rifle. That’s why he was heading for the church tower. He was
going to shoot.’
Bannon opened a file. Pulled a sheet of paper. Studied it
carefully.
‘Our Bismarck field office listed all attending personnel,’ he
said. q’here were forty-two local cops on the field. Nobody
above the rank of sergeant except for two, firstly the senior
officer present, who was a captain, and his second-in-command,
who was a lieutenant.’
‘Might have been either one of them,’ Reacher said.
Bannon sighed. I’his puts us in a difficult spot.’
Stuyvesant stared at him. ‘Now you’re worried about upsetting
the Bismarck PD? You didn’t worry too much about
upsetting us.’
‘I’m not worried about upsetting anybody,’ Bannon said.
‘I’m thinking tactically,is all. If it had been a patrolman out
there I could call the captain or the lieutenant and ask him to
investigate. Can’t do that the other.way around. And alibis are
going to be all over the place. Senior ranks will be off-duty today
for the holiday.’
‘Call now,’ Neagley said. ‘Find out who’s not in town. They
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can’t be home yet. You’re watching the airports.’
Bannon shook his head. ‘People aren’t home today for lots of
reasons. They’re visiting family, stuff like that. And this guy could be home already. He could have gotten through the
airports easy as anything. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?
Mayhem like we had today, multiple agencies out and looking,
nobody knows each other, all he’s got to do is hustle along
holding his badge up and he walks straight through anywhere.
That’s obviously how they got into the immediate area. And out
again. What’s more natural in the circumstances than a cop
running full speed with his badge held up?’
The room went quiet.
‘Personnel files,’ Stuyvesant said. ‘We should get Bismarck
PD to send us their files and let Reacher look at the photographs.’
¢Fhat would take days,’ Bannon said. ‘And who would I ask? I
might be speaking directly to the bad guy.’
‘So speak to your Bismarck field office,’ Neagley said.
‘Wouldn’t surprise me if the local FBI had illicit summaries on
the whole police department, with photographs.’
Bannon smiled. ‘You’re not supposed to know about things
like that.’
Then he stood up slowly and went out to his office to make
the necessary call.
‘So Armstrong made the statement,’ Stuyvesant said, ‘Did you
see it? But it’s going to cost him politically, because I can’t let
him go.’
‘I need a decoy, is all,’ Reacher said. ‘Better for me if he
doesn’t really show up. And the last thing I care about right
now is politics.’
Stuyvesant didn’t answer. Nobody spoke again. Bannon came
back into the room after fifteen minutes. He had a completely
neutral look on his face.
‘Good news and bad news,’ he said. ‘Good news is that
Bismarck isn’t the largest city on earth. Police department
employs a hundred and thirty-eight people, of which thirty-two
are civilian workers, leaving a hundred and six badged officers.
Twelve of those are women, so we’re down to ninety-four
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already. And thanks to the miracles of illicit intelligence and
modern technology we’ll have scanned and e-mailed mug shots
of all ninety-four of them within ten minutes.’
‘What’s the bad news?’ Stuyvesant asked.
‘Later,’ Bannon said. ‘After Reacher has wasted a little more
of our time.’
He looked around the room. Wouldn’t say anything more. In
the end the wait was a little less than ten minutes. An agent in a
suit hurried in with a sheaf of paper. He stacked it in front of
Bannon. Bannon pushed the pile across to Reacher. Reacher
picked it up and flicked through. Sixteen sheets, some of them
still a little wet from the printer. Fifteen sheets had six photographs
each and the sixteenth had just four. Ninety-four faces in
total. He started with the last sheet. None of the four faces was
even close.
He picked up the fifteenth sheet. Glanced across the next six
faces and put the paper down again. Picked up the fourteenth
sheet. Scanned all six pictures. He worked fast. He didn’t need
to study carefully. He had the guy’s features fixed firmly in his
mind. But the guy wasn’t on the fourteenth sheet. Or the