‘Closer to home?’
DeWitt put his back to the window. ‘Did you see Kaplan’s jacket?’
‘His co-pilot?’
DeWitt nodded. ‘Did you read his last but one mission?’
Reacher shook his head.
‘You should have,’ DeWitt said. ‘Sloppy work from somebody who was once an MP major. But don’t tell anybody I suggested it, because I’ll deny it, and they’ll believe me, net you.’
Reacher looked away. DeWitt walked back to his desk and sat down.
‘Is it possible Victor Hobie is still alive?’ Jodie asked him.
The distant helicopter shut off its engines. There was total silence.
‘I have no comment on that,’ DeWitt said.
‘Have you been asked that question before?’ Jodie said.
‘I have no comment on that,’ DeWitt said again.
‘You saw the crash. Is it possible anybody survived it?’
‘I saw an explosion under the jungle canopy, is all. He was way more than half-full with fuel. Draw your own conclusion, Ms Garber.’
‘Did he survive?’
‘I have no comment on that.’
‘Why is Kaplan officially dead and Hobie isn’t?’
‘I have no comment on that.’
She nodded. Thought for a moment and regrouped exactly like the lawyer she was, boxed in by some recalcitrant witness. ‘Just theoretically, then. Suppose a young man with Victor Hobie’s personality and character and background survived such an incident, OK? Is it possible a man like that would never even have made contact with his own parents again afterward?’
DeWitt stood up again. He was clearly uncomfortable.
‘I don’t know, Ms Garber. I’m not a damn psychiatrist. And like I told you, I was careful not to get to know him too well. He seemed like a real dutiful guy, but he was cold. Overall, I guess I would rate it as very unlikely. But don’t forget, Vietnam changed people. It sure as hell changed me, for instance. I used to be a nice guy.’
Officer Sark was forty-four years old, but he looked older. His physique was damaged by a poor childhood and ignorant neglect through most of his adult years. His skin was dull and pale, and he had lost his hair
early. It left him looking sallow and sunken and old before his time. But the truth was he had woken up to it and was fighting it. He had read stuff the NYPD’s medical people were putting about, concerning diet and exercise. He had eliminated most of the fats from his daily intake, and he had started sunbathing a little, just enough to take the pallor off his skin without provoking the risk of melanomas. He walked whenever he could. Going home, he would get off the subway a stop short and hike the rest of the way, fast enough to get his breath going and his heartbeat raised, like the stuff he’d read said he should. And during the workday, he would persuade O’Hallinan to park the prowl car somewhere that would give them a short walk to wherever it was they were headed.
O’Hallinan had no interest in aerobic exercise, but she was an amiable woman and happy enough to cooperate with him, especially during the summer months, when the sun was shining. So she put the car against the kerb in the shadow of Trinity Church and they approached the World Trade Center on foot from the south. It gave them a brisk six-hundred-yard walk in the sun, which made Sark happy, but it left the car exactly equidistant from a quarter of a million separate postal addresses, and with nothing on paper in the squad room it left nobody with any clue about which one of them they were heading for.
‘You want a ride back to the airport?’ DeWitt asked. Reacher interpreted the offer as a dismissal mixed in with a gesture designed to soften the stonewall performance the guy had been putting up. He nodded. The Army Chevrolet would get them there faster than
a taxi, because it was already waiting right outside with the motor running.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘Hey, my pleasure,’ DeWitt said back. ‘
He dialled a number from his desk and spoke like he was issuing an order.
‘Wait right here,’ he said. ‘Three minutes.’
Jodie stood up and smoothed her dress down. Walked to the windows and gazed out. Reacher stepped the other way and looked at the mementoes on the wall. One of the photographs was a glossy reprint of a famous newspaper picture. A helicopter was lifting off from inside the embassy compound in Saigon, with a crowd of people underneath it, arms raised like they were trying to force it to come back down for them.