow.
"Can you fix that?" McGrath asked him.
The tech stopped the tape and hit rewind again. Shook his head.
"It's not broken," he said. "That's how it's supposed to be. Typical cheap surveillance video. What it does is record a freeze-frame, probably every ten seconds or so. Just one frame, every ten seconds. Like a sequence of snapshots."
"Why?" McGrath asked him.
"Cheap and easy," the guy said. "You can get a whole day on one tape that way. Low cost, and you don't have to remember to change the cassette every three hours. You just change it in the morning. And assuming a stick-up takes longer than ten seconds to complete, you've got the perp's face right there on tape, at least once."
"OK," McGrath said impatiently. "So how do we use it?"
The tech used two fingers together. Pressed play and freeze at the same time. Up on the screen came a perfect black-and-white still picture of an empty store. In the bottom-left corner was Monday's date and the time, seven thirty-five in the morning. The tech held the remote out to McGrath and pointed to a small button.
"See this?" he said. "Frame-advance button. Press this and the tape rolls on to the next still. Usually for sports, right? Hockey? You can see the puck go right in the net. Or for porn. You can see whatever you need to see. But on this type of a system, it jumps you ahead ten seconds. Like on to the next snapshot, right?"
McGrath calmed down and nodded.
"Why's it in black-and-white?" he said.
"Cheap camera," the tech guy said. "The whole thing is a cheap system. They only put them in because the insurance companies tell them they got to."
He handed the remote to McGrath and headed back for the door.
"You want anything else, you let me know, OK?" he called.
He got no reply because everybody was staring at the screen as McGrath started inching his way through the tape. Every time he hit the frame-advance button, a broad band of white snow scrolled down the screen and unveiled a new picture, same aspect, same angle, same dim monochrome gray, but the time code at the bottom jumped ahead ten seconds. The third frame showed a woman behind the counter. Milosevic touched the screen with his finger.
"That's the woman I spoke to," he said.
McGrath nodded.
"Wide field of view," he said. "You can see all the way from behind the counter right out into the street."
"Wide-angle lens on the camera," Brogan said. "Like a fisheye sort of thing. The owner can see everything. He can see the customers coming in and out, and he can see if the help is fiddling the register."
McGrath nodded again and trawled through Monday morning, ten seconds at a time. Customers jumped in and out of shot. The woman behind the counter jumped from side to side, fetching and carrying and ringing up the payments. Outside, cars flashed in and out of view.
"Fast-forward to twelve o'clock," Milosevic said. "This is taking way too long."
McGrath nodded and fiddled with the remote. The tape whirred forward. He pressed stop and play and freeze and came up with four o'clock in the afternoon.
"Shit," he said.
He wound back and forward a couple of times and came up with eleven forty-three and fifty seconds.
"Close as we're going to get," he said.
He kept his finger hard on the frame-advance button and the white snow scrolled continuously down the screen. One hundred and fifty-seven frames later, he stopped.
"There she is," he said.
Milosevic and Brogan shouldered together for a closer look. The still frame showed Holly Johnson on the far right of the picture. She was outside, on the sidewalk, crutch in one hand, clothes on hangers in the other. She was hauling the door open with a spare finger. The time in the bottom left of the frame was stopped at ten minutes and ten seconds past twelve noon.
"OK," McGrath said quietly. "So let's see."
He hit the button and Holly jumped halfway over to the counter. Even frozen on the misty monochrome screen her awkward posture was plain to see. McGrath hit the button again and the snow rolled over and Holly was at the counter. Ten seconds later the Korean woman was there with her. Ten seconds after that, Holly had folded back a hem on one of her suits and was showing the woman something. Probably the position of a particular stain. The two women stayed like that for a couple of minutes, heads together for twelve frames, jumping slightly from one shot to the next. Then the Korean woman was gone and the clothes were off the counter and Holly was standing alone for five frames. Fifty seconds. Behind her on the left, a car nosed into shot on the second frame and stayed there for the next three, parked at the kerb.
