Without Fail (32 page)

"And was he?"

"I doubt it."

"You said you felt guilty afterwards. You told me that too, when we were watching those surveillance tapes."

"I think I said I felt angry, not guilty."

"Angry, guilty, it's all the same thing. Why feel guilty if it wasn't your fault?"

"Now you're saying it was my fault?"

"I'm just asking, what's the guilt about?"

"He grew up under a false impression."

He went quiet and moved deeper into the room. Neagley followed him. He lay down on the bed, arms outstretched, hands hanging off the edges. She sat down in the armchair, where Froelich had been.

"Tell me about the false impression," she said.

"He was big, but he was studious," Reacher said. "The schools we went to, being studious was like having kick my ass tattooed across your forehead. And he wasn't all that tough, really, although he was big. So he got his ass kicked, regular as clockwork."

"And?"

"I was two years younger, but I was big and tough, and not very studious. So I started to look after him. Loyalty, I guess, and I liked fighting anyway. I was about six. I'd wade in anywhere. I learned a lot of stuff. Learned that style was the big thing. Look like you mean it, and people back off a lot. Sometimes they didn't. I had eight-year-olds all over me the first year. Then I got better at it. I hurt people bad. I was a madman. It got to be a thing. We'd arrive in some new place and pretty quick people would know to lay off Joe, or the psycho would be coming after them."

"Sounds like you were a lovely little boy."

"It was the army. Anyplace else they'd have sent me to reform school."

"You're saying Joe grew to rely on it."

Reacher nodded. "It was like that for ten years, basically. It came and went, and it got less as we got older. But more serious when it actually happened. I think he internalized it. Ten years is a significant chunk of time when you're growing up, internalizing things. I think it became part of his mindset to ignore danger because the psycho always had his back. So I think Froelich's right, in a way. He was reckless. Not because he was trying to compete, but because deep down he felt he could afford to be. Because I had always looked after him, like his mother had always fed him, like the army had always housed him."

"How old was he when he died?"

"Thirty-eight."

"That's twenty years, Reacher. He had twenty years to adjust. We all adjust."

"Do we? Sometimes I still feel like that same six-year-old. Everybody looking out of the corner of their eye at the psycho."

"Like who?"

"Like Froelich."

"She been saying things?"

"I disconcert her, clearly."

"Secret Service is a civilian organization. Paramilitary at best. Nearly as bad as regular citizens."

He smiled. Said nothing.

"So, what's the verdict?" Neagley asked. "You going to be walking around from now on thinking you killed your brother?"

"A little bit, maybe," he said. "But I'll get over it."

She nodded. "You will. And you should. It wasn't your fault. He was thirty-eight. He wasn't waiting for his little brother to show up."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"About what?"

"Something else Froelich said."

"She wonders why we aren't doing it?"

"You're quick," he said.

"I could sense it," Neagley said. "She came across as a little concerned. A little jealous. Cold, even. But then, I'd just kicked her ass with the audit thing."

"You sure had."

"We've never even touched, you know that, you and me? We've never had any physical contact of any kind at all. You've never patted me on the back, never even shaken my hand."

He looked at her, and thought back through fifteen years. "Haven't I?" he said. "Is that good or bad?"

"It's good," she said. "But don't ask why."

"OK," he said.

"Reasons of my own. Don't ask what they are. But I don't like to be touched. And you never touched me. I always figured you could sense it. And I always appreciated that. It's one of the reasons I always liked you so much."

He said nothing.

"Even if you should have been in reform school," she said.

"You probably should have been in there with me."

"We'd have made a good team," she said. "We are a good team. You should come back to Chicago with me."

"I'm a wanderer," he said.

"OK, I won't push," she said. "And look on the bright side with Froelich. Cut her some slack. She's probably worth it. She's a nice woman. Have some fun. You're good together."

"OK," he said. "I guess." Neagley stood up and yawned.

"You OK?" he asked.

She nodded. "I'm fine."

Then she put a kiss on the tips of her fingers and blew it to him from six feet away. Walked out of the room without saying another word. He was tired, but he was agitated and the room was cold and the bed was lumpy and he couldn't sleep. So he put his pants and shirt back on and walked to the closet and pulled Joe's box out. He didn't expect to find anything of interest in it. It would be abandoned stuff, that was all. Nobody leaves important things in a girlfriend's house when he knows he's going to skip out some day soon.

He put the box on the bed and pulled the flaps open. First thing he saw was a pair of shoes. They were packed heel to toe sideways across one end of the box. They were formal black shoes, good leather, reasonably heavy. They had proper stitched welts and toe caps. Thin laces in five holes. Imported, probably. But not Italian. They were too substantial. British, maybe. Like the air force tie.

He placed them on the bed cover. Put the heels six inches apart and the toes a little farther. The right heel was worn more than the left. The shoes were fairly old, fairly battered. He could see the whole shape of Joe's feet in them. The whole shape of his body, towering above them, like he was standing right there wearing them, invisible. They were like a death mask.

