degrees, I think, momentarily.’
Neagley leaned close. ‘Then he lifts the paper out of the
output tray by clamping it between his finger and thumb, which
accounts for the smudges front and back near the top, which
aren’t baked because it’s after the heat treatment. And you
know what? This is a home office, not a work office.’
‘Why?’
‘The front and back finger-clamping thing means the paper is
coming out of the printer vertically. Popping up, like a toaster. If
it was feeding out flat the marks would be different. There
would be a smear on the front where he slides it. Less of a mark
on the back. And the only Hewlett-Packard lasers that feed the
paper vertically are the little ones. Home office things. I’ve got
one myself. It’s too slow to use high-volume. And the toner
cartridge only lasts twenty-five hundred pages. Strictly amateur.
So this guy did this in his den at home.’
Froelich nodded. ‘Stands to reason, I guess. He’s going to
look a little strange using latex gloves in front of other people in
an office.’
Neagley smiled, like she was making progress. ‘OK, he’s in
his den, he lifts the message out of his printer and slides it
straight into the envelope and seals it with faucet water while
he’s still got his gloves on. Hence none of his prints.’
Froelich’s face changed. ‘No, this is where it gets very weird.’
She pointed to the photograph. Laid her fingernail on a spot an
inch below the printed message, and a little right of centre.
‘What might we expect to find here, if this were a regular letter, for instance?’
74
‘A signature,’ Reacher said.
‘Exactly,’ Froelich said. She kept her fingernail on the spot.
‘And what we’ve got here is a thumbprint. A big, clear, definite
thumbprint. Obviously deliberate. Bold as anything, exactly
vertical, clear as a bell. Way too big to be a woman’s. He’s
signed the message with his thumb.’
Reacher pulled the photograph out from under Froelich’s
finger and studied it.
‘You’re tracing the print, obviously,’ Neagley said.
ifhey won’t find anything,’ Reacher said. ifhe guy must be
completely confident his prints aren’t on file anywhere.’
‘We’ve come up blank so far,’ Froelich said.
‘Which is very weird,’ Reacher said. ‘He signs the note with
his thumbprint, which he’s happy to do because his prints
aren’t on file anywhere, but he goes to extraordinary lengths to
make sure his prints don’t appear anywhere else on the letter or
the envelope. Why?’
‘Effect?’ Neagley said. ‘Drama? Neatness?’
‘But it explains the expensive paper,’ Reacher said. ifhe
smooth coating holds the print. Cheap paper would be too
porous.’
‘What did they use at the lab?’ Neagley asked. ‘Iodine
fuming? Ninhydrin?’
Froelich shook her head. ‘It came right up on the fluoroscope.’
Reacher was quiet for a spell,just looking at the photograph.
Full dark had fallen outside the window. Shiny, damp, city dark.
‘What else?’ he said to Froelich. ‘Why are you so uptight?’
‘Should she need something else?’ Neagley asked him.
He nodded. You know how these organizations work, he had
told her.
ifhere has to be something else,’ he said. ‘I mean, OK, this is
scary and challenging and intriguing, I guess, but she’s really
panicking here.’
Froelich sighed and picked up her envelope and slid out a
second item. It was identical to the first in almost every respect.
A plastic page protector, with an eight-by-ten colour photograph
inside it. The photograph showed a sheet of white paper. There
were eight words printed on it: Vice-President-elect Armstrong is
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going to die. The paper was lying on a different surface, and it
had a different ruler next to it. The surface was grey laminate,
and the ruler was clear plastic.
‘It’s virtually identical,’ Froelich said. if’he forensics are the
same, and it’s got the same thumbprint for a signature.’
‘And?’
‘It showed up on my boss’s desk,’ Froelich said. ‘One morning,
it was just there. No envelope, no nothing. And absolutely
no way of telling how it got there.’
Reacher stood up and moved to the window. Found the track
cord and pulled the drapes closed. No real reason. It just felt