Then the woman was back with an armful of clean clothes in bags. She was frozen in the act of laying them flat on the counter. Ten seconds later she had torn five tags off the hangars. Ten seconds after that, she had another four lined up next to the register.
"Nine outfits," McGrath said.
"That's about right," Milosevic said. "Five for work, Monday to Friday, and I guess four for evening wear, right?"
"What about the weekend?" Brogan said. "Maybe it's five for work, two for evening wear and two at the weekend?"
"Probably wears jeans at the weekend," Milosevic said. "Jeans and a shirt. Just throws them in the machine, maybe."
"God's sake, does it matter?" McGrath said.
He pressed the button and the Korean woman's fingers were caught dancing over the register keys. The next two stills showed Holly paying in cash and accepting a couple of dollars' change.
"How much is all that costing her?" Brogan asked out loud.
"Nine garments?" Milosevic said. "Best part of fifty bucks a week, that's for damn sure. I saw the price list in there. Specialized processes and gentle chemicals and all."
The next frame showed Holly starting toward the exit door on the left of the picture. The top of the Korean woman's head was visible, on her way through to the back of the store. The time was showing at twelve fifteen exactly. McGrath hitched his chair closer and stuck his face a foot from the glowing monochrome screen.
"OK," he said. "So where did you go now, Holly?"
She had the nine cleaned garments in her left hand. She was holding them up, awkwardly, so they wouldn't drag on the floor. Her right elbow was jammed into the curved-metal clip of her crutch, but her hand wasn't gripping the handle. The next frame showed it reaching out to push the door open. McGrath hit the button again.
"Christ," he shouted.
Milosevic gasped out loud and Brogan looked stunned. There was no doubt about what they were seeing. The next frame showed an unknown man attacking Holly Johnson. He was tall and heavy. He was seizing her crutch with one hand and her cleaning with the other. No doubt about it. Both his arms were extended and he was taking her crutch and her cleaning away from her. He was caught in a perfect snapshot through the glass door. The three agents stared at him. There was total silence in the conference room. Then McGrath hit the button again. The time code jumped ahead ten seconds. There was another gasp as they caught their breath simultaneously.
Holly Johnson was suddenly surrounded by a triangle of three men. The tall guy who had attacked her had been joined by two more. The tall guy had Holly's cleaning slung up over his shoulder and he had seized Holly's arm. He was staring straight up into the store window like he knew a camera was in there. The other two guys were facing Holly head-on.
"They pulled guns on her," McGrath shouted. "Son of a bitch, look at that."
He thumbed the button again until the bar of snow cleared away from the bottom of the frame and the whole picture stabilized into perfect sharpness. The two new guys had their right arms bent at ninety degrees, and there was tension showing in their shoulder muscles.
"The car," Milosevic said. "They're going to put her in the car."
Beyond Holly and the triangle of men was the car which had parked up fourteen frames ago. It was just sitting there at the curb. McGrath hit the button again. The bar of white snow scrolled down. The small knot of people on the screen jumped sideways ten feet. The tall guy who had attacked Holly was leading the way into the back of the car. Holly was being pushed in after him by one of the new guys. The other new guy was opening the front passenger door. Inside the car, a fourth man was plainly visible through the side glass, sitting at the wheel.
McGrath hit the button again. The bar of snow scrolled down. The street was empty. The car was gone. Like it had never been there at all.
"Hell is going on here?" he asked again.
Brogan crowded in and shook his head. Milosevic pushed closer to look. He'd brought the tape in, so he felt personally responsible for it. McGrath hit rewind again and tried once more. Same result. Just a blur of disjointed flashing pictures.
"Get the damn tech guy back in here," he shouted.
Milosevic used the phone on the credenza next to the coffee pot. Called upstairs to tech services. The head tech was in the room within a minute. The tone of Milosevic's voice had told him to hurry more effectively than any words could have.
"Damn tape won't run properly," McGrath told him.
