Without Fail (13 page)

"System really looks after itself," the guy said. "There are four recorders slaved to each camera, six hours to a tape, so we change all the tapes once a day, file them away, keep them three months and then reuse them."

"Where are the originals from the night in question?" Reacher asked.

"Right here," the guy said. He fiddled in his pocket and came out with a bunch of small brass keys on a ring. Squatted down in the limited space and opened a low cupboard. Took out three boxes.

"These are the three I copied for Froelich," he said, on his knees.

"Some place where we can look at them?"

"They're no different than the copies."

"Copying causes detail loss," Reacher said. "First rule, start with the originals."

"OK," the guy said. "You can look at them right here, I guess." He stood up awkwardly and pushed and pulled some equipment around on a bench and angled a small monitor outward and switched on a standalone player. A blank grey square appeared on the screen.

"No remotes on these things," he said. "You have to use the buttons."

He stacked the three tape boxes in the correct time sequence.

"Got chairs?" Reacher asked.

The guy ducked out and came back dragging two typist's chairs. They tangled in the doorway and he had trouble fitting them both in front of the narrow bench. Then he glanced around like he was unhappy about leaving strangers alone in his little domain.

"I guess I'll wait in the foyer," he said. "Call me when you're through."

"What's your name?" Neagley asked.

"Nendick," the guy said, shyly.

"OK, Nendick," she said. "We'll be sure to call you."

He left the room and Reacher put the third tape in the machine.

"You know what?" Neagley said. "That guy didn't sneak a peek at my ass."

"Didn't he?"

"Guys usually do when "I'm wearing these pants."

"Do they?"

"Usually."

Reacher kept his gaze firmly on the blank video screen. "Maybe he's gay," he said.

"He was wearing a wedding band."

"Then maybe he tries hard to avoid inappropriate feelings. Or maybe he's tired."

"Or maybe I'm getting old," she said.

He hit fast rewind. The motor whirred.

"Third tape," he said. "Thursday morning. We'll do this backward."

The player spooled fast. He watched the counter and hit play and the picture came up with an empty office with the timecode burned in over it showing the relevant Thursday's date and the time at seven fifty-five a.m. He hit forward scan and then froze the picture when the secretary entered the frame at exactly eight o'clock in the morning. He settled in his chair and hit play and the secretary walked into the square area and took off her coat and hung it on the rack. Walked within three feet of Stuyvesant's door and bent down behind her desk.

"Stowing her purse," Neagley said. "On the floor in the foot well."

The secretary was a woman of maybe sixty. For a moment she was face on to the camera. She was a matronly figure. Stern, but kindly. She sat down heavily and hitched her chair in and opened a book on the desk.

"Checking the diary," Neagley said.

The secretary stayed firmly in her chair, busy with the diary. Then she started in on a tall stack of memos. She filed some of them in a drawer and used her rubber stamp on others and moved them right to left across her desk.

"You ever see so much paperwork?" Reacher said. "Worse than the army."

The secretary broke off from her memo stack twice, to answer the phone. But she didn't move from her chair. Reacher fast-forwarded until Stuyvesant himself swept into view at ten past eight. He was wearing a dark raincoat, maybe black or charcoal. He was carrying a slim briefcase. He took off his coat and hung it on the rack. Advanced into the square area and the secretary's head moved as if she was speaking to him. He set his briefcase on her desk at an exact angle and adjusted its position. Bent to confer with her. Nodded once and straightened up and stepped to his door without his briefcase and disappeared into his office. The timer ticked off four seconds.

Then he was back out in the doorway, calling to his secretary. "He found it," Reacher said.

"The briefcase thing is weird," Neagley said. "Why would he leave it?"

"Maybe he had an early meeting," Reacher said. "Maybe he left it out there because he knew he was leaving again right away."

He fast-forwarded through the next hour. People ducked in and out of the office. Froelich made two trips. Then a forensic team arrived and left twenty minutes later with the letter in a plastic evidence bag. He hit reverse scan. The whole morning's activity unfolded again, backward. The forensic team left and then arrived, Froelich came out and in twice, Stuyvesant arrived and left, and then his secretary did the same.

"Now for the boring part," Reacher said. "Hours and hours of nothing."

The picture settled to a steady shot of an empty area with the timer rushing backward. Absolutely nothing happened. The level of detail coming off the original tape was better than the copy, but there wasn't much in it. It was grey and milky. OK for a surveillance situation, but it wouldn't have won any technical awards.

"You know what?" Reacher said. "I was a cop for thirteen years, and I never found anything significant on a surveillance tape. Not even once."

"Me neither," Neagley said. "The hours I spent like this."

At six a.m. the tape jammed to a stop and Reacher ejected it and fast wound the second tape to the far end and started the patient backward search again. The timer sped through five o'clock and headed fast toward four. Nothing happened. The office just sat there, still and grey and empty.

"Why are we doing this tonight?" Neagley asked.

