Without Fail

“Age?”

“Middle or late forties.”

“Rank?”

“He showed me a gold badge, but he stayed twenty feet away. I couldn’t read it. He struck me as a senior guy. Maybe a detective lieutenant, maybe even a captain.”

“Did he speak?”

“He shouted from twenty feet away. Couple dozen words, maybe.”

“Was he the guy on the phone?”

“No.”

“So now we know both of them,” Stuyvesant said. “A shorter squat guy in a herringbone overcoat from the garage video and a tall lean cop from Bismarck. The squat guy spoke on the phone, and it’s his thumbprint. And he was in Colorado with the machine gun because the cop is the marksman with the rifle. That’s why he was heading for the church tower. He was going to shoot.”

Ba

“Our Bismarck field office listed all attending perso

“Might have been either one of them,” Reacher said.

Ba

Stuyvesant stared at him. “Now you’re worried about upsetting the Bismarck PD? You didn’t worry too much about upsetting us.”

“I’m not worried about upsetting anybody,” Ba

“Call now,” Neagley said. “Find out who’s not in town. They can’t be home yet. You’re watching the airports.”

Ba

The room went quiet.

“Perso

“That would take days,” Ba

“So speak to your Bismarck field office,” Neagley said. “Wouldn’t surprise me if the local FBI had illicit summaries on the whole police department, with photographs.”

Ba

Then he stood up slowly and went out to his office to make the necessary call.

“So Armstrong made the statement,” Stuyvesant said. “Did you see it? But it’s going to cost him politically, because I can’t let him go.”

“I need a decoy, is all,” Reacher said. “Better for me if he doesn’t really show up. And the last thing I care about right now is politics.”

Stuyvesant didn’t answer. Nobody spoke again. Ba

“Good news and bad news,” he said. “Good news is that Bismarck isn’t the largest city on earth. Police department employs a hundred thirty-eight people, of which thirty-two are civilian workers, leaving a hundred and six badged officers. Twelve of those are women, so we’re down to ninety-four already. And thanks to the miracles of illicit intelligence and modern technology we’ll have sca

“What’s the bad news?” Stuyvesant asked.

“Later,” Ba

He looked around the room. Wouldn’t say anything more. In the end the wait was a little less than ten minutes. An agent in a suit hurried in with a sheaf of paper. He stacked it in front of Ba

He picked up the fifteenth sheet. Glanced across the next six faces and put the paper down again. Picked up the fourteenth sheet. Sca

“How sure are you?” Stuyvesant asked.

Nothing on the twelfth sheet.

“I’m sure,” Reacher said. “That was the guy, and the guy was a cop. He had a badge and he looked like a cop. He looked as much like a cop as Ba

Nothing on the eleventh sheet. Or the tenth.

“I don’t look like a cop,” Ba

Nothing on the ninth sheet.

“You look exactly like a cop,” Reacher said. “You’ve got a cop coat, cop pants, cop shoes. You’ve got a cop face.”

Nothing on the eighth sheet.

“He acted like a cop,” Reacher said.

Nothing on the seventh sheet.

“He smelled like a cop,” Reacher said.

Nothing on the sixth sheet. Nothing on the fifth sheet.

“What did he say to you?” Stuyvesant asked.

Nothing on the fourth sheet.

“He asked me if the church was secure,” Reacher said. “I asked him what was going on. He said some kind of big commotion. Then he yelled at me for leaving the church door open. Just like a cop would talk.”

Nothing on the third sheet. Or the second. He picked up the first sheet and knew instantly that the guy wasn’t on it. He dropped the paper and shook his head.

“OK, now for the bad news,” Ba

“The guy was a Bismarck cop,” Reacher said.

“No,” Ba

Reacher said nothing.

“But he was obviously making a pretty good stab at it,” Ba

Nobody spoke.

“So nothing’s changed, I’m afraid,” Ba