The technician took the remote in his hand with that blend of familiarity and unfamiliarity that tech guys use the world over. They're all at home with complex equipment, but each individual piece has its own peculiarities. He peered at the buttons and pressed rewind, firmly, with a chewed thumb. The tape whirred back and he pressed play and watched the disjointed stream of flashing images and video snow.
"Can you fix that?" McGrath asked him.
The tech stopped the tape and hit rewind again. Shook his head.
"It's not broken," he said. "That's how it's supposed to be. Typical cheap surveillance video. What it does is record a freeze-frame, probably every ten seconds or so. Just one frame, every ten seconds. Like a sequence of snapshots."
"Why?" McGrath asked him.
"Cheap and easy," the guy said. "You can get a whole day on one tape that way. Low cost, and you don't have to remember to change the cassette every three hours. You just change it in the morning. And assuming a stick-up takes longer than ten seconds to complete, you've got the perp's face right there on tape, at least once."
"OK," McGrath said impatiently. "So how do we use it?"
The tech used two fingers together. Pressed play and freeze at the same time. Up on the screen came a perfect black-and-white still picture of an empty store. In the bottom-left corner was Monday's date and the time, seven thirty-five in the morning. The tech held the remote out to McGrath and pointed to a small button.
"See this?" he said. "Frame-advance button. Press this and the tape rolls on to the next still. Usually for sports, right? Hockey? You can see the puck go right in the net. Or for porn. You can see whatever you need to see. But on this type of a system, it jumps you ahead ten seconds. Like on to the next snapshot, right?"
McGrath calmed down and nodded.
"Why's it in black-and-white?" he said.
"Cheap camera," the tech guy said. "The whole thing is a cheap system. They only put them in because the insurance companies tell them they got to."
He handed the remote to McGrath and headed back for the door.
"You want anything else, you let me know, OK?" he called.
He got no reply because everybody was staring at the screen as McGrath started inching his way through the tape. Every time he hit the frame-advance button, a broad band of white snow scrolled down the screen and unveiled a new picture, same aspect, same angle, same dim monochrome gray, but the time code at the bottom jumped ahead ten seconds. The third frame showed a woman behind the counter. Milosevic touched the screen with his finger.
"That's the woman I spoke to," he said.
McGrath nodded.
"Wide field of view," he said. "You can see all the way from behind the counter right out into the street."
"Wide-angle lens on the camera," Brogan said. "Like a fisheye sort of thing. The owner can see everything. He can see the customers coming in and out, and he can see if the help is fiddling the register."
McGrath nodded again and trawled through Monday morning, ten seconds at a time. Customers jumped in and out of shot. The woman behind the counter jumped from side to side, fetching and carrying and ringing up the payments. Outside, cars flashed in and out of view.
"Fast-forward to twelve o'clock," Milosevic said. "This is taking way too long."
McGrath nodded and fiddled with the remote. The tape whirred forward. He pressed stop and play and freeze and came up with four o'clock in the afternoon.
"Shit," he said.
He wound back and forward a couple of times and came up with eleven forty-three and fifty seconds.
"Close as we're going to get," he said.
He kept his finger hard on the frame-advance button and the white snow scrolled continuously down the screen. One hundred and fifty-seven frames later, he stopped.
"There she is," he said.
Milosevic and Brogan shouldered together for a closer look. The still frame showed Holly Johnson on the far right of the picture. She was outside, on the sidewalk, crutch in one hand, clothes on hangers in the other. She was hauling the door open with a spare finger. The time in the bottom left of the frame was stopped at ten minutes and ten seconds past twelve noon.
"OK," McGrath said quietly. "So let's see."
