“And did she?”

“She didn’t call. She went personally. She felt they would take her more seriously face-to-face. Not that they did, apparently. Nothing happened. It was like dropping a stone down a well and never hearing the splash.”

“When did she go?”

“A week before the thing in the plaza last Friday.”

Nobody spoke. Then, kindly, gently, Ann Yanni asked the obvious question: “You didn’t suspect a connection?”

The woman shook her head. “Why would we? It seemed to be a total coincidence. The shootings were random, weren’t they? You said so yourself. On the television news. We heard you say it. Five random victims, in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Nobody spoke.

Reacher turned away from the window.

“What business was Ted Archer in?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, I assumed you knew,” the husband said. “He owns a quarry. Huge place about forty miles north of here. Cement, concrete, crushed stone. Vertically integrated, very efficient.”

“And who was the customer who backed off?”

“The city,” the guy said.

“Big customer.”

“As big as they come. All this construction going on right now is manna from heaven for people in that business. The city sold ninety million in tax-free municipals just to cover the first year. Add in the inevitable overruns and it’s a nine-figure bonanza for somebody.”

“What car did Ted sell?”

“A Mercedes-Benz.”

“Then what did he drive?”

“He used a truck from work.”

“Did you see it?”

“Every day for two years.”

“What was it?”

“A pickup. A Chevy, I think.”

“An old brown Silverado? Plain steel wheels?”

The guy stared. “How did you know that?”

“One more question,” Reacher said. “For your wife.”

She looked at him.

“After Oline went to the cops, did she tell you who it was she talked to? Was it a detective called Emerson?”

The woman was already shaking her head. “I told Oline if she didn’t want to call she should go to the station house, but she said it was too far, because she never got that long of a lunch hour. She said she’d go to the DA instead. His office is much closer to the DMV. And Oline was like that anyway. She preferred to go straight to the top. So she took it to Alex Rodin himself.”

Helen Rodin was completely silent on the drive back to town. So silent she quivered and vibrated and shook with it. Her lips were clamped and her cheeks were sucked in and her eyes were wide-open. Her silence made it impossible for Reacher or Yanni to speak. She drove like a robot, competently, not fast, not slow, displaying a mechanical compliance with lane markers and stoplights and yield signs. She parked on the apron below Franklin’s office and left the motor running and said, “You two go on ahead. I just can’t do this.”

Ann Yanni got out and walked over to the staircase. Reacher stayed in the car and leaned forward over the seat.

“It’ll be OK,” he said.

“It won’t.”

“Helen, pull the keys and get your ass upstairs. You’re an officer of the court and you’ve got a client in trouble.” Then he opened his door and climbed out of the car and by the time he had walked around the trunk she was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.

Franklin was in front of his computer, as always. He told Reacher that Cash was on his way up from Kentucky, no questions asked. Told him that Ted Archer hadn’t shown up anywhere else in the databases. Then he noticed the silence and the tension.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“We’re one step away,” Reacher said. “Ted Archer was in the concrete business and he was frozen out of all these new city construction contracts by a competitor who was offering bribes. He tried to prove it and must have been getting very close to succeeding, because the competitor offed him.”

“Can you prove that?”

“Only by inference. We’ll never find his body without digging up First Street again. But I know where his truck is. It’s in Jeb Oliver’s barn.”

“Why there?”

“They used Oliver for things they can’t do themselves. For when they don’t want to show their faces, or for when they can’t. Presumably Archer knew them and wouldn’t have gone near them. But Oliver was just a local kid. Maybe he staged a flat tire or hitched a ride. Archer would have walked right into it. Then the bad guys hid the body and Oliver hid the truck.”

“Oline Archer didn’t suspect anything?”

“She did eventually,” Reacher said. “She sat on it two months and then presumably she pieced together enough to make some kind of sense out of it. Then she started to go public with it and all kinds of private alarm bells must have gone off, because a week later she was dead. Staged the way it was because to have a missing husband and then a murdered wife two months later would have raised too many flags. But as long as it looked random it was going to be seen as coincidental.”

“Who had Oline taken it to? Emerson?”

Reacher said nothing.

“She took it to my father,” Helen Rodin said.

There was silence for a long moment.

“So what now?” Franklin said.

“You need to hit that keyboard again,” Reacher said. “Whoever got the city contracts has pretty much defined himself as the bad guy here. So we need to know who he is. And where he’s based.”

“Public record,” Franklin said.

“So check it.”

Franklin turned away in the silence and started his fingers pattering over the keys. He pointed and clicked for a minute. Then he came up with the answer.

“Specialized Services of Indiana,” he said. “They own all the current city contracts for cement, concrete, and crushed stone. Many, many millions of dollars.”

“Where are they?”

“That was the good news.”

“What’s the bad?”

“There’s no paperwork. They’re a trust registered in Bermuda. They don’t have to file anything.”

“What kind of a system is that?”

Franklin didn’t answer.

“A Bermuda trust needs a local lawyer.” Helen’s voice was low, quiet, resigned. Reacher recalled the plate outside A. A. Rodin’s office: the name, followed by the letters that denoted the law degree.

Franklin clicked his way through two more screens.

“There’s a phone number,” he said. “That’s all we’ve got.”

“What is it?” Helen asked.

Franklin read it out.

“That’s not my father’s number,” Helen said.

Franklin clicked his way into a reverse directory. Typed in the number and the screen changed and gave him a name and a business address.

“John Mistrov,” he said.

“Russian name,” Reacher said.

“I guess so.”

“Do you know him?”

“Vaguely. He’s a wills and trusts guy. One-man band. I’ve never worked for him.”

Reacher checked his watch. “Can you find a home address?”

Franklin went into a regular directory. Typed in the name and came up with a domestic listing.

“Should I call him?” he said.

Reacher shook his head. “We’ll pay him a visit. Face-to-face works better when time is short.”

Vladimir made his way down to the ground-floor surveillance room. Sokolov was in a rolling chair in front of the long table that carried the four television monitors. From left to right they were labeled North, East, South, and West, which made sense if a person viewed the world from a clockwise perspective. Sokolov was scooting his chair slowly down the line, examining each picture, moving on, returning from West to North with a powerful push off the wall. All four screens were misty and green, because it was dark outside and the thermal imaging had kicked in. Occasionally a bright dot could be seen moving fast in the distance. An animal. Nocturnal. Fox, skunk, raccoon, or a pet cat or a lost dog far from home. The North monitor showed a glow from the crushing plant. It would fade as the idle machines cooled. Apart from that all the backgrounds were a deep olive color, because there was nothing out there except for miles of fields constantly misted with cold water from the always-turning irrigation booms.