Without Fail

Reacher stepped back to the hallway. Into the living room. The television was a huge thing a couple of years old. It was tuned to a commercial network. The program seemed to be made up of clips from police traffic surveillance videos several years out of date. The sound was low. Just a constant murmur suggesting extreme and sustained excitement. There was a remote control balanced carefully on the arm of a chair opposite the screen. There was a low mantel above the fireplace with a row of six photographs in brass frames. Nendick and a woman featured in all six of them. She was about his age, maybe just lively enough and attractive enough not to be called plain. The photographs followed the couple from their wedding day through a couple of vacations and some other unspecified events. There were no pictures of children. And this wasn’t a house where children lived. There were no toys anywhere. No mess. Everything was frilly and considered and matched and adult.

The remote on the arm of the chair was labeled Video, not TV. Reacher glanced at the screen and pressed play. The cop radio sound died instantly and the video machine clicked and whirred and a second later the picture went black and was replaced by an amateur video of a wedding. Nendick and his wife smiled into the camera from several years in the past. Their heads were close together. They looked happy. She was all in white. He was wearing a suit. They were on a lawn. A blustery day. Her hair was blowing and the sound track was dominated by wind noise. She had a nice smile. Bright eyes. She was saying something for posterity, but Reacher couldn’t hear the words.

He pressed stop and a nighttime car chase resumed. He stepped back into the kitchen. Nendick was still shaking and rocking. He still had his hands trapped up under his arms. He still wasn’t saying anything. Reacher glanced again at the dirty dishes and the dead flowers.

“We can get her back for you,” he said.

Nendick said nothing.

“Just tell us who, and we’ll go get her right now.”

No reply.

“Sooner the better,” Reacher said. “Thing like this, we don’t want to have her wait any longer than she has to, do we?”

Nendick stared at the far wall with total concentration.

“When did they come for her?” Reacher asked. “Couple of weeks ago?”

Nendick said nothing. Made no sound at all. Neagley came in from the hallway. Drifted away into the half of the kitchen that was set up as a family room. There was a matching set of heavy furniture grouped along one wall, bookcase, credenza, bookcase.

“We can help you,” Reacher said. “But we need to know where to start.”

Nendick said nothing in reply. Nothing at all. Just stared and shook and rocked and hugged himself tight.

“Reacher,” Neagley called. Soft voice, with some kind of strain in it. He stepped away from Nendick and joined her at the credenza. She handed him something. It was an envelope. There was a Polaroid photograph in it. The photograph showed a woman sitting on a chair. Her face was white and panicked. Her eyes were wide. Her hair was dirty. It was Nendick’s wife, looking about a hundred years older than the pictures in the living room. She was holding up a copy of USA Today. The masthead was right under her chin. Neagley passed him another envelope. Another Polaroid in it. Same woman. Same pose. Same paper, but a different day.

“Proofs of life,” Reacher said.

Neagley nodded. “But look at this. What’s this proof of?”

She passed him another envelope. A padded brown mailer. Something soft and white in it. Underwear. One pair. Discolored. Slightly grimy.

“Great,” he said. Then she passed him a fourth envelope. Another padded brown mailer. Smaller. There was a box in it. It was a tiny neat cardboard thing like a jeweler might put a pair of earrings in. There was a pad of cotton wool in it. The cotton wool was browned with old blood, because lying on top of it was a fingertip. It had been clipped off at the first knuckle by something hard and sharp. Garden shears, maybe. It was probably from the little finger of the left hand, judging by the size and the curve. There was still paint on the nail. Reacher looked at it for a long moment. Nodded and handed it back to Neagley. Walked around and faced Nendick head on across the breakfast bar. Looked straight into his eyes. Gambled.

“Stuyvesant,” he called. “And Froelich. Go wait in the hallway.”

They stood still for a second, surprised. He glared hard at them. They shuffled obediently out of the room.

“Neagley,” he called. “Come over here with me.”

She walked around and stood quiet at his side. He leaned down and put his elbows on the counter. Put his face level with Nendick’s. Spoke soft.

“OK, they’re gone,” he said. “It’s just us now. And we’re not Secret Service. You know that, right? You never saw us before the other day. So you can trust us. We won’t screw up like they will. We come from a place where you’re not allowed to screw up. And we come from a place where they don’t have rules. So we can get her back. We know how to do this. We’ll get the bad guys and we’ll bring her back. Safe. Without fail, OK? That’s a promise. Me to you.”

Nendick leaned his head back and opened his mouth. His lips were dry. They were flecked with sticky foam. Then he closed his mouth. Tight. Clamped his jaw hard. So hard his lips were compressed into a bloodless thin line. He brought one shaking hand out from under his arm and put the thumb and forefinger together like he was holding something small. He drew the small imaginary thing sideways across his lips, slowly, like he was closing a zipper. He put his hand back under his arm. Shook. Stared at the wall. There was crazy fear in his eyes. Some kind of absolute, uncontrolled terror. He started rocking again. Started coughing. He was coughing and choking in his throat. He wouldn’t open his mouth. It was clamped tight. He was bucking and shaking on the stool. Clutching his sides. Gulping desperately inside his clamped mouth. His eyes were wild and staring. They were pools of horror. Then they rolled up inside his head and the whites showed and he pitched backward off the stool.

10

They did what they could at the scene, but it was useless. Nendick just lay on the kitchen floor, not moving, not really conscious, but not really unconscious either. He was in some kind of a fugue state. Like suspended animation. He was pale and damp with perspiration. His breathing was shallow. His pulse was weak. He was responsive to touch and light but nothing else. An hour later he was in a guarded room at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center with a tentative diagnosis of psychosis-induced catatonia.

“Paralyzed with fear, in layman’s language,” the doctor said. “It’s a genuine medical condition. We see it most often in superstitious populations, like Haiti, or parts of Louisiana. Voodoo country, in other words. The victims get cold sweats, pallor, loss of blood pressure, near-unconsciousness. Not the same thing as adrenaline-induced panic. It’s a neurogenic process. The heart slows, the large blood vessels in the abdomen take blood away from the brain, most voluntary function shuts down.”

“What kind of threat could do that to a person?” Froelich asked, quietly.

“One that the person sincerely believes,” the doctor answered. “That’s the key. The victim has to be convinced. My guess is his wife’s kidnappers described to him what they would do to her if he talked. Then your arrival triggered a crisis, because he was afraid he would talk. Maybe he even wanted to talk, but he knew he couldn’t afford to. I wouldn’t want to speculate about the exact nature of the threat against his wife.”

“Will he be OK?” Stuyvesant asked.

“Depends on the condition of his heart. If he tends toward heart disease he could be in serious trouble. The cardiac stress is truly enormous.”