He hit the button and Holly jumped halfway over to the counter. Even frozen on the misty monochrome screen her awkward posture was plain to see. McGrath hit the button again and the snow rolled over and Holly was at the counter. Ten seconds later the Korean woman was there with her. Ten seconds after that, Holly had folded back a hem on one of her suits and was showing the woman something. Probably the position of a particular stain. The two women stayed like that for a couple of minutes, heads together for twelve frames, jumping slightly from one shot to the next. Then the Korean woman was gone and the clothes were off the counter and Holly was standing alone for five frames. Fifty seconds. Behind her on the left, a car nosed into shot on the second frame and stayed there for the next three, parked at the kerb.
Then the woman was back with an armful of clean clothes in bags. She was frozen in the act of laying them flat on the counter. Ten seconds later she had torn five tags off the hangars. Ten seconds after that, she had another four lined up next to the register.
"Nine outfits," McGrath said.
"That's about right," Milosevic said. "Five for work, Monday to Friday, and I guess four for evening wear, right?"
"What about the weekend?" Brogan said. "Maybe it's five for work, two for evening wear and two at the weekend?"
"Probably wears jeans at the weekend," Milosevic said. "Jeans and a shirt. Just throws them in the machine, maybe."
"God's sake, does it matter?" McGrath said.
He pressed the button and the Korean woman's fingers were caught dancing over the register keys. The next two stills showed Holly paying in cash and accepting a couple of dollars' change.
"How much is all that costing her?" Brogan asked out loud.
"Nine garments?" Milosevic said. "Best part of fifty bucks a week, that's for damn sure. I saw the price list in there. Specialized processes and gentle chemicals and all."
The next frame showed Holly starting toward the exit door on the left of the picture. The top of the Korean woman's head was visible, on her way through to the back of the store. The time was showing at twelve fifteen exactly. McGrath hitched his chair closer and stuck his face a foot from the glowing monochrome screen.
"OK," he said. "So where did you go now, Holly?"
She had the nine cleaned garments in her left hand. She was holding them up, awkwardly, so they wouldn't drag on the floor. Her right elbow was jammed into the curved-metal clip of her crutch, but her hand wasn't gripping the handle. The next frame showed it reaching out to push the door open. McGrath hit the button again.
"Christ," he shouted.
Milosevic gasped out loud and Brogan looked stunned. There was no doubt about what they were seeing. The next frame showed an unknown man attacking Holly Johnson. He was tall and heavy. He was seizing her crutch with one hand and her cleaning with the other. No doubt about it. Both his arms were extended and he was taking her crutch and her cleaning away from her. He was caught in a perfect snapshot through the glass door. The three agents stared at him. There was total silence in the conference room. Then McGrath hit the button again. The time code jumped ahead ten seconds. There was another gasp as they caught their breath simultaneously.
Holly Johnson was suddenly surrounded by a triangle of three men. The tall guy who had attacked her had been joined by two more. The tall guy had Holly's cleaning slung up over his shoulder and he had seized Holly's arm. He was staring straight up into the store window like he knew a camera was in there. The other two guys were facing Holly head-on.
"They pulled guns on her," McGrath shouted. "Son of a bitch, look at that."
He thumbed the button again until the bar of snow cleared away from the bottom of the frame and the whole picture stabilized into perfect sharpness. The two new guys had their right arms bent at ninety degrees, and there was tension showing in their shoulder muscles.
"The car," Milosevic said. "They're going to put her in the car."
Beyond Holly and the triangle of men was the car which had parked up fourteen frames ago. It was just sitting there at the curb. McGrath hit the button again. The bar of white snow scrolled down. The small knot of people on the screen jumped sideways ten feet. The tall guy who had attacked Holly was leading the way into the back of the car. Holly was being pushed in after him by one of the new guys. The other new guy was opening the front passenger door. Inside the car, a fourth man was plainly visible through the side glass, sitting at the wheel.
McGrath hit the button again. The bar of snow scrolled down. The street was empty. The car was gone. Like it had never been there at all.
13
"I need to talk", Holly said.
"So talk," Reacher replied.
