work overalls.
‘We need to know your names,’ Neagley said.
Her voice was halfway between warm friendliness and the
cold knell of doom. Reacher smiled to himself. That was
Neagley’s way. He remembered it well. Nobody ever argued
with her. It was one of her strengths.
‘Julio,’ the man said.
‘Anita,’ the first woman said. Reacher assumed she was
Julio’s wife, by the way she glanced at him before answering.
‘Maria,’ the second woman said. ‘I’m Anita’s sister.’
There was a small sofa and two armchairs. Anita and Maria
squeezed up to let Julio sit with them on the sofa. Reacher took
that as an invitation and sat down in one of the armchairs.
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Neagley took the other. It put the two of them at a symmetrical
angle, like the sofa was a television screen and they were sitting
down to watch it.
‘We think you guys put the letter in the office,’ Neagley said.
There was no reply. No reaction at all. No expression on the
three faces. Just some kind of silent blank stoicism.
‘Did you?’ Neagley asked.
No reply.
]ae kids in bed?’ Reacher asked.
Fhey’re not here,’ Anita said.
‘Are they yours or Maria’s?’
q3aey’re mine.’
‘Boys or girls?’
‘Both girls.’
‘Where are they?’
She paused. ‘With cousins.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we work nights.’
‘Not for much longer,’ Neagley said. ‘You won’t be working at
all, unless you tell somebody something.’
No response.
‘No more health insurance, no more benefits.’
No response.
‘You might even go to jail.’
Silence in the room.
‘Whatever happens to us will happen,’ Julio said.
‘Did somebody ask you to put it there? Somebody you know
in the office?’
Absolutely no response.
‘Somebody you know outside the office?’
‘We didn’t do anything with any letter.’
‘So what did you do?’ Reacher asked.
‘We cleaned. That’s what we’re there for.’
‘You were in there an awful long time.’
Julio looked at his wife, like he was puzzled.
‘We saw the tape,’ Reacher said.
‘We know about the cameras,’ Julio said.
‘You follow the same routine every night?’
‘We have to.’
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‘Spend that long in there every night?’
Julio shrugged. ‘I guess so.’
‘You rest up in there?’
‘No, we clean.’
‘Same every night?’
‘Everything’s the same every night. Unless somebody’s
spilled some coffee or left a lot of trash around or something.
That might slow us up some.’
‘Was there something like that in Stuyvesant’s office that
night?’
‘No,’ Julio said. ‘Stuyvesant is a clean guy.’
‘You spent some big amount of time in there.’
‘No more than usual.’
‘You got an exact routine?’
‘I guess so. We vacuum, wipe things off, empty the trash, put
things neat, move on to the next office.’
Silence in the room. Just the faint thump of the far-off car
stereo, much attenuated by the walls and the windows.
‘OK,’ Neagley said. ‘Listen up, guys. The tape shows you
going in there. Afterwards, there was a letter on the desk. We
think you put it there because somebody asked you to. Maybe
they told you it was a joke or a trick. Maybe they told you it was
OK to do it. And it was OK. There’s no harm done. But we need
to know who asked you. Because this is part of the game, too,
us trying to find out. And now you’ve got to tell us, otherwise
the game is over and we have lo figure you put it there off of
your own bat. And that’s not OK. That’s real bad. That’s making
a threat against the Vice President-elect of the United States.
And you can go to prison for that.’
No reaction. Another long silence.
‘Are we going to get fired?’ Maria asked.
‘Aren’t you listening?’ Neagley said. ‘You’re going to jail, unless you tell us who it was.’
Maria’s face went still, like a stone. And Anita’s, and Julio’s.
Still faces, blank eyes, stoic miserable expressions straight
from a thousand years of peasant experience: sooner or later, the
harvest always fails.
‘Let’s go,’ Reacher said.
They stood up and stepped through to the hallway. Climbed
109
over the seesaw and let themselves out into the night. Made it
back to the Suburban in time to see Froelich snapping her cell