"Because I'm an impatient guy," Reacher said.

"You want to score one for the military, don't you? You want to show these civilians how the real pros work."

"Nothing left to prove," Reacher said. "We already scored three and a half."

He bent closer to the screen. Fought to keep his eyes focused. Four o'clock in the morning. Nothing was happening. Nobody was delivering any letters.

"Or maybe there's another reason we're doing this tonight," Neagley said. "Maybe you're trying to outpoint your brother."

"Don't need to. I know exactly how we compared. And it doesn't matter to me what anybody else thinks about it."

"What happened to him?"

"He died."

"I gathered that, belatedly. But how?"

"He was killed. In the line of duty. Just after I left the army. Down in Georgia, south of Atlanta. Clandestine rendezvous with an informer from a counterfeiting operation. They were ambushed. He was shot in the head, twice."

"They get the guys who did it?"

"No."

"That's awful."

"Not really. I got them instead."

"What did you do?"

"What do you think?"

"OK, how?"

"It was a father and son team. I drowned the son in a swimming pool. I burned the father to death in a fire. After shooting him in the chest with a hollow-point.44."

"That ought to do it."

"Moral of the story, don't mess with me or mine. I just wish they'd known that ahead of time."

"Any comeback?"

"I exfiltrated fast. Stayed out of circulation. Had to miss the funeral."

"Bad business."

"The guy he was meeting with got it, too. Bled to death under a highway ramp. There was a woman, as well. From Joe's office. His assistant, Molly Beth Gordon. They knifed her at the Atlanta airport."

"I saw her name. On the roll of honour."

Reacher was quiet. The video sped backward. Three in the morning, then two fifty-something. Then two forty. Nothing happening. "The whole thing was a can of worms," he said. "It was his own fault, really."

"That's harsh."

"It was a stretch for him. I mean, would you get ambushed at a rendezvous?"

"No."

"Me neither."

"I'd do all the usual stuff," Neagley said. "You know, arrive three hours early, stake it out, surveil, block the approaches."

"But Joe didn't do any of that. He was out of his depth. Thing about Joe, he looked tough. He was six-six, two-fifty, built like a brick outhouse. Hands like shovels, face like a catcher's mitt. We were clones, physically, the two of us. But we had different brains. Deep down, he was a cerebral guy. Kind of pure. Naive, even. He never thought dirty. Everything was a game of chess with him. He gets a call, he sets up a meet, he drives down there. Like he's moving his knight or his bishop around. He just didn't expect somebody to come along and blow the whole chessboard away."

Neagley said nothing. The tape sped on backward. Nothing was happening on it. The square office area just sat there, dim and steady.

"Afterwards I was angry he was so careless," Reacher said. "But then I figured I couldn't blame him for that. To be careless, first of all you've got to know what you're supposed to be careful about. And he just didn't. He didn't know. He didn't see stuff like that. Didn't think that way."

"So?"

"So I guess I was angry I didn't do it for him."

"Could you have?"

He shook his head. "I hadn't seen him for seven years. I had no idea where he was. He had no idea where I was. But somebody like me should have done it for him. He should have asked for help."

"Too proud?"

"No, too naive. That's the bottom line."

"Could he have reacted? At the scene?"

Reacher made a face. "They were pretty good, I guess. Semi-proficient, by our standards. There must have been some chance. But it would have been a split-second thing, purely instinctive. And Joe's instincts were all buried under the cerebral stuff. He probably stopped to think. He always did. Just enough to make him come out timid."

"Naive and timid," Neagley said. "They don't share that opinion around here."

"Around here he must have looked like a wild man. Everything's comparative."

Neagley shifted in her chair and watched the screen.

"Stand by," she said. "The witching hour approaches."

The timer spun back through half past midnight. The office was undisturbed. Then at sixteen minutes past midnight the cleaning crew rushed backward out of the gloom of the exit corridor. Reacher watched them at high speed until they reversed into Stuyvesant's office at seven minutes past. Then he ran the tape forward at normal speed and watched them come out again and clean the secretarial station.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"They look pretty normal," Neagley said.

"If they'd just left the letter in there, would they look so composed?"

They weren't hurrying. They weren't furtive or anxious or stressed or excited. They weren't glancing back at Stuyvesant's door. They were just cleaning, efficiently and speedily. He reversed the tape again and sped back through seven minutes past midnight and onward until it jammed to a stop at midnight exactly. He ejected it and inserted the first tape. Wound to the far end and scanned backward until they first entered the picture just before eleven fifty-two. Ran the tape forward and watched them walk into shot and froze the tape when they were all clearly visible.

"So where would it be?" he asked.

"Like Froelich speculated," Neagley said. "Could be anywhere."

He nodded. She was right. Between the three of them and the cleaning cart, they could have concealed a dozen letters.

"Do they look worried?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Run the tape. See how they move."

He let them walk onward. They headed straight for Stuyvesant's door and disappeared from view inside, eleven fifty-two exactly.