Child, Lee – Without Fail

the whole year. I guess he didn’t need them.’

‘He must have had a lot of suits.’

‘Couple of dozen, I guess,’ she said.

96

‘How can a person have twenty-four suits?’

‘He was a dresser,’ she said. ‘You must remember that.’

He stood still. The way he remembered it, Joe had lived in

one pair of shorts and one T-shirt. In the winters he wore

khakis. When it was very cold he added a worn-out leather

pilot’s jacket. That was it. At their mother’s funeral he wore

a very formal black suit, which Reacher had assumed was

rented. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe working in Washington had

changed his approach.

‘You should have them,’ Froelich Said. q’hey’re your

property, anyway. You were his next of kin, I guess.’

‘I guess I was,’ he said.

q’here’s a box, too,’ she said. ‘Stuff he left around and never

came back for.’

He followed her gaze to the closet floor and saw a cardboard

box sitting underneath the hanging rail. The flaps were folded

over each other.

I’ell me about Molly Beth Gordon,’ he said.

‘What about her?’

‘After they died I kind of inferred they’d had a thing going.’

She shook her head. if’hey were close. No doubt about that.

But they worked together. She was his assistant. He wouldn’t

date people in the office.’

‘Why did you break up?’ he asked.

The doorbell rang downstairs. It sounded loud in the Sunday

hush.

q’he food,’ Froelich said.

They went down and ate together at the kitchen table,

silently. It felt curiously intimate, but also distant. Like sitting

next to a stranger on a long plane ride. You feel connected, but

also not connected.

‘You can stay here tonight,’ she said. ‘If you like.’

‘I didn’t check out of the hotel.’

She nodded. ‘So check out tomorrow. Then base yourself

here.’

‘What about Neagley?’

Silence for a second.

‘Her, too, if she wants. There’s another bedroom on the third

floor.’

97

‘OK,’ he said.

They finished the meal and he put the containers in the trash

and rinsed the plates. She set the dishwasher going. Then her

phone rang. She stepped through to the living room to answer

it. Talked for a long moment and then hung up and came back.

qhat was Stuyvesant,’ she said. ‘He’s giving you the formal

go-ahead.’

He nodded. ‘So call Neagley and tell her to get her ass in

gear.’

‘Now?’

‘Get a problem, solve a problem,’ he said. ‘That’s my way. Tell

her to be out front of the hotel in thirty minutes.’

‘Where are you going to start?’

‘With the video,’ he said. ‘I want to watch the tapes again.

And I want to meet with the guy who runs that part of the

operation.’

Thirty minutes later they scooped Neagley off the sidewalk in

front of the hotel. She had changed into a black suit with a short

jacket. The pants were cut tight. They looked pretty good from

the back, in Reacher’s opinion. He saw Froelich arrive at the

same conclusion. But she said nothing. Just drove, five minutes,

and then they were back in the Secret Service offices. Froelich

headed straight for her desk and left Reacher and Neagley

with the agent who ran the video surveillance. He was a small

thin nervous guy in Sunday clothes who had come in at short

notice to meet with them. He looked a little dazed about it. He

led them to a closet-sized equipment room full of racks of

recorders. One wall was a floor-to-ceiling shelving unit with

hundreds of VHS tapes stacked neatly in black plastic boxes.

The recorders themselves were plain grey industrial units. The

whole tiny space was full of neat wiring and procedural memos

tacked to the walls and soft noise from small motors turning

and the smell of warm circuit boards and the green glow of LED

numbers ticking over relentlessly.

‘System really looks after itself,’ the guy said. q’here 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.’

98

‘Where are the originals from the night in question?’ Reacher