There were three books in the box, packed edge up. One was Du cet de chez Swarm, which was the first volume of Marcel Proust's, la recherche du temps perdu. It was a French paperback with a characteristic severe plain cover. He leafed through. He could manage the language, but the content passed over his head. The second book was a college text about statistical analysis. It was heavy and dense. He leafed through and gave up on both the language and the content. Piled it on top of Proust on the bed.

He picked up the third book. Stared at it. He recognized it. He had bought it for Joe himself, a long time ago, for his thirtieth birthday. It was Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. It was in English, but he had bought it in Paris at a used-book store. He could even remember exactly what it had cost, which wasn't very much. The Paris bookseller had relegated it to the foreign-language section, and it wasn't a first edition or anything. It was just a nice-looking volume, and a great story.

He opened it to the flyleaf. He had written: Joe. Avoid both, OK? Happy birthday. Jack. He had used the bookseller's pen, and the ink had smudged. Now it had faded a little. Then he had written out an address label, because the bookseller had offered to mail it for him. The address was the Pentagon back then, because Joe was still in Military Intelligence when he was thirty. The bookseller had been very impressed. The Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia, USA.

He leafed past the title page to the first line: At the beginning of July, during a spell of exceptionally hot weather, towards evening, a certain young man came down to the street from the room he was renting. Then he leafed ahead, looking for the axe murder itself, and a folded paper fell out of the book. It was there as a bookmark, he guessed, about halfway through, where Raskolnikov is arguing with Svidrigailov.

He unfolded the paper. It was army issue. He could tell by the colour and the texture. Dull cream, smooth surface. It was the start of a letter, in Joe's familiar neat handwriting. The date was six weeks after his birthday. The text said: Dear Jack, thanks for the book. It got here eventually. I will treasure it always. I might even read it. But probably not soon, because things are getting pretty, busy here. I'm thinking of jumping ship and going to Treasury. Somebody (you'd recognize the name) offered me a job, and

That was it. It ended abruptly, halfway down the page. He laid it unfolded next to the shoes. Put all three books back in the box. He looked at the shoes and the letter and listened hard inside his head the way a whale listens for another whale across a thousand miles of freezing ocean. But he heard nothing. There was nothing there. Nothing at all. So he crammed the shoes back into the box and folded the letter and tossed it in on top. Closed the flaps again and carried the box across the room and balanced it on top of the trash can. Turned back to the bed and heard another knock at the door.

It was Froelich. She was wearing her suit pants and jacket. No shirt under the jacket. Probably nothing at all under the jacket. He guessed she had dressed quickly because she knew she had to walk near the marshal in the corridor. "You're still up," she said.

"Come in," he said.

She stepped into the room and waited until he closed the door.

"I'm not angry at you," she said. "You didn't get Joe killed. I don't really think that. And I'm not angry at Joe for getting killed. That just happened."

"You're angry at something," he said.

"I'm angry at him for leaving me," she said.

He moved back into the room and sat on the end of the bed. This time, she sat right next to him.

"I'm over him," she said. "Completely. I promise you. I have been for a long time. But I'm not over how he just walked out on me."

Reacher said nothing.

"And therefore I'm angry at myself." she said, quietly. "Because I wished him harm. Inside of me. I so wanted him to crash and burn afterwards. And then he did. So I feel terribly guilty. And now I'm worried that you're judging me."

Reacher paused a beat.

"Nothing to judge," he said. "Nothing to feel guilty about, either. Whatever you wished was understandable, and it had no influence on what happened. How could it?"

She was silent.

"He got in over his head," Reacher said. That's all. He took a chance and got unlucky. You didn't cause it. I didn't cause it. It just happened."

"Things happen for a reason."

He shook his head. "No, they don't," he said. "They really don't. They just happen. It wasn't your fault. You're not responsible."

"You think?"

"You're not responsible," he said again. "Nobody's responsible. Except the guy who pulled the trigger."

"I wished him harm," she said. "I need you to forgive me."

"Nothing to forgive."

"I need you to say the words."

"I can't," Reacher said. "And I won't. You don't need forgiving. It wasn't your fault. Or mine. Or Joe's, even. It just happened. Like things do."

She was quiet for a long moment. Then she nodded, just slightly, and moved a little closer to him.

"OK," she said.

"Are you wearing anything under that suit?" he asked.

"You knew I had a gun in the kitchen."

"Yes, I did."

"Why did you search my house?"

"Because I've got the gene that Joe didn't have. Things don't happen to me. I don't get unlucky. You carrying a gun now?"

"No, "I'm not," she said.

There was silence.

"And there's nothing under the suit," she said.

"I need to confirm those things for myself," he said. "It's a caution thing. Purely genetic, you understand."

He undid the first button on her jacket. Then the second. Slipped his hand inside. Her skin was warm and smooth. They got a wake-up call from the motel desk at six o'clock in the morning. Stuyvesant must have arranged it last night, Reacher thought. I wish he'd forgotten. Froelich stirred at his side. Then her eyes snapped open and she sat up, wide awake.