The house was set in a large lot, casually landscaped, placed somewhere comfortable in the region between natural and neglected. The house itself was low and sprawling, dark cedar siding, dark screens at the windows, big stone chimney, somewhere between suburban modest and cosy cottage. It was very quiet. The air smelled hot and damp and fecund. He could hear insects massing in the undergrowth. He could sense the river beyond the house, a mile-wide void dragging stray sounds away to the south.
He walked closer and heard muted conversation behind the house. People talking low, maybe a lot of people. He walked down towards the sound and came out around the side of the garage. He was at the top of a flight of cement steps, looking west across the backyard to the river, blue and blinding in the sun. A mile away in the haze, slightly north-west to his right, was West Point, low and grey in the distance.
The backyard was a flat area cleared out of the woods on the top of the bluff. It was covered in coarse grass, mowed short, and there was a solemn crowd of a hundred people standing in it. They were all dressed in black, men and women alike, black suits and ties and blouses and shoes, except for half a dozen Army officers in full dress uniform. They were all talking quietly, soberly, juggling paper buffet plates and glasses of wine, sadness in the slope of their shoulders.
A funeral. He was gate-crashing a funeral. He stood there awkwardly, looming against the skyline in the gear he had thrown on yesterday in the Keys, faded chinos, creased pale yellow shirt, no socks, scuffed shoes, sun-bleached hair sticking out all over the place, a day’s beard on his face. He gazed down at the group of mourners and as if he had suddenly clapped his hands they all fell silent and turned to look up at him. He froze. They all stared at him, quietly, inquiringly, and he looked back at them, blankly. There was silence. Stillness. Then a woman moved. She handed her paper plate and her glass to the nearest bystander and stepped forward.
She was a young woman, maybe thirty, dressed like the others in a severe black suit. She was pale and strained, but very beautiful. Achingly beautiful. Very slim, tall in her heels, long legs in sheer dark nylon. Fine blond hair, long and unstyled, blue eyes, fine bones. She moved delicately across the lawn and stopped at the bottom of the cement steps, like she was waiting for him to come down to her.
‘Hello, Reacher,’ she said, softly.
He looked down at her. She knew who he was. And he knew who she was. It came to him suddenly like a stop-motion film blasting through fifteen years in a single glance. A teenage girl grew up and blossomed into a beautiful woman right in front of his eyes, all in a split second. Garber, the name on the mailbox. Leon Garber, for many years his commanding officer. He recalled their early acquaintance, getting to know each other at backyard barbecues on hot wet evenings in the Philippines. A slender girl gliding in and out of the shadows around the bleak base house, enough of a woman at fifteen to be utterly captivating but enough of a girl to be totally forbidden. Jodie, Garber’s daughter. His only child. The light of his life. This was Jodie Garber, fifteen years later, all grown up and beautiful and waiting for him at the bottom of a set of cement steps.
He glanced at the crowd and went down the steps to the lawn.
‘Hello, Reacher,’ she said again.
Her voice was low and strained. Sad, like the scene around her.
‘Hello, Jodie,’ he said.
Then he wanted to ask who died? But he couldn’t frame it in any way that wasn’t going to sound callous, or stupid. She saw him struggling, and nodded.
‘Dad,’ she said simply.
‘When?’ he asked.
‘Five days ago,’ she said. ‘He was sick the last few months, but it was sudden at the end. A surprise, I guess.’
He nodded slowly.
‘I’m very sorry,’ he said.