Child, Lee – Without Fail

better than ours.’

There was a knock at the door. Reacher stood up and walked

over and put his eye to the peephole. The room service guy,

with the coffee. Reacher opened the door and took the tray from

him. A large pot, three upside-down cups, three saucers, no

milk or sugar or spoons, and a single pink rose in a thin china

vase. He carried the tray back to the table and Froelich moved

the photograph to give him room to put it down. Neagley

righted the cups and started to pour.

‘What did the FBI find?’ she asked.

q’he envelope was clean,’ Froelich said. ‘Standard brown

letter-size, gummed flap, metal butterfly closure. The address

was printed on a self-adhesive label, presumably by the same

computer that printed the message. The message was inserted

unfolded. The flap gum was wetted with faucet water. No saliva,

no DNA. No fingerprints on the metal closure. There were five

sets of prints on the envelope itself. Three of them were postal

workers. Their prints are on file as government workers. It’s a

condition of their emplo’ment. The fourth was the Senate mail

handler who passed it on to us. And the fifth was our agent, who

opened it.’

Neagley nodded. ‘So forget the envelope. Except in as much

as the faucet water was pretty thoughtful. This guy’s a reader,

keeps up with the times.’

72

‘What about the letter itself?’ Reacher asked.

Froelich picked up the photograph and tilted it towards the

room light.

‘Very weird,’ she said. q’he FBI lab says the paper was made

by the Georgia-Pacific company, their high-bright, twenty-four

pound heavyweight, smooth finish, acid-free laser stock,

standard eight-and-a-half by eleven-inch letter-size. Georgia- Pacific is the third largest supplier into the office market. They

sell hundreds of tons a week. So a single sheet is completely

untraceable. But it’s a buck or two more expensive per ream

than basic paper, so that might mean something. Or it might

not.’

‘What about the printing?’

‘It’s a Hewlett-Packard laser. They can tell by the toner

chemistry. Can’t tell which model, because all their black-and

white lasers use the same basic toner powder. The typeface is

Times New Roman, from Microsoft Works 4.5 for Windows 95,

fourteen point, printed bold.’

q’hey can narrow it down to a single computer program?’

Froelich nodded, q’hey’ve got a guy who specializes in that.

Typefaces tend to change very subtly between different word

processors. The software writers fiddle with the kerning, which

is the spacing between individual letters, as opposed to the

spacing between words. If you look long enough, you can kind

of sense it. Then you can measure it and identify the program.

But it doesn’t help us much. There must be a million zillion PCs

out there with Works 4.5 bundled in.’

‘No prints, I guess,’ Neagley said.

‘Well, this is where it gets weird,’ Froelich answered. She

moved the coffee tray an inch and laid the photograph flat

Pointed to the top edge. ‘Right here on the actual edge we’ve

got microscopic traces of talcum dust.’ Then she pointed to a

spot an inch below the top edge. ‘And here we’ve got two

definite smudges of talcum dust, one on the back, one on the

front.’

‘Latex gloves,’ Neagley said.

‘Exactly,’ Froelich said. ‘Disposable latex gloves, like a

doctor’s or a dentist’s. They come in boxes of fifty or a hundred

pairs. Talcum powder inside the gloves, to help them slip on.

73

But there’s always some loose talcum in the box, so it transfers

from the outside of the glove, too. The dust on the top edge is

baked, but the smudges aren’t.’

‘OK,’ Neagley said. ‘So the guy puts on his gloves, breaks

open a new ream of paper, fans it out so it won’t jam, which puts

talcum dust on the top edge where he flips it, then he loads the

printer, prints out his message, whereby he bakes the dust.’

‘Because a laser printer uses heat,’ Froelich said. ¢Fhe toner

powder is attracted to the paper by an electrostatic charge in

the shape of the required letters, and then a heater bakes

it permanently into placel Somewhere around two hundred

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