They were sprawled out on the mattresses in the gloom inside the truck, rocking and bouncing, but not much. It was pretty clear they were heading down a highway. After fifteen minutes of a slow straight road, there had been a deceleration, a momentary stop, and a left turn followed by steady acceleration up a ramp. Then a slight sway as the truck nudged left onto the pavement. Then a steady droning cruise, maybe sixty miles an hour, which had continued ever since and was feeling like it would continue forever.
The temperature inside the dark space had slowly climbed higher. Now it was pretty warm. Reacher had taken his shirt off. But the truck had started cool from the night in the cow barn, and Reacher felt as long as it kept moving through the air, it was going to be tolerable. The problem would come if they stopped for any length of time. Then the truck would heat up like a pizza oven and it would get as bad as it had gotten the day before.
The twin-sized mattress had been standing upright on its long edge, up against the forward bulkhead, and the queen-size had been flat on the floor, jammed up against it, making a crude sofa. But the ninety-degree angle between the seat and the back had made the whole thing uncomfortable. So Reacher had slid the queen-size backward, with Holly riding on it like a sled, and laid the twin flat next to it. Now they had an eight-foot by six-six flat padded area. They were lying down on their backs, heads together so they could talk, bodies apart in a decorous V shape, rocking gently with the motion of the ride.
"You should do what I tell you," Holly said. "You should have gotten out."
He made no reply.
"You're a burden to me," she said. "You understand that? I've got enough on my hands here without having to worry about you."
He didn't reply. They lay rocking in silence. He could smell yesterday morning's shampoo in her hair.
"So you've got to do what I tell you from now on," she said. "Are you listening to me? I just can't afford to be worrying about you."
He turned his head to look at her, close up. She was worrying about him. It came as a big surprise, out of nowhere. A shock. Like being on a train, stopped next to another train in a busy railroad station. Your train begins to move. It picks up speed. And then all of a sudden it's not your train moving. It's the other train. Your train was stationary all the time. Your frame of reference was wrong. He thought his train was moving. She thought hers was.
"I don't need your help," she said. "I've already got all the help I need. You know how the Bureau works? You know what the biggest crime in the world is? Not bombing, not terrorism, not racketeering. The biggest crime in the world is messing with Bureau personnel. The Bureau looks after its own."
Reacher stayed quiet for a spell. Then he smiled.
"So then we're both OK," he said. "We just lay back here, and pretty soon a bunch of agents is going to come bursting in to rescue us."
"I trust my people," Holly said to him.
There was silence again. The truck droned on for a couple of minutes. Reacher ticked off the distance in his head. About four hundred and fifty miles from Chicago, maybe. East, west, north or south. Holly gasped and used both hands to shift her leg.
"Hurting?" Reacher said.
"When it gets out of line," she said. "When it's straight, it's OK."
"Which direction are we headed?" he asked.
"Are you going to do what I tell you?" she asked.
"Is it getting hotter or colder?" he said. "Or staying the same?"
She shrugged.
"Can't tell," she said. "Why?"
"North or south, it should be getting hotter or colder," he said. "East or west, it should be staying more or less the same."
"Feels the same to me," she said. "But inside here you can't really tell."
"Highway feels fairly empty," Reacher said. "We're not pulling out to pass people. We're not getting slowed down by anybody. We're just cruising."
"So?" Holly said.
"Might mean we're not going east," he said. There's a kind of barrier, right? Cleveland to Pittsburgh to Baltimore. Like a frontier. Gets much busier. We'd be hitting more traffic. What is it, Tuesday? About eleven o'clock in the morning? Roads feel too empty for the east."
Holly nodded.
"So we're going north or west or south," she said.
"In a stolen truck," he said. "Vulnerable."
"Stolen?" she said. "How do you know that?"
"Because the car was stolen too," he said.
"How do you know that?" she repeated.
"Because they burned it," he said.
Holly rolled her head and looked straight at him.
"Think about it," he said. "Think about their plan. They came to Chicago in their own vehicle. Maybe some time ago. Could have taken them a couple of weeks to stake you out. Maybe three."
Three weeks?" she said. "You think they were watching me three weeks?"
