"Feels worse."
"It"s going to get worse. The Weather Channel radar looks horrible."
"Thanks for sharing."
"Hey, you asked."
"Hats and underwear?"
"Got to be something to do with a generational change of equipment or a reduced number of aircrew. Or both."
"Anything on the size or architecture of the place itself?"
"That stuff disappeared a long time ago."
"OK," Reacher said. "Thanks."
"My guy talked. From Fort Hood. Like you said he would."
"I"m glad."
"I owe you."
"No, we"re even."
"No, I do. It"s my first major score."
"Really? How long have you been in the job?"
"Two weeks."
"I had no idea. You sound like you"ve been there for ever."
"I"m not sure that"s a compliment."
"It was meant as one," Reacher said. "Then I thank you."
"You should be out celebrating."
"I sent my people out."
"Good move. Give them all the credit. They"ll appreciate it, but the bra.s.s will always know who really did the work. You"ll win both ways around."
"Is that how you did it?"
"Always. I made out that I did nothing much. A lot of the time that was true, of course."
"Not what your file suggests."
"You still looking at that old thing?"
"It"s a saga."
"Not fair. This is a very asymmetrical relationship in terms of information."
"Dude, life sucks."
"What did you just call me?"
"I was trying to sound blond and Californian."
"I see."
"Do you?"
"You"re not blond or Californian."
"Is that OK?"
"Brunette could work for me. Brown eyes?"
"You got it."
"Long hair, right?"
"Longer than it should be."
"Excellent."
"You want to revisit the A-cup thing too?"
"Got to be honest. I"m just not hearing it."
She laughed. "OK, I confess. You"re right."
"Height?"
"Five feet seven."
"Pale or dark?"
"Neither, really. But I tan well."
"You want to see South Dakota in the winter?"
She laughed again. "I prefer the beach."
"Me too. Where are you from?"
"Montana. A small town you never heard of."
"Try me. I"ve been to Montana."
"Hungry Horse?"
"Never heard of it."
"Told you," she said. "It"s near Whitefish."
"You like the army?"
"Did you?"
"You"ve got my file," Reacher said.
"And half the time I"m thinking, man, if you hated it that bad, you should have just gotten out while the getting was good."
"I never hated it. Not for a minute. I just wanted to fix what was wrong with it."
"Above your pay grade."
"I learned that, eventually." Reacher looked around the hallway. The closed door, the dark panelling, the oil paintings, the Persian carpet. The rare woods, the wax, the polish, the patina. He had all the information he was ever going to get from or through the 110th. No real reason to keep on talking.
The voice asked, "What are you doing in South Dakota anyway?"
He said, "I was on a bus that crashed. I got hung up here."
"Life is a gamble."
"But the deck is stacked. No bus that I was on ever crashed in a warm place."
"You behaving yourself up there?"
"Why wouldn"t I be?"
"These files get tagged if an outside agency asks to take a look. You know, the FBI or a local police department or something. And yours is tagged to h.e.l.l and back. Folks have been all over you for the last twelve years."
"Anything from here in the last two days?"
"A transcript went out to someone called Thomas Holland at the Bolton PD."
"The Chief of Police. Probably routine. He wanted to know I was qualified, because he wanted my help. Back when he thought the stone building was an army place. Any follow-up?"
"No."
"That"s because I"m behaving myself."
A long pause.
Time to go.
He asked, "What"s your name?"
"Does it matter?"
"I could find out. The way the army is now, you"re probably on a web site somewhere."
"Are you kidding? The 110th? No way. We don"t exist."
"So what"s your name?"
"Susan."
"Nice name."
"I think so too."
Another long pause.
Time to go.
He asked, "Is your air force guy at Lackland?"
"Yes. Talking to their records guys in Colorado."
"Ask him to try one more time. Obviously that stuff was flown in. There has to be a cargo manifest somewhere."
"I"ll try."
"Call me back?" he asked.
"You bet," she said.
Reacher went back to the kitchen and took another cup of coffee. The house was quiet. No significant sound from the outside. No significant sound from the inside either, except for the subliminal vibe of calm alert people concentrating hard on the business at hand. It was the kind of silence Reacher had heard a hundred times before. He carried his mug to the parlour and found Janet Salter reading there. She looked up from her book and said, "You"re drinking coffee."
Reacher said, "I hope you don"t mind."
"Not at all. But doesn"t it keep you awake?"
He nodded. "Until I want to go to sleep."
"How was she?"
"Who?"
"The woman in Virginia."
"She was fine." Reacher stepped to the window and took a look at the street. Snow, ice, the parked cruiser, frozen foliage moving stiffly in the wind. A little moonlight, a little high cloud, a distant orange glow from vapour lamps on the streets to the north and the east. He said, "All quiet."