Bad Luck and Trouble

30

His old unit came through the door first. What was left of it, anyway. The remnant. O’Donnell and Neagley and Dixon, all of them fast and anxious. They stopped dead in surprise when they saw him and he raised a hand in greeting.

“You’re still here,” O’Donnell said.

“No, I’m an optical illusion.”

“Outstanding.”

“What did Angela say?”

“Nothing. She doesn’t know anything about his clients.”

“How was she?”

“Like a woman whose husband just died.”

“What did you think of Charlie?”

“Nice kid. Like his dad. Franz lives on, in a way.”

Dixon said, “Why are you still here?”

“That’s a very good question,” Reacher said.

“What’s the answer?”

“Is the deputy still out there?”

Dixon nodded. “We saw him from the end of the street.”

“Let’s go upstairs.”

They used the room that Reacher and O’Donnell were in. It was a little bigger than Dixon’s, because it was a double. The first thing Reacher did was retrieve his money and his passport and his ATM card from O’Donnell’s bag.

O’Donnell said, “Looks like you think you’re sticking around.”

“I think I am,” Reacher said.

“Why?”

“Because Charlie opened the door all by himself.”

“Which means?”

“Seems to me that Angela is a pretty good mom. Normal, at worst. Charlie was clean, well fed, well dressed, well balanced, well cared for, well looked after. So we can conclude that Angela is doing a conscientious job with the parenting thing. Yet she let the kid open the door to a couple of complete strangers.”

Dixon said, “Her husband was just killed. Maybe she was distracted.”

“More likely the opposite. Her husband was killed more than three weeks ago. My guess is she’s over whatever initial reaction she had. Now she’s clinging to Charlie more than ever because he’s all she’s got left. Yet she let the kid get the door. Then she told him to go out to play. She didn’t say to go play in his room. She said, Go out. In Santa Monica? In a yard on a busy street full of passersby? Why would she do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because she knew it was safe.”

“How?”

“Because she knew that deputy was watching the house.”

“You think?”

“Why did she wait fourteen days before calling Neagley?”

“She was distracted,” Dixon said again.

“Possibly,” Reacher said. “But maybe there’s another reason. Maybe she wasn’t going to call us at all. We were ancient history. She liked Franz’s current life better. Naturally, because she was Franz’s current life. We represented the bad old days, rough, dangerous, uncouth. I think she was disapproving. Or if not, then a little jealous.”

“I agree,” Neagley said. “That’s the impression I got.”

“So why did she call you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think about it from the deputies’ point of view. Small department, limited resources. They find a dead guy in the desert, they ID him, they set the wheels in motion. They do it by the book. First thing they do is profile the victim. Along the way they find out that he used to be a part of a shit-hot investigative team in the military. And they find out that all but one of his old buddies are supposedly still around somewhere.”

“And they suspect us?”

“No, I think they dismiss us as suspects and they move right along. But they get nowhere. No clues, no leads, no breaks. They’re stuck.”

“So?”

“So after two weeks of frustration they get an idea. Angela has told them all about the unit and the loyalty and the old slogan, and they see an opportunity. Effectively they’ve got a freelance investigative team waiting in the wings. One that’s smart and experienced and above all one that’s going to be very highly motivated. So they prompt Angela to call us. Just to tell us, nothing more. Because they know that’s the exact same thing as winding up the Energizer Bunny. They know we’re going to get down here pretty damn fast. They know we’re going to look for answers. They know they can just stay in the shadows and watch us and piggy-back on whatever we do.”

“That’s ridiculous,” O’Donnell said.

“But I think it’s exactly what happened,” Reacher said. “Angela told them it was Neagley she had gotten on the phone, they put Neagley’s name on a watch list, they picked her up when she got to town, they tailed her and lay back in the weeds and watched the rest of us show up one by one. And they’ve been watching everything we’ve been doing ever since. Police work by proxy. That’s what Angela wasn’t telling us. The deputies asked her to set us up as stalking horses and she agreed. And that’s why I’m still here. There’s no other explanation. They figure a busted nose is the price of doing business.”

“That’s nuts.”

“Only one way to find out. Take a walk around the block and talk to the deputy.”

“You think?”

“Dixon should go. She wasn’t with us in Santa Ana. So if I’m wrong the guy probably won’t shoot her.”