"Probably three," he said. "You went to the cleaners every Monday, right? Once a week? Must have taken them a while to confirm that pattern. But they couldn't grab you in their own vehicle. Too easy to trace, and it probably had windows and all, not suitable for long-distance transport of a kidnap victim. So I figure they stole this truck, in Chicago, probably yesterday morning. Painted over whatever writing was on the side. You notice the patch of white paint? Fresh, didn't match the rest? They disguised it, maybe changed the plates. But it was still a hot truck, right? And it was their getaway vehicle. So they didn't want to risk it on the street. And people getting into the back of a truck looks weird. A car is better. So they stole the black sedan and used that instead. Switched vehicles on that waste ground, burned the black car, and they're away."
Holly shrugged. Made a face.
"Doesn't prove they stole anything," she said.
"Yes it does," Reacher said. "Who buys a new car with leather seats, knowing they're going to burn it? They'd have bought some old clunker instead."
She nodded, reluctantly.
"Who are these people?" she said, more to herself than to Reacher.
"Amateurs," Reacher said. "They're making one mistake after another."
"Like what?" she said.
"Burning is dumb," he said. "Attracts attention. They think they've been smart, but they haven't. Probability is they burned their original car, as well. I bet they burned it right near where they stole the black sedan."
"Sounds smart enough to me," Holly said.
"Cops notice burning cars," Reacher said. "They'll find the black sedan, they'll find out where it was stolen from, they'll go up there and find their original vehicle, probably still smoldering. They're leaving a trail, Holly. They should have parked both cars in the long-term lot at O'Hare. They would have been there a year before anybody noticed. Or just left them both down on the South Side somewhere, doors open, keys in. Two minutes later, two residents down there got themselves a new motor each. Those cars would never have been seen again. That's how to cover your tracks. Burning feels good, feels like it's real final, but it's dumb as hell."
"So talk," Reacher replied.
They were sprawled out on the mattresses in the gloom inside the truck, rocking and bouncing, but not much. It was pretty clear they were heading down a highway. After fifteen minutes of a slow straight road, there had been a deceleration, a momentary stop, and a left turn followed by steady acceleration up a ramp. Then a slight sway as the truck nudged left onto the pavement. Then a steady droning cruise, maybe sixty miles an hour, which had continued ever since and was feeling like it would continue forever.
The temperature inside the dark space had slowly climbed higher. Now it was pretty warm. Reacher had taken his shirt off. But the truck had started cool from the night in the cow barn, and Reacher felt as long as it kept moving through the air, it was going to be tolerable. The problem would come if they stopped for any length of time. Then the truck would heat up like a pizza oven and it would get as bad as it had gotten the day before.
The twin-sized mattress had been standing upright on its long edge, up against the forward bulkhead, and the queen-size had been flat on the floor, jammed up against it, making a crude sofa. But the ninety-degree angle between the seat and the back had made the whole thing uncomfortable. So Reacher had slid the queen-size backward, with Holly riding on it like a sled, and laid the twin flat next to it. Now they had an eight-foot by six-six flat padded area. They were lying down on their backs, heads together so they could talk, bodies apart in a decorous V shape, rocking gently with the motion of the ride.
"You should do what I tell you," Holly said. "You should have gotten out."
He made no reply.
"You're a burden to me," she said. "You understand that? I've got enough on my hands here without having to worry about you."
He didn't reply. They lay rocking in silence. He could smell yesterday morning's shampoo in her hair.
"So you've got to do what I tell you from now on," she said. "Are you listening to me? I just can't afford to be worrying about you."
He turned his head to look at her, close up. She was worrying about him. It came as a big surprise, out of nowhere. A shock. Like being on a train, stopped next to another train in a busy railroad station. Your train begins to move. It picks up speed. And then all of a sudden it's not your train moving. It's the other train. Your train was stationary all the time. Your frame of reference was wrong. He thought his train was moving. She thought hers was.
