Reacher shrugged. “Mr. Spencer, I guess. He’s who I usually see.”

The guy looked offended. Placed the clipboard back in its slot.

“Mr. Spencer died ten years ago,” he said. “You want to come in, you get yourself a proper appointment, OK?”

Reacher nodded. The place was safe enough. He turned on his heel and headed back to the car.

MARILYN STONE WAITED until Chester’s Mercedes was out of sight and then she ran back to the house and got to work. She was a serious woman, and she knew a possible six-week gap between listing and closing was going to need some serious input.

Her first call was to the cleaning service. The house was already perfectly clean, but she was going to move some furniture out. She took the view that presenting a house slightly empty of furniture created an impression of spaciousness. It made it seem even larger than it was. And it avoided trapping a potential buyer into preconceptions about what would look good, and what wouldn’t. For instance, the Italian credenza in the hallway was the perfect piece for that hallway, but she didn’t want a potential buyer to think the hallway wouldn’t work any other way. Better to just have nothing there, and let the buyer’s imagination fill the gap, maybe with a piece she already had.

So if she was going to move furniture out, she needed the cleaning service to attend to the spaces left behind. A slight lack of furniture created a spacious look, but obvious gaps created a sad look. So she called them, and she called the moving and storage people, too, because she was going to have to put the displaced stuff somewhere. Then she called the pool service, and the gardeners. She wanted them there every morning until further notice, for an hour’s work every day. She needed the yard looking absolutely at its best. Even at this end of the market, she knew curb appeal was king.

Then she tried to remember other stuff she’d read, or things people had told her about. Flowers, of course, in vases, all over the place. She called the florist. She remembered somebody saying saucers of window cleaner neutralized all the little stray smells any house generates. Something to do with the ammonia. She remembered reading that putting a handful of coffee beans in a hot oven made a wonderful welcoming smell. So she put a new packet in her utensil drawer, ready. She figured if she put some in the oven each time Sheryl called to say she was on her way over with clients, that would be timing it about right, in terms of aroma.

8

CHESTER STONE’S DAY started out in the normal way. He drove to work at the usual time. The Benz was as soothing as ever. The sun was shining, as it should be in June. The drive into the city was normal. Normal traffic, no more, no less. The usual rose vendors and paper sellers in the toll plazas. The slackening congestion down the length of Manhattan, proving he’d timed it just right, as he usually did. He parked in his normal leased slot under his building and rode the elevator up to his offices. Then his day stopped being normal.

The place was deserted. It was as if his company had vanished overnight. The staff had all disappeared, instinctively, like rats from a sinking ship. A single phone was trilling on a distant desk. Nobody was sitting there to answer it. The computers were all turned off. The monitor screens were dull gray squares, reflecting the strip lights in the ceiling. His own inner office was always quiet, but now there was a strange hush lying over it. He walked in and heard a sound like a tomb.

“I’m Chester Stone,” he said into the silence.

He said it just to be making some noise in the place, but it came out like a croak. There was no echo, because the thick carpeting and the fiberboard walls soaked up the sound like a sponge. His voice just disappeared in the void.

“Shit,” he said.

He was angry. Mostly with his secretary. She had been with him a long time. She was the sort of employee he expected to stand up and be loyal, with a shy hand on his shoulder, a gleam in her eye, a promise to stay and beat the odds whatever the hell they were. But she’d done the same thing as all the others. She’d heard the rumors coming out of the finance department, the company was bust, the paychecks would bounce, and she’d dumped some old files out of a carton and boxed up the photos of her damn nephews in their cheap brass frames and her ratty old spider plant from her desk and her junk from her drawers and carried it all home on the subway to her neat little apartment, wherever the hell that was. Her neat little apartment, decorated and furnished with his paychecks from when the times were good. She would be sitting there now, in her bathrobe, drinking coffee slowly, an unexpected morning off, never to return to him, maybe leafing through the vacancies in the back of the newspaper, choosing her next port of call.

“Shit,” he said again.

He turned on his heel and barged out through the secretarial pen and back out all the way to the elevator. Rode down to the street and strode out into the sun. Turned west and set out walking fast, in a fury, with his heart thumping. The enormous glittering bulk of the Twin Towers loomed over him. He hurried across the plaza and inside to the elevators. He was sweating. The chill of the lobby air struck through his jacket. He rode the express up to eighty-eight. Stepped out and walked through the narrow corridor and into Hobie’s brass-and-oak lobby for the second time in twenty-four hours.

The male receptionist was sitting behind his counter. On the other side of the lobby a thickset man in an expensive suit was coming out of a small kitchen, carrying two mugs in one hand. Stone could smell coffee. He could see steam rising and brown froth swirling in the mugs. He glanced between the two men.

“I want to see Hobie,” he said.

They ignored him. The thickset man walked over to the counter and set one of the mugs in front of the receptionist. Then he walked back behind Stone and put himself nearer the lobby door than Stone was. The receptionist leaned forward and rotated the coffee mug, carefully adjusting the angle of the handle until it was presented comfortably to his grasp.

“I want to see Hobie,” Stone said again, looking straight ahead.

“My name is Tony,” the receptionist said to him.

Stone just turned and stared at him, blankly. The guy had a red mark on his forehead, like a fresh bruise. The hair on his temple was newly combed but wet, like he’d pressed a cold cloth to his head.

“I want to see Hobie,” Stone said for the third time.

“Mr. Hobie’s not in the office today,” Tony said. “I’ll be dealing with your affairs for the time being. We have matters to discuss, don’t we?”

“Yes, we do,” Stone said.

“So shall we go inside?” Tony said, and stood up.

He nodded to the other guy, who slid around the counter and took up position in the chair. Tony came out and stepped across to the inner door. Held it open and Stone walked through into the same gloom as the day before. The blinds were still closed. Tony padded ahead through the dark to the desk. He walked around it and sat down in Hobie’s chair. The sprung base creaked once in the silence. Stone followed after him. Then he stopped and glanced left and right, wondering where he should sit.

“You’ll remain standing,” Tony said to him.

“What?” Stone said back.

“You’ll remain standing for the duration of the interview.”

“What?” Stone said again, astonished.

“Right in front of the desk.”

Stone just stood there, his mouth clamped shut.

“Arms by your sides,” Tony said. “Stand straight and don’t slump.”

He said it calmly, quietly, in a matter-of-fact voice, not moving at all. Then there was silence. Just faint background noises booming elsewhere in the building, and thumping in Stone’s chest. His eyes were adjusting to the gloom. He could see the score marks on the desktop from Hobie’s hook. They made an angry tracery, deep in the wood. The silence was unsettling him. He had absolutely no idea how to react to this. He glanced at the sofa to his left. It was humiliating to stand. Doubly so, when told to by a damn receptionist. He glanced at the sofa to his right. He knew he should fight back. He should just go ahead and sit down on one of the sofas. Just step left or right and sit down. Ignore the guy. Just do it. Just sit down, and show the guy who was boss. Like hitting a winning return or trumping an ace. Sit down, for God’s sake, he told himself. But his legs would not move. It was like he was paralyzed. He stood still, a yard in front of the desk, rigid with outrage and humiliation. And fear.