25

STEALING THE PHONE was candy from a baby, but the reconnaissance is a bitch. Timing it right was the first priority. You needed to wait for complete darkness, and you wanted to wait for the daytime cop’s final hour. Because the cop is dumber than the Bureau guy, and because somebody’s last hour is always better than somebody else’s first hour. Attention will have waned. Boredom will have set in. His eyes will have glazed and he’ll be thinking ahead to a beer with his buddies or a night in front of the television with his wife. Or however the hell he spends his downtime.

So your window extends to about forty minutes, say seven to seven-forty. You plan it in two halves. First the house, then the surrounding area. You drive back from the airport and you approach on the through road. You drive straight through the junction three streets from her house. You stop at a hikers’ parking area two hundred yards farther north. There’s a wide gravel trail leading east up the slope of Mount Hood. You get out of your car and you turn your back on the trail and you work your way west and north through lightly wooded terrain. You’re about level with your first position, but on the other side of her house, behind it, not in front of it.

The terrain means the houses don’t have big yards. There are slim cultivated strips behind the buildings, then fences, then steep hillside covered in wild brush. You ease through the brush and come out at her fence. Stand motionless in the dark and observe. Drapes are drawn. It’s quiet. You can hear a piano playing, very faintly. The house is built into the hillside, and it’s at right angles to the street. The side is really the front. The porch runs all the way along it. Facing you is a wall dotted with windows. No doors. You ease along the fence and check the other side, which is really the back of the house. No doors there either. So the only ways in are the front door on the porch, and the garage door facing the street. Not ideal, but it’s what you expected. You’ve planned for it. You’ve planned for every contingency.

"OK, COLONEL KRUGER,” Leighton said. "We’re on your ass now.”

They were back in the duty office, damp from the jog through the nighttime rain, high with elation, flushed with cold air and success. Handshakes had been exchanged, high fives had been smacked, Harper had laughed and hugged Reacher. Now Leighton was scrolling through a menu on his computer screen, and Reacher and Harper were sitting side by side in front of his desk on the old upright chairs, breathing hard. Harper was still smiling, basking in relief and triumph.

“Loved that business with the stool,” she said. “We watched the whole thing on the video screen.”

Reacher shrugged.

“I cheated,” he said. “I chose the right stool, is all. I figured visiting time, that sergeant sits on the one by the door, wriggles around a little because he’s bored. Guy that size, the joints were sure to be cracked. The thing practically fell apart.”

“But it looked real good.”

“That was the plan. First rule is to look real good.”

“OK, he’s in the personnel listings,” Leighton said. "LaSalle Kruger, bird colonel, right there.”

He tapped the screen with his nail. It made the same glassy thunk they’d heard before. Like a bottle.

“Has he been in trouble?” Reacher asked.

“Can’t tell, yet,” Leighton said. “You think he’ll have an MP record?”

“Something happened,” Reacher said. “Special Forces in Desert Storm, and now he’s working supply? What’s that about?”

Leighton nodded. “It needs explaining. Could be disciplinary, I guess.”

He exited the personnel listings and clicked on another menu. Then he paused.

“This will take all night,” he said.

Reacher smiled. “You mean you don’t want us to see anything.”

Leighton smiled back. “Right first time, pal. You can smack the prisoners around as much as you want, but you can’t look at the computer stuff. You know how it is.”

“I sure do,” Reacher said.

Leighton waited.

“That inventory thing about the jeep tires?” Harper said suddenly. “Could you trace some missing camouflage paint in there?”

“Maybe,” Leighton said. “Theoretically, I guess.”

“Eleven women on his list, look for about three hundred gallons,” she said. “If you could put Kruger together with the paint, that would do it for me.”

Leighton nodded.

“And dates,” she said. “Find out if he was off duty when the women were killed. And match the locations, I guess. Confirm there were thefts where the women served. Prove they saw something.”

Leighton looked across at her. “The Army is going to just love me, right? Kruger’s our guy, and I’m busting my ass all night so we can give him away to the Bureau.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But the jurisdiction issue is clear, isn’t it? Homicide beats theft.”

Leighton nodded, suddenly somber.

“Like scissors beats paper,” he said.

YOU’VE SEEN ENOUGH of the house. Standing there in the dark staring at it and listening to her play the damn piano isn’t going to change anything. So you step away from the fence and duck into the brush and work your way east and south, back toward the car. You get there and dust yourself off and slide in and start it up and head back down through the crossroads. Part two of your task ahead, and you’ve got about twenty minutes to complete it in. You drive on. There’s a small shopping center two miles west of the junction, left-hand side of the road. An old-fashioned one-story mall, shaped like a squared-off letter C. A supermarket in the middle like a keystone, small single-unit stores spreading either side of it. Some of them are boarded up and empty. You pull into the parking lot at the far end and you nose along the fire lane, looking. You find exactly what you want, three stores past the supermarket. It’s nothing you didn’t expect to find, but still you clench your fist and bang it on the rim of the steering wheel. You smile to yourself.

Then you turn the car around and idle back through the lot, checking it out, and your smile dies. You don’t like it. You don’t like it at all. It’s completely overlooked. Every storefront has a direct view. It’s badly lit now, but you’re thinking about daylight. So you drive around behind the arm of the C, and your smile comes back again. There’s a single row of overspill parking back there, facing plain painted delivery doors in the back walls of the stores. No windows. You stop the car and look around. A complete circle. This is your place. No doubt about it. It’s perfect.

Then you drive back into the main lot and you park up alongside a small group of other vehicles. You kill the motor and wait. You watch the through road. You wait and watch ten minutes, and then you see the Bureau Buick heading by, not fast, not slow, reporting for duty.

“Have a nice night,” you whisper.

Then you start your car again and wind around the parking lot and drive off in the opposite direction.

LEIGHTON RECOMMENDED A motel a mile down Route 1 toward Trenton. He said it was where the prisoners’ visitors stayed, it was cheap, it was clean, it was the only place for miles around and he knew the phone number. Harper drove, and they found it easily enough. It looked fine from the outside, and it had plenty of vacancies.

“Number twelve is a nice double,” the desk clerk said.

Harper nodded.

“OK, we’ll take it,” she said.

“We will?” Reacher said. “A double?”

“Talk about it later,” she said.

She paid cash and the desk guy handed over a key.

“Number twelve,” he said again. “Down the row a piece.”

Reacher walked through the rain, and Harper brought the car. She parked it in front of the cabin and found Reacher waiting at the door.

“What?” she said. “It’s not like we’re going to sleep, is it? We’re just waiting for Leighton to call. May as well do that in here as in the car.”