vague description about his size, his Army service. Costello must then have called the military’s central storage facility, a carefully guarded complex in St. Louis that holds every piece of paper relating to every man and woman who has ever served in uniform. Carefully guarded in two ways, physically with gates and wire, and bureaucratically with a thick layer of obstruction designed to discourage frivolous access. After patient inquiries he would have discovered the honorable discharge. Then a puzzled pause, staring at a dead end. Then the long shot with the bank account. A call to an old buddy, favors called in, strings pulled. Maybe a blurry faxed printout from Virginia, maybe a blow-by-blow narrative of credits and debits over the telephone. Then the hurried flight south, the questions up and down Duval, the two guys, the fists, the linoleum knife.
A reasonably short sequence, but St. Louis and Virginia would have been major delays. Reacher’s guess was getting good information out of the records office would take three days, maybe four, for a citizen like Costello. The Virginia bank might not have been any quicker. Favors aren’t necessarily granted immediately. The timing has got to be right. Call it a total of seven days’ bureaucratic fudge, separated by a day’s thinking time, plus a day at the start and a day at the end. Maybe altogether ten days since Mrs. Jacob set the whole thing in motion.
He clicked on a subdirectory labeled INVOICES. The right-hand side of the screen came up with a long field of file names, stacked alphabetically. He ran the cursor down the list and spooled them up from the bottom. No Jacob in the Js. Mostly they were just initials, long acronyms maybe standing for law firm names. He checked the dates. Nothing from exactly ten days ago. But there was one nine days old. Maybe Costello was faster than he thought, or maybe his secretary was slower. It was labeled SGR amp;T-09. He clicked on it and the hard drive chattered and the screen came up with a thousand-dollar retainer against a missing persons inquiry, billed to a Wall Street firm called Spencer Gutman Ricker and Talbot. There was a billing address, but no phone number.
He quit file manager and entered the database. Searched for SGR amp;T again and came up with a page showing the same address, but this time with numbers for phone, fax, telex and E-mail. He leaned down and used his fingers and thumb to pull a couple of tissues from the secretary’s pack. Wrapped one around the telephone receiver and opened the other flat and laid it across the keypad. Dialed the number by pressing through it. There was ring tone for a second, and then the connection was made.
“Spencer Gutman,” a bright voice said. “How may we help you?”
“Mrs. Jacob, please,” Reacher said, busily.
“One moment,” the voice said.
There was tinny music and then a man’s voice. He sounded quick, but deferential. Maybe an assistant.
“Mrs. Jacob, please,” Reacher said again.
The guy sounded busy and harrassed. “She already left for Garrison, and I really don’t know when she’ll be in the office again, I’m afraid.”
“Do you have her address in Garrison?”
“Hers?” the guy said, surprised. “Or his?”
Reacher paused and listened to the surprise and took a chance.
“His, I mean. I seem to have lost it.”
“Just as well you did,” the voice said back. “It was misprinted, I’m afraid. I must have redirected at least fifty people this morning.”
He recited an address, apparently from memory. Garrison, New York, a town about sixty miles up the Hudson River, more or less exactly opposite West Point, where Reacher had spent four long years.
“I think you’ll have to hurry,” the guy said.
“Yes, I will,” Reacher said, and hung up, confused.
He closed the database and left the screen blank. Took one more glance at the missing secretary’s abandoned bag and caught one more breath of her perfume as he left the room.
THE SECRETARY DIED five minutes after she gave up Mrs. Jacob’s identity, which was about five minutes after Hobie started in on her with his hook. They were in the executive bathroom inside the office suite on the eighty- eighth floor. It was an ideal location. Spacious, sixteen feet square, way too big for a bathroom. Some expensive decorator had put shiny gray granite tiling over all six surfaces, walls and floor and ceiling. There was a big shower stall, with a clear plastic curtain on a stainless steel rail. The rail was Italian, grossly overspecified for the task of holding up a clear plastic curtain. Hobie had discovered it could take the weight of an unconscious human, handcuffed to it by the wrists. Time to time, heavier people than the secretary had hung there, while he asked them urgent questions or persuaded them as to the wisdom of some particular course of action.
The only problem was soundproofing. He was pretty sure it was OK. It was a solid building. Each of the Twin Towers weighs more than half a million tons. Plenty of steel and concrete, good thick walls. And he had no inquisitive neighbors. Most of the suites on eighty-eight were leased by trade missions from small obscure foreign nations, and their skeleton staffs spent most of their time up at the UN. Same situation on eighty-seven and eighty-nine. That was why he was where he was. But Hobie was a man who never took an extra risk if he could avoid it. Hence the duct tape. Before starting, he always lined up some six-inch strips, stuck temporarily to the tiling. One of them would go over the mouth. When whoever it was started nodding wildly, eyes bulging, he would tear off the strip and wait for the answer. Any screaming, he would slam the next strip on and go to work again. Normally he got the answer he wanted after the second strip came off.
Then the tiled floor allowed a simple sluicing operation. Set the shower running hard, throw a few bucketfuls of water around, get busy with a mop, and the place was safe again as fast as water drains down eighty-eight floors and away into the sewers. Not that Hobie ever did the mopping himself. A mop needs two hands. The second young guy was doing the mopping, with his expensive pants rolled up and his socks and shoes off. Hobie was outside at his desk, talking to the first young guy.
“I’ll get Mrs. Jacob’s address, you’ll bring her to me, OK?”
“Sure,” the guy said. “What about this one?”
He nodded toward the bathroom door. Hobie followed his glance.
“Wait until tonight,” he said. “Put some of her clothes back on, take her down to the boat. Dump her a couple of miles out in the bay.”
“She’s likely to wash back in,” the guy said. “Couple of days.”
Hobie shrugged.
“I don’t care,” he said. “Couple of days, she’ll be all bloated up. They’ll figure she fell off a motorboat. Injuries like that, they’ll put it down to propeller damage.”
THE COVERT HABIT had advantages, but it also had problems. Best way to get up to Garrison in a hurry would be to grab a rental car and head straight out. But a guy who chooses not to use credit cards and won’t carry a driver’s license loses that option. So Reacher was back in a cab, heading for Grand Central. He was pretty sure the Hudson Line ran a train up there. He guessed commuters sometimes lived as far north as that. If not, the big Amtraks that ran up to Albany and Canada might stop there.
He paid off the cab and pushed through the crowd to the doors. Down the long ramp and out into the giant concourse. He glanced around and craned his head to read the departures screen. Tried to recall the geography. Croton-Harmon trains were no good. They terminated way too far south. He needed Poughkeepsie at the minimum. He scanned down the list. Nothing doing. No trains out of there inside the next hour and a half that would get him to Garrison.
THEY DID IT the usual way. One of them rode ninety floors down to the underground loading bay and found an empty carton in the trash pile. Refrigerator cartons were best, or soda machines, but once he’d done it with the box from a thirty-five-inch color television. This time, he found a filing cabinet carton. He used a janitor’s trolley from the loading ramp and wheeled it into the freight elevator. Rode with it back up to the eighty-eighth floor.
The other guy was zipping her into a body bag in the bathroom. They folded it into the carton and used the remaining duct tape to secure the carton shut. Then they hefted it back on the trolley and headed for the elevator once more. This time, they rode down to the parking garage. Wheeled the box over to the black Suburban. Counted to three and heaved it into the back. Slammed the tailgate shut and clicked the lock. Walked away and glanced back. Deep tints on the windows, dark garage, no problem.
“You know what?” the first guy said. “We fold the seat down, we’ll get Mrs. Jacob in there along with her. Do it all in one trip, tonight. I don’t like going on that boat any more times than I have to.”
