technicians were swarming all over the third-floor conference room
again, hooking up a standard VHS player to the bank of monitors piled
down the middle of the long table. There was a problem with a fuse,
and then the right wire proved too short, so a computer had to be moved
to allow the video player to get nearer to the center of the table.
Then the head tech handed McGrath the remote and nodded.
“All yours, chief,” he said.
McGrath sent him out of the room and the three agents crowded around
the screens, waiting for the picture to roll. The screens faced the
wall of windows, so they all three had their backs to the glass. But
at that time of day, there was no danger of anybody getting
uncomfortable because right then the bright morning sun was blasting
the other side of the building.
That same sun rolled on seventeen hundred and two miles from Chicago
and made it bright morning outside the white building. He knew it had
come. He could hear the quiet ticking as the old wood frame warmed
through. He could hear muffled voices outside, below him, down at
street level. The sound of people starting a new day.
His fingernails were gone. He had found a gap where two boards were
not hard together. He had forced his fingertips down and levered with
all his strength. His nails had torn off, one after the other. The
board had not moved. He had scuttled backward into a corner and curled
up on the floor. He had sucked his bloodied fingers and now his mouth
was smeared all around with blood, like a child’s with cake.
He heard footsteps on the staircase. A big man, moving lightly. The
sound halted outside the door. The lock clicked back. The door
opened. The employer looked in at him. Bloated face, two nickel-sized
red spots burning high on his cheeks.
“You’re still here,” he said.
The carpenter was paralyzed. Couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.
“You failed,” the employer said.
There was silence in the room. The only sound was the slow ticking of
the wood frame as the morning sun slid over the roof.
“So what shall we do now?” the employer asked.
The carpenter just stared blankly at him. Didn’t move. Then the
employer smiled a relaxed, friendly smile. Like he was suddenly
surprised about something.
“You think I meant it?” he said, gently.
The carpenter blinked. Shook his head, slightly, hopefully.
“You hear anything?” the employer asked him.
The carpenter listened hard. He could hear the quiet ticking of the
wood, the song of the forest birds, the silent sound of sunny morning
air.
“You were just kidding around?” he asked.
His voice was a dry croak. Relief and hope and dread were jamming his
tongue into the roof of his mouth.
“Listen,” the employer said.
The carpenter listened. The frame ticked, the birds sang, the warm air
sighed. He heard nothing else. Silence. Then he heard a click. Then
he heard a whine. It started slow and quiet and stabilized up at a
familiar loud pitch. It was a sound he knew. It was the sound of a
big power saw being run up to speed.
“Now do you think I meant it?” the employer screamed.
ELEVEN
HOLLY JOHNSON HAD BEEN MILDLY DISAPPOINTED BY REACHER’S assessment of
the cash value of her wardrobe. Readier had said he figured she had
maybe fifteen or twenty outfits, four hundred bucks an outfit, maybe
eight grand in total. Truth was she had thirty-four business suits in
her closet. She’d worked three years on Wall Street. She had eight
grand tied up in the shoes alone. Four hundred bucks was what she had
spent on a blouse, and that was when she felt driven by native common
sense to be a little economical.
She liked Armani. She had thirteen of his spring suits. Spring
clothes from Milan were just about right for most of the Chicago
summer. Maybe in the really fierce heat of August she’d break out her
Moschino shifts, but June and July, September too if she was lucky, her
Armanis were the thing. Her favorites were the dark-peach shades she’d