Without Fail

Thirty minutes later they scooped Neagley off the sidewalk in front of the hotel. She had changed into a black suit with a short jacket. The pants were cut tight. They looked pretty good from the back, in Reacher’s opinion. He saw Froelich arrive at the same conclusion. But she said nothing. Just drove, five minutes, and then they were back in the Secret Service offices. Froelich headed straight for her desk and left Reacher and Neagley with the agent who ran the video surveillance. He was a small thin nervous guy in Sunday clothes who had come in at short notice to meet with them. He looked a little dazed about it. He led them to a closet-sized equipment room full of racks of recorders. One wall was a floor-to-ceiling shelving unit with hundreds of VHS tapes stacked neatly in black plastic boxes. The recorders themselves were plain gray industrial units. The whole tiny space was full of neat wiring and procedural memos tacked to the walls and soft noise from small motors turning and the smell of warm circuit boards and the green glow of LED numbers ticking over relentlessly.

“System really looks after itself,” the guy said. “There are four recorders slaved to each camera, six hours to a tape, so we change all the tapes once a day, file them away, keep them three months, and then reuse them.”

“Where are the originals from the night in question?” Reacher asked.

“Right here,” the guy said. He fiddled in his pocket and came out with a bunch of small brass keys on a ring. Squatted down in the limited space and opened a low cupboard. Took out three boxes.

“These are the three I copied for Froelich,” he said, on his knees.

“Some place where we can look at them?”

“They’re no different than the copies.”

“Copying causes detail loss,” Reacher said. “First rule, start with the originals.”

“OK,” the guy said. “You can look at them right here, I guess.”

He stood up awkwardly and pushed and pulled some equipment around on a bench and angled a small monitor outward and switched on a stand-alone player. A blank gray square appeared on the screen.

“No remotes on these things,” he said. “You have to use the buttons.”

He stacked the three tape boxes in the correct time sequence.

“Got chairs?” Reacher asked.

The guy ducked out and came back dragging two typist’s chairs. They tangled in the doorway and he had trouble fitting them both in front of the narrow bench. Then he glanced around like he was unhappy about leaving strangers alone in his little domain.

“I guess I’ll wait in the foyer,” he said. “Call me when you’re through.”

“What’s your name?” Neagley asked.

“Nendick,” the guy said, shyly.

“OK, Nendick,” she said. “We’ll be sure to call you.”

He left the room and Reacher put the third tape in the machine.

“You know what?” Neagley said. “That guy didn’t sneak a peek at my ass.”

“Didn’t he?”

“Guys usually do when I’m wearing these pants.”

“Do they?”

“Usually.”

Reacher kept his gaze firmly on the blank video screen.

“Maybe he’s gay,” he said.

“He was wearing a wedding band.”

“Then maybe he tries hard to avoid inappropriate feelings. Or maybe he’s tired.”

“Or maybe I’m getting old,” she said.

He hit fast rewind. The motor whirred.

“Third tape,” he said. “Thursday morning. We’ll do this backward.”

The player spooled fast. He watched the counter and hit play and the picture came up with an empty office with the timecode burned in over it showing the relevant Thursday’s date and the time at seven fifty-five A.M. He hit forward scan and then froze the picture when the secretary entered the frame at exactly eight o’clock in the morning. He settled in his chair and hit play and the secretary walked into the square area and took off her coat and hung it on the rack. Walked within three feet of Stuyvesant’s door and bent down behind her desk.

“Stowing her purse,” Neagley said. “On the floor in the footwell.”

The secretary was a woman of maybe sixty. For a moment she was face-on to the camera. She was a matronly figure. Stern, but kindly. She sat down heavily and hitched her chair in and opened a book on the desk.

“Checking the diary,” Neagley said.

The secretary stayed firmly in her chair, busy with the diary. Then she started in on a tall stack of memos. She filed some of them in a drawer and used her rubber stamp on others and moved them right to left across her desk.

“You ever see so much paperwork?” Reacher said. “Worse than the Army.”

The secretary broke off from her memo stack twice, to answer the phone. But she didn’t move from her chair. Reacher fast-forwarded until Stuyvesant himself swept into view at ten past eight. He was wearing a dark raincoat, maybe black or charcoal. He was carrying a slim briefcase. He took off his coat and hung it on the rack. Advanced into the square area and the secretary’s head moved like she was speaking to him. He set his briefcase on her desk at an exact angle and adjusted its position. Bent to confer with her. Nodded once and straightened up and stepped to his door without his briefcase and disappeared into his office. The timer ticked off four seconds. Then he was back out in the doorway, calling to his secretary.

“He found it,” Reacher said.

“The briefcase thing is weird,” Neagley said. “Why would he leave it?”

“Maybe he had an early meeting,” Reacher said. “Maybe he left it out there because he knew he was leaving again right away.”

He fast-forwarded through the next hour. People ducked in and out of the office. Froelich made two trips. Then a forensic team arrived and left twenty minutes later with the letter in a plastic evidence bag. He hit reverse scan. The whole morning’s activity unfolded again, backward. The forensic team left and then arrived, Froelich came out and in twice, Stuyvesant arrived and left, and then his secretary did the same.

“Now for the boring part,” Reacher said. “Hours and hours of nothing.”

The picture settled to a steady shot of an empty area with the timer rushing backward. Absolutely nothing happened. The level of detail coming off the original tape was better than the copy, but there wasn’t much in it. It was gray and milky. OK for a surveillance situation, but it wouldn’t have won any technical awards.

“You know what?” Reacher said. “I was a cop for thirteen years, and I never found anything significant on a surveillance tape. Not even once.”

“Me neither,” Neagley said. “The hours I spent like this.”

At six A.M. the tape jammed to a stop and Reacher ejected it and fast wound the second tape to the far end and started the patient backward search again. The timer sped through five o’clock and headed fast toward four. Nothing happened. The office just sat there, still and gray and empty.

“Why are we doing this tonight?” Neagley asked.

“Because I’m an impatient guy,” Reacher said.

“You want to score one for the military, don’t you? You want to show these civilians how the real pros work.”

“Nothing left to prove,” Reacher said. “We already scored three and a half.”

He bent closer to the screen. Fought to keep his eyes focused. Four o’clock in the morning. Nothing was happening. Nobody was delivering any letters.

“Or maybe there’s another reason we’re doing this tonight,” Neagley said. “Maybe you’re trying to outpoint your brother.”

“Don’t need to. I know exactly how we compared. And it doesn’t matter to me what anybody else thinks about it.”

“What happened to him?”

“He died.”

“I gathered that, belatedly. But how?”

“He was killed. In the line of duty. Just after I left the Army. Down in Georgia, south of Atlanta. Clandestine rendezvous with an informer from a counterfeiting operation. They were ambushed. He was shot in the head, twice.”

“They get the guys who did it?”