‘He called that his family picture,’ she said. ‘Always did.’
He nodded again. ‘That’s why. That’s how it worked for us.’
She gazed at the photograph for a long moment, something in her face.
‘And there’s the secretary,’ he said to her. ‘They’ll have asked her who the client was. She’ll have told them. And even if she didn’t, they’ll find out anyway. Took me thirty seconds and one phone call. So now they’re going to come looking for you, to ask you who’s behind all of this.’
She looked blank and put the old photograph on the desk.
‘But I don’t know who.’
‘You think they’re going to believe that?’
She nodded vaguely and glanced towards the window.
‘OK, so what do I do?’
‘You get out of here,’ he said. ‘That’s for damn sure. Too lonely, too isolated. You got a place in the city?’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘A loft on lower Broadway.’
‘You got a car here?’
She nodded. ‘Sure, in the garage. But I was going to stay here tonight. I’ve got to find his will, do the paperwork, close things down. I was going to leave tomorrow morning, early.’
‘Do all that stuff now,’ he said. ‘As fast as you can, and get out. I mean it, Jodie. Whoever these people are, they’re not playing games.’
The look on his face told her more than the words. She nodded quickly and stood up.
‘OK, the desk. You can give me a hand.’
From his high school ROTC until his ill-health demobilization Leon Garber had done almost fifty years of military service of one sort or another. It showed right there in his desk. The upper drawers contained pens and pencils and rulers, all in neat rows. The lower drawers were double height, with concertina files hanging on neat rods. Each was labelled in careful handwriting. Taxes, phone, electricity, heating oil, yard work, appliance warranties. There was a label with newer handwriting in a different colour: last will and testament. Jodie flicked through the files and ended up lifting the whole concertina put of each drawer. Reacher found a battered leather suitcase in the den closet and they loaded the concertinas straight into it. Forced the lid down tight and snapped it shut. Reacher picked up the old photograph from the desk and looked at it again.
‘Did you resent it?’ he asked. ‘The way he thought about me? Family?’
She paused in the doorway and nodded.
‘I resented it like crazy,’ she said. ‘And one day I’ll tell you exactly why.’
He just looked at her and she turned and disappeared down the hallway.
I’ll get my things,’ she called. ‘Five minutes, OK?’
He stepped over to the bookshelf and tacked the old picture back in its original position. Then he snapped the light off and carried the suitcase out of the room. Stood in the quiet hallway and looked around. It was a pleasant house. It had been expanded in size at some stage in its history. That was clear. There was a central core of rooms that made some kind of sense in terms of layout, and then there were more rooms off the dog-legged hallway he was standing in. They branched out from arbitrary little inner lobbies. Too small to be called a warren, too big to be predictable. He wandered through to the living room. The windows overlooked the yard and the river, with the West Point buildings visible at an angle from the fireplace end. The air was still and smelled of old polish. The decor was faded, and had been plain to start with. Neutral wood floors, cream walls, heavy furniture. An ancient TV, no video. Books, pictures, more photographs. Nothing matched. It was an undesigned place, evolved, comfortable. It had been lived in.
Garber must have bought it thirty years ago. Probably when Jodie’s mother got pregnant. It was a common move. Married officers with a family often bought a place, generally near their first service base or near some other location they imagined was going to be central to their lives, like West Point. They bought the place and usually left it empty while they lived overseas. The point was to have an anchor, somewhere identifiable they knew they would come back to when it was all over. Or somewhere their families could live if the overseas posting was unsuitable, or if their children’s education demanded consistency.