Child, Lee – Without Fail

‘Nobody at all.’

He hit fast rewind and stared at nothing until he found eight

o’clock in the evening. The secretary got up from her desk,

put her head round Stuyvesant’s door, and went home. He

wound back to seven thirty-one and watched Stuyvesant himself

leave.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘he cleaners did it. On their own initiative?’

‘I seriously doubt it.’

‘So who told them to?’

They stopped in the foyer and found Nendick and sent him

back to tidy up his equipment room. Then they went in search

of Froelich and found her deep in a stack of paperwork at her

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desk, on the phone, co-ordinating Brook Armstrong’s return

from Camp David.

‘We need to speak with the cleaners,’ Reacher said.

‘Now?’ Froelich said.

‘No better time. Late-night interrogation always works best.’

She looked blank. ‘OK. I’ll drive you, I guess.’

‘Better that you’re not there,’ Neagley said.

‘Why not?’

‘We’re military. We’ll probably want to slap them around

some.’

Froelich stared at her. ‘You can’t do that. They’re department

members, no different than me.’

‘She’s kidding,’ Reacher said. ‘But they’re going to feel

better talking to us if there’s nobody else from the department

around.’

‘OK, I’ll wait outside. But I’m going with you.’

She finished up her phone calls and tidied up her paperwork

and then led them back to the elevator and down to the garage.

They climbed into the Suburban and Reacher closed his eyes

for twenty minutes as she drove. He was tired. He had been

working hard for six days straight. Then the car came to a stop

and he opened his eyes again in a mean neighbourhood full of

ten-year-old sedans and hurricane fencing.. There was an orange

glow from streetlights here and there. Patched blacktop and

scrawny weeds in the sidewalks. The thump of a loud car stereo

blocks away.

qhis is it,’ Froelich said. ‘Number 2301.’

2301 was the left-hand half of a two-family house. It was a low

clapboard structure with paired front doors in the centre and

symmetrical windows left and right. There was a low wire fence

defining a front yard. The yard had a lawn that was partly dead.

No bushes or flowers or shrubs. But it was neat enough. No

trash. The steps up to the door were swept clean.

‘I’ll wait right here,’ F’oelich said.

Reacher and Neagley climbed out of the car. The night air

was cold and the distant stereo was louder. They went in

through the gate. Up a cracked Concrete walk to the door.

Reacher pressed the bell and heard it sound inside the house.

They waited. Heard the slap of footsteps on what sounded like a

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bare floor, and then something metal being hauled out of

the way. The door opened and a man stood there, holding the

handle. He was the cleaner from the video, no doubt about it.

They had looked at him forward and backward for hours. He

was not young, not old. Not short, not tall. Just a completely

average guy. He was wearing cotton pants and a Redskins

sweatshirt. His skin was dark and his cheekbones were high

and flat. His hair was black and glossy, with an old-fashioned

cut still crisp and neat around the edges.

‘Yes?’ he said.

‘We need to talk about the thing at the office,’ Reacher said.

The guy didn’t ask any questions. Didn’t ask for ID. Just

glanced at Reacher’s face and stepped backward and over the

thing he had moved to get the door open. It was a children’s

seesaw made out of brightly coloured curved metal tubes. It

had little seats at each end, like you might see on a children’s

tricycle, and plastic horses’ heads with little handlebars coming

out of the sides below the ears.

‘Can’t leave it outside at night,’ the guy said. ‘It would be

stolen.’

Neagley and Reacher climbed over it into a narrow hallway.

There were more toys neatly packed onto shelves. Bright

grade-school paintings visible on the front of the refrigerator in

the kitchen. The smell of cooking. There was a living room off

the hallway with two silent, scared women in it. They were

wearing Sunday dresses, which ,were very different from their

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