purpose, every single thing. Then you said the thumbprints are
a taunt of a different sort. So not everything is the same, right?
Something’s different.’ ,
Swain shrugged. ‘I could stretch it. The thumbprints induce
the fear that these guys are too clever to be caught. Different
sort of fear, but it’s still fear.’
Reacher looked away. Went quiet. Thirty seconds, a whole
minute.
‘I’m going to cave in,’ he said. ‘Finally. I’m going to be like Joe. I’m wearing his suit. I was sleeping with his girlfriend. I
keep meeting his old colleagues. So now I’m going to make
a lateral random off-the-wall observation, just like he did,
apparently.’
‘What is it?’ Neagley said.
‘I think we missed something,’ Reacher said. ‘Just skated
right on by it.’
299
‘What?’
‘I’ve got all these weird images going round in my head. Like
for instance, Stuyvesant’s secretary doing things at her desk.’
‘What things?’
‘I think we’ve got the thumbprint exactly ass-backward.
All along we’ve assumed they knew it was untraceable. But
I think we’re completely wrong. I think it’s just the opposite. I
think they expected it would be traceable.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I think the thumbprint thing is exactly the same as
the Nendick thing. I met a watchmaker today. He told me
where squalene comes from.’
‘Sharks’ livers,’ Neagley said.
‘And people’s noses,’ Reacher said. ‘Same stuff. That gunk
you wake up with in the morning is squalene. Same chemical
exactly.’
‘So?’
‘So I think our guys gambled and got unlucky. Suppose you
picked a random male person aged about sixty or seventy. What
are the chances he’d have been fingerprinted at least once in
his lifetime?’
‘Pretty good, I guess,’ Neagley said. ‘All immigrants are
printed. American born, he’d have been drafted for Korea or
Vietnam and printed even if he didn’t go. He’d have been
printed if he’d ever been arrested or worked for the government.’
‘Or for some private corporations,’ Swain said. ‘Plenty of them
require prints. Banks, retailers, people like that.’
‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘So here’s the thing. I don’t think the
thumbprint comes from one of the guys themselves. I think it
comes from somebody else entirely. From some innocent bystander.
From somebody they picked out at random. And it was
supposed to lead us directly to that somebody.’
The room went quiet. Neagley stared at Reacher.
‘What for?’ she said.
‘So we could find another Nendick,’ he said. I’he thumbprint
was on every message, and the guy it came from was a message, just like Swain says Nendick was. We were supposed
to trace the print and find the guy and find an exact replica of
300
the Nendick situation. Some terrified victim, too scared to open
his mouth and tell us anything. A message in himself. But by
pure accident our guys hit on somebody who had never been
printed, so we didn’t find him.’
‘But there were six paper messages,’ Swain said. ‘Probably
twenty days between the first one going in the mail and the last
one being delivered to Froelich’s house. So what does that
mean? All the messages were prepared in advance? That’s way
too much planning ahead, surely.’
‘It’s possible,’ Neagley said. q’hey could have printed dozens
of variations, one for every eventuality.’
‘No,’ Reacher said. ‘I think they printed them up as they went
along. I think they kept the thumbprint available to them at all
times.’
‘How?’ Swain asked, qhey abducted some guy and took him
hostage? They’ve stashed him somewhere? They’re taking
him everywhere with them?’
‘Couldn’t work,’ Neagley said. ‘Can’t expect us to find him if
he’s not home.’
‘He’s home,’ Reacher said. ‘But his thumb isn’t.’
Nobody spoke.
‘Fire up a computer,’ Reacher said. ‘Search NCIC for the
word thumb.’
‘We’ve got a big field office in Sacramento,’ Bannon said. Fhree
agents are already mobile. A doctor, too. We’ll know in an
hour.’
This time Bannon had come to them. They were in the Secret
Service conference room, Stuyvesant at the head of the table,
Reacher and Neagley and Swain together on one side, Bannon
alone on the other.
‘It’s a bizarre idea,’ Bannon said. ‘What would they do? Keep
it in the freezer?’