impacted whatever came next. The back wall, in Froelich’s
case. The interior hallway wall, presumably, in Crosetti’s. The
Minnesota bullet looked new. Its passage through the farmyard
mud had scoured it clean.
‘Get the rifle,’ Bannon said.
It came out of the laboratory still smelling of the hot super
glue fumes that had been blown all over it in the hope of finding
305
latent fingerprints. It was a dull, boxy, undramatic weapon. It
was painted all over in factory-finish black epoxy paint. It had a
short stubby bolt and a relatively short barrel made much
longer by the fat suppressor. It had a powerful scope fixed to
the sight mounts.
at’s the wrong scope,’ Reacher said. ‘That’s a Hensoldt.
Vaime uses Bushnell scopes.’
‘Yeah, it’s been modified,’ one of the techs said. ‘We already
logged that.’
‘By the factory?’
The guy shook his head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘High
standard, but it’s not factory workmanship.’ ‘So what does that mean?’ Bannon asked. ‘I’m not sure,’ Reacher said.
‘Is a Hensoldt better than a Bushnell?’
‘Not really. They’re both fine scopes. Like BMW and Met
cedes. Like Canon and Nikon.’
‘So a person might have a preference?’
‘Not a government person,’ Reacher said. ‘Like, what would
you say if one of your crime scene photographers came to you
and said, I want a Canon instead of this Nikon you gave me?’
‘I’d probably tell him to get lost.’
‘Exactly. He works with what he’s got..So I don’t see somebody
going to their department armourer and asking him to
junk a thousand-dollar Bushnell just because he prefers the feel
of a thousand-dollar Hensoldt.’
‘So why the switch?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Reacher said again. ‘Damage, maybe. If you
drop a rifle you can damage a sniper scope pretty easily. But a
government repairer would use another Bushnell. They don’t
just buy the rifles. They buy crateloads of spare parts along with
them.’
‘Suppose they were short? Suppose the scopes got damaged a
lot?’
¢i’hen they might use a Hensoldt, I guess. Hensoldts usually
come with SIG rifles. You need to look at your lists again. Find
out if there’s anybody who buys Vaimes and SIGs for their
snipers.’
‘Is the SIG silenced too?’
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‘No,’ Reacher said.
‘So there you go,’ Bannon said. ‘Some agency needs two
types of sniper rifles, it buys Vaimes as the silenced option and
SIGs as the unsilenced option. Two types of scope in the
spare-parts bins. They run out of Bushnells, they start in on
the Hensoldts.’
‘Possible,’ Reacher said. ‘You should make the enquiries. You
should ask specifically if anybody has fitted a Hensoldt scope to
a Vaime rifle. And if they haven’t, you should start asking
commercial gunsmiths. Start with the expensive ones. These
are rare pieces. This could be important.’
Stuyvesant was staring into the distance. Worry in the slope
of his shoulders.
‘What?’ Reacher asked.
Stuyvesant focused, and shook his head. A defeated little
gesture.
‘I’m afraid we bought SIGs,’ he said, quietly. ‘We had a batch
of SG550s about five years ago. Unsilenced semi-automatics, as
an alternative option. But we don’t use them much because the
automatic mechanism makes them a little inaccurate for close
crowd situations. They’re mostly stored. We use the Vaimes
everywhere now. So I’m sure the SIG parts bins are still full.’
The room was quiet for a moment. Then Bannon’s phone
rang again. The insane little overture trilled into the silence. He
clicked it on and put it to his ear and said yeah and listened.
‘I see,’ he said. Listened som more.
if’he doctor agree?’ he asked. Listened some more.
‘I see,’ he said, and listened.
‘I guess,’ he said, and listened.
Two?’ he asked, and listened.
‘OK,’ he said, and clicked the phone off.
‘Upstairs,’ he said. He was pale.
Stuyvesant and Reacher and Neagley followed him out to the
elevator and rode with him up to the conference room. He sat at
the head of the table and the others stayed together towards
the other end, like they didn’t want to get too close to the news.
The sky was full dark outside the windows. Thanksgiving Day
was grinding to a close.