Without Fail

“So?”

“So I think our guys gambled and got unlucky. Suppose you picked a random male person aged about sixty or seventy. What are the chances he’d have been fingerprinted at least once in his lifetime?”

“Pretty good, I guess,” Neagley said. “All immigrants are printed. American born, he’d have been drafted for Korea or Vietnam and printed even if he didn’t go. He’d have been printed if he’d ever been arrested or worked for the government.”

“Or for some private corporations,” Swain said. “Plenty of them require prints. Banks, retailers, people like that.”

“OK,” Reacher said. “So here’s the thing. I don’t think the thumbprint comes from one of the guys themselves. I think it comes from somebody else entirely. From some i

The room went quiet. Neagley stared at Reacher.

“What for?” she said.

“So we could find another Nendick,” he said. “The thumbprint was on every message, and the guy it came from was a message, just like Swain says Nendick was. We were supposed to trace the print and find the guy and find an exact replica of the Nendick situation. Some terrified victim, too scared to open his mouth and tell us anything. A message in himself. But by pure accident our guys hit on somebody who had never been printed, so we couldn’t find him.”

“But there were six paper messages,” Swain said. “Probably twenty days between the first one going in the mail and the last one being delivered to Froelich’s house. So what does that mean? All the messages were prepared in advance? That’s way too much pla

“It’s possible,” Neagley said. “They could have printed dozens of variations, one for every eventuality.”

“No,” Reacher said. “I think they printed them up as they went along. I think they kept the thumbprint available to them at all times.”

“How?” Swain asked. “They abducted some guy and took him hostage? They’ve stashed him somewhere? They’re taking him everywhere with them?”

“Couldn’t work,” Neagley said. “Can’t expect us to find him if he’s not home.”

“He’s home,” Reacher said. “But his thumb isn’t.”

Nobody spoke.

“Fire up a computer,” Reacher said. “Search NCIC for the word thumb.”

“We’ve got a big field office in Sacramento,” Ba

This time Ba

“It’s a bizarre idea,” Ba

“Probably,” Reacher said. “Thaw it a bit, rub it down their nose, print it on the paper. Just like Stuyvesant’s secretary with her rubber stamp. It’s probably drying out a bit with age, which is why the squalene percentage keeps getting higher.”

“What are the implications?” Stuyvesant said. “Assuming you’re right?”

Reacher made a face. “We can change one major assumption. Now I would guess they’ve both got prints on file, and they’ve both been wearing the latex gloves.”

“Two renegades,” Ba

“Not necessarily ours,” Stuyvesant said.

“So explain the other factors,” Ba

Nobody spoke. Ba

“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got an hour. And I don’t want to be looking in the wrong place. So convince me. Show me these are private citizens gu

Stuyvesant glanced at Swain, but Swain said nothing.

“Time is ticking by,” Ba

“This isn’t an ideal context,” Swain said.

Ba

Nobody spoke.

“You’ve got no case,” Ba

“It was a pitcher,” Swain said. “John Nance Garner said the Vice Presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm spit. He also called it a spare tire on the automobile of government. He was FDR’s first ru

“So who cares enough to shoot a spare tire or an insignificant pitcher of spit?”

“Let me start from the begi

“He sits around,” Ba

Swain nodded. “Somebody else said the Vice President’s job is merely about waiting. In case the President dies, sure, but more often for the nomination in his own right eight years down the track. But in the short term, what is the Vice President for?”

“Beats the hell out of me,” Ba

“He’s there to be a candidate,” Swain said. “That’s the bottom line. His design life lasts from when he’s tapped in the summer until election day. He’s useful for four or five months, tops. He starts out as a pick-me-up for the campaign. Everybody’s bored to death with the presidential nominees by midsummer, so the VP picks put a jolt into the campaigns. Suddenly we’ve all got something else to talk about. Somebody else to analyze. We look at their qualities and their records. We figure out how well they balance the tickets. That’s their initial function. Balance and contrast. Whatever the presidential nominee isn’t, the VP nominee is, and vice versa. Young, old, racy, dull, northern, southern, dumb, smart, hard, soft, rich, poor.”

“We get the picture,” Ba

“So he’s there for what he is,” Swain said. “Initially he’s just a photograph and a biography. He’s a concept. Then his duties start. He’s got to have campaigning skills, obviously. Because he’s there to be the attack dog. He’s got to be able to say the stuff the presidential candidate isn’t allowed to say himself. If the campaign scripts an attack or a put-down, it’s the VP candidate they get to deliver it. Meanwhile the presidential candidate stands around somewhere else looking all statesmanlike. Then the election happens and the presidential candidate goes to the White House and the VP gets put away in a closet. His usefulness is over, first Tuesday in November.”

“Was Armstrong good at that kind of stuff?”

“He was excellent. The truth is he was a very negative campaigner, but the polls didn’t really show it because he kept that nice smile on his face the whole time. Truth is he was deadly.”

“And you think he trod on enough toes to get himself assassinated for it?”

Swain nodded. “That’s what I’m working on now. I’m analyzing every speech and comment, matching up his attacks against the profile of the people he was attacking.”

“The timing is persuasive,” Stuyvesant said. “Nobody can argue with that. He was in the House for six years and the Senate for another six and barely got a nasty letter. This whole thing was triggered by something recent.”

“And his recent history is the campaign,” Swain said.

“Nothing way in his background?” Ba

Swain shook his head.

“We’re covered four ways,” he said. “First and most recent was your own FBI check when he was nominated. We’ve got a copy and it shows nothing. Then we’ve got opposition research from the other campaign from this time around and from both of his congressional races. Those guys dig up way more stuff than you do. And he’s clean.”

“North Dakota sources?”

“Nothing,” Swain said. “We talked to all the papers up there, matter of course. Local journalists know everything, and there’s nothing wrong with the guy.”

“So it was the campaign,” Stuyvesant said. “He pissed somebody off.”

“Somebody who owns Secret Service weapons,” Ba