‘Problems, boss,’ the driver said. ‘There’s some sort of a wake going on here, a funeral or something. Must be a hundred people milling around. We got no chance of grabbing this Mrs Jacob. We can’t even tell which one she is. There are dozens of women here, she could be any one of them.’
The speaker relayed a grunt from Hobie. ‘And?’
‘The guy from the bar down in the Keys? He just showed up here in a damn taxi. Got here about ten minutes after we did, strolled right in.’
The speaker crackled. No discernible reply.
‘So what do we do?’ the driver asked.
‘Stick with it,’ Hobie’s voice said. ‘Maybe hide the vehicle and lay up someplace. Wait until everybody leaves. It’s her house, as far as I can tell. Maybe the family home or a weekend place. So everybody else will leave, and she’ll be the one who stays. Don’t you come back here without her, OK?’
‘What about the big guy?’
‘If he leaves, let him go. If he doesn’t, waste him. But bring me this Jacob woman.’
‘You’re Mrs Jacob?’ Reacher asked.
Jodie Garber nodded.
‘Am, was,’ she said. ‘I’m divorced, but I keep the name for work.’
‘Who was he?’
She shrugged.
‘A lawyer, like me. It seemed like a good idea at the time.’
‘How long?’
‘Three years, beginning to end. We met at law school, got married when we got jobs. I stayed on Wall Street, but he went to a firm in DC, couple of years ago. The marriage didn’t go with him, just kind of petered out. The papers came through last fall. I could hardly remember who he was. Just a name, Alan Jacob.’
Reacher stood in the sunny yard and looked at her. He realized he was upset that she had been married.
She had been a skinny kid but totally gorgeous at fifteen, self-confident and innocent and a little shy about it all at the same time. He had watched the battle between her shyness and her curiosity as she sat and worked up the courage to talk to him about death and life and good and evil. Then she would fidget and tuck her bony knees up under her and work the conversation around to love and sex and men and women. Then she would blush and disappear. He would be left alone, icy inside, captivated by her and angry at himself for it. Days later he would see her somewhere around the base, still blushing furiously. And now fifteen years later she was a grown woman, college and law school, married and divorced, beautiful and composed and elegant, standing there in her dead father’s yard with her arm linked through his.
‘Are you married?’ she asked him.
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘But are you happy?’
‘I’m always happy,’ he said. ‘Always was, always will be.’
‘Doing what?’
He shrugged.
‘Nothing much,’ he said.
He glanced over the top of her head and scanned the faces in the crowd. Subdued busy people, substantial lives, big careers, all of them moving steadily from A to Z. He looked at them and wondered if they were the fools, or if he was. He recalled the expression on Costello’s face.
‘I was just in the Keys,’ he said. ‘Digging swimming pools with a shovel.’
Her face didn’t change. She tried to squeeze his forearm with her hand, but her hand was too small and his arm was too big. It came out as a gentle pressure from her palm.
‘Costello find you down there?’ she asked.
He didn’t find me to invite me to a funeral, he thought.
‘We need to talk about Costello,’ he said.
‘He’s good, isn’t he?’
Not good enough, he thought. She moved away to circulate through the crowd. People were waiting to offer their second-layer condolences. They were getting loose from the wine, and the buzz of talk was getting louder and more sentimental. Reacher drifted over to a patio, where a long table with a white cloth held food. He loaded a paper plate with cold chicken and rice and took a glass of water. There was an ancient patio furniture set, ignored by the others because it was all spotted with little grey-green botanical droppings from the trees. The sun umbrella was stiff and faded white. Reacher ducked under it and sat quietly in a dirty chair on his own.