"I don't need your help," she said. "I've already got all the help I need. You know how the Bureau works? You know what the biggest crime in the world is? Not bombing, not terrorism, not racketeering. The biggest crime in the world is messing with Bureau personnel. The Bureau looks after its own."
Reacher stayed quiet for a spell. Then he smiled.
"So then we're both OK," he said. "We just lay back here, and pretty soon a bunch of agents is going to come bursting in to rescue us."
"I trust my people," Holly said to him.
There was silence again. The truck droned on for a couple of minutes. Reacher ticked off the distance in his head. About four hundred and fifty miles from Chicago, maybe. East, west, north or south. Holly gasped and used both hands to shift her leg.
"Hurting?" Reacher said.
"When it gets out of line," she said. "When it's straight, it's OK."
"Which direction are we headed?" he asked.
"Are you going to do what I tell you?" she asked.
"Is it getting hotter or colder?" he said. "Or staying the same?"
She shrugged.
"Can't tell," she said. "Why?"
"North or south, it should be getting hotter or colder," he said. "East or west, it should be staying more or less the same."
"Feels the same to me," she said. "But inside here you can't really tell."
"Highway feels fairly empty," Reacher said. "We're not pulling out to pass people. We're not getting slowed down by anybody. We're just cruising."
"So?" Holly said.
"Might mean we're not going east," he said. There's a kind of barrier, right? Cleveland to Pittsburgh to Baltimore. Like a frontier. Gets much busier. We'd be hitting more traffic. What is it, Tuesday? About eleven o'clock in the morning? Roads feel too empty for the east."
Holly nodded.
"So we're going north or west or south," she said.
"In a stolen truck," he said. "Vulnerable."
"Stolen?" she said. "How do you know that?"
"Because the car was stolen too," he said.
"How do you know that?" she repeated.
"Because they burned it," he said.
Holly rolled her head and looked straight at him.
"Think about it," he said. "Think about their plan. They came to Chicago in their own vehicle. Maybe some time ago. Could have taken them a couple of weeks to stake you out. Maybe three."
Three weeks?" she said. "You think they were watching me three weeks?"
"Probably three," he said. "You went to the cleaners every Monday, right? Once a week? Must have taken them a while to confirm that pattern. But they couldn't grab you in their own vehicle. Too easy to trace, and it probably had windows and all, not suitable for long-distance transport of a kidnap victim. So I figure they stole this truck, in Chicago, probably yesterday morning. Painted over whatever writing was on the side. You notice the patch of white paint? Fresh, didn't match the rest? They disguised it, maybe changed the plates. But it was still a hot truck, right? And it was their getaway vehicle. So they didn't want to risk it on the street. And people getting into the back of a truck looks weird. A car is better. So they stole the black sedan and used that instead. Switched vehicles on that waste ground, burned the black car, and they're away."
Holly shrugged. Made a face.
"Doesn't prove they stole anything," she said.
"Yes it does," Reacher said. "Who buys a new car with leather seats, knowing they're going to burn it? They'd have bought some old clunker instead."
She nodded, reluctantly.
"Who are these people?" she said, more to herself than to Reacher.
"Amateurs," Reacher said. "They're making one mistake after another."
"Like what?" she said.
"Burning is dumb," he said. "Attracts attention. They think they've been smart, but they haven't. Probability is they burned their original car, as well. I bet they burned it right near where they stole the black sedan."
"Sounds smart enough to me," Holly said.
"Cops notice burning cars," Reacher said. "They'll find the black sedan, they'll find out where it was stolen from, they'll go up there and find their original vehicle, probably still smoldering. They're leaving a trail, Holly. They should have parked both cars in the long-term lot at O'Hare. They would have been there a year before anybody noticed. Or just left them both down on the South Side somewhere, doors open, keys in. Two minutes later, two residents down there got themselves a new motor each. Those cars would never have been seen again. That's how to cover your tracks. Burning feels good, feels like it's real final, but it's dumb as hell."