‘Your point being?’ she said.
‘My point being, I don’t think there is anything more import
ant to Julio and Anita than their children.’
‘So why are they still clamming up?’
Froelich sat forward and pressed her finger on her earpiece.
Listened for a second and raised her wrist.
‘Copy,’ she said. ‘Good work, everybody, out.’
Then she smiled.
‘Armstrong’s home,’ she said. ‘Secure.’
Reacher looked at his watch again. Nine o’clock exactly. He
glanced across at Stuyvesant. ‘Can I see your office again? Right
now?’
Stuyvesant looked blank, but he stood up and led the way out
180
of the room. They followed the corridors and arrived at the rear
of the floor. The secretarial station was quiet and deserted.
Stuyvesant’s door was closed. He pushed it open and hit the
lights.
There was a sheet of paper on the desk.
They all saw it. Stuyvesant stood completely still for a second
and then walked across the floor and stared down at it. Swallowed.
Breathed out. Picked it up.
‘Fax from Boulder PD,’ he said. ‘Preliminary ballistics. My
secretary must have left it.’ He smiled with relief.
‘Now check,’ Reacher said. ‘Concentrate. Is this how your
office usually looks?’
Stuyvesant held the fax and glanced around the room.
‘Exactly,’ he said.
‘So this is how the cleaners see it every night?’
‘Well, the desk is usually clear,’ Stuyvesant said. ‘But otherwise,
yes.’
‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘Let’s go.’
They walked back to the conference room. Stuyvesant read
the fax.
Fhey found six shell cases,’ he said. ‘Nine-millimetre Para
bellums. Strange impact marks on the sides. They’ve sent a
drawing.’
He slid the paper to Neagley. She read it through. Made a
face. Slid it across to Reacher. He looked at the drawing and
nodded.
‘Heckler & Koch MPS,’ he said. ‘It punches the mpty brass
out like nobody’s business. The guy had it set to bursts of
three. Two bursts, six cases. They probably ended up twenty
yards away.’
‘Probably the SD6 version,’ Neagley said. ‘If it was silenced.
That’s a nice weapon. Quality sub-machine gun. Expensive.
Rare, too.’
‘Why did you want to see my office?’ Stuyvesant asked.
‘We’re wrong about the cleaners,’ Reacher said.
The room went quiet.
‘In what way?’ Neagley asked.
‘In every way,’ Reacher said. ‘Every possible way we could be.
What happened when we talked to them?’
181
qhey stonewalled like crazy.’
He nodded, q’hat’s what I thought too. They went into some
kind of a stoic silence. All of them. Almost like a trance. I
interpreted that as a response to some kind of danger. Like they
were really digging deep and defending against whatever hold
somebody had over them. Like it was vitally important. Like
they knew they couldn’t afford to say a single word. But you
know what?’
‘What?’
“I’hey just didn’t have a clue what we were talking about.
Not the first idea. We were two crazy white people asking
them impossible questions, is all. They were too polite and too
inhibited to tell us to get lost. They just sat there patiently while
we rambled on.’
‘So what are you saying?’
I’hink about what else we know. There’s a weird sequence of
facts on the tape. They look a little tired going into Stuyvesant’s
office, and a little less tired coming out. They look fairly neat
going in, and a little dishevelled coming out. They spend fifteen
minutes in there, and only nine in the secretarial area.’
‘So?’ Stuyvesant asked.
Reacher smiled. ‘Your office is probably the world’s cleanest
room. You could do surgery in there. You keep it that way
deliberately. We know about the thing with the briefcase and
the wet shoes, by the way.’
Froelich looked blank. Stuyvesant’s turn to blush.
‘It’s tidy to the point of obsession,’ Reacher said. ‘And yet the
cleaners spent fifteen minutes in there. Why?’
ney were unpacking the letter,’ Stuyvesant said. ‘Placing it
in position.’
‘No, they weren’t.’
‘Was it just Maria on her own? Did Julio and Anita come out
first?’
‘No.’
‘So who put it there? My secretary?’
‘No.’
The room went quiet.
‘Are you saying I did?’ Stuyvesant asked.
Reacher shook his head. ‘All I’m doing is asking why the