Bad Luck and Trouble

was tinted too dark. It had a band of plastic across the top, dark blue with the words No Fear written across it in jagged silver script. Very appropriate, he thought, for Neagley.
    He called her on the phone.
    “Accident up ahead,” she said. “I heard it on the radio.”
    “Terrific.”
    “If Sanchez made it this far, he can make it a few minutes more.”
    Reacher asked, “Where did they go wrong?”
    “I don’t know. This wasn’t the toughest thing they ever faced.”
    “So something tripped them up. Something unpredictable. Where would Swan have started?”
    “With Dean,” Neagley said. “The quality control guy. His behavior must have been the trigger. Bad numbers on their own don’t necessarily mean much. But bad numbers plus a stressed-out quality control guy mean a lot.”
    “Did he get the whole story out of Dean?”
    “Probably not. But enough to join the dots. Swan was a lot smarter than Berenson.”
    “What was his next step?”
    “Two steps in parallel,” Neagley said. “He secured Dean’s situation, and he started the search for corroborating evidence.”
    “With help from the others.”
    “More than help,” Neagley said. “He was basically subcontracting. He had to, because his office situation was insecure.”
    “So he didn’t talk to Lamaison at any point?”
    “Not a chance. First rule, trust no one.”
    “So what tripped them up?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “How would Swan have secured Dean’s situation?”
    “He’d have talked to the local cops. Asked for protection, or at least asked for a car to swing by on a regular basis.”
    “Lamaison is ex-LAPD. Maybe he still has buddies on the job. Maybe they tipped him off.”
    “Doesn’t work,” Neagley said. “Swan didn’t talk to the LAPD. Dean lived over the hill. Outside of LAPD jurisdiction.”
    Reacher paused a beat.
    “Which actually means that Swan didn’t talk to anyone,” he said. “Because that’s Curtis Mauney’s kingdom up there, and he didn’t know anything about Dean or New Age. Or even anything about Swan, except through Franz.”
    “Swan wouldn’t leave Dean unprotected.”
    “So maybe Dean wasn’t the trigger. Maybe Swan didn’t know anything about him. Maybe he found a different way in.”
    “Which was?” Neagley asked.
    “No idea,” Reacher said. “Maybe Sanchez will be able to tell us.”
    “You think he’s alive?”
    “Hope for the best.”
    “But plan for the worst.”
    They clicked off. Their lane moved a little. In a minute and a quarter of conversation they had covered about five car lengths. In the next five minutes of silence they covered about ten more, six times slower than walking. All around them people were enduring. They were talking on the phone, reading, shaving, applying makeup, smoking, eating, listening to music. Some were tanning. They were hitching up their sleeves and holding their arms out their open windows.
    Reacher’s pay-as-you-go rang. Neagley again.
    “More from Chicago,” she said. “We’re into parts of the LAPD mainframe. Lennox and Parker were about as bad as Lamaison. The two of them were partners together. They resigned rather than face their twelfth IA inquiry in twelve years. They must have been out of work about a week before Lamaison hired them on at New Age.”
    “I’m glad I don’t hold New Age stock.”
    “You do. It’s all Pentagon money. Where do you think it comes from?”
    “Not from me,” Reacher said.
    Two hundred yards later the freeway straightened and rose in front of them and they saw the source of the delay, in the far distance, in the haze. There was a broken-down car in the left lane. A trivial blockage, but the whole road was at a standstill. Reacher clicked off with Neagley and called Dixon.
    “You there yet?” he asked.
    “Maybe ten minutes away.”
    “We’re stuck in traffic. Call us if there’s good news. Call us if there’s bad news too, I guess.”

    It took another quarter of an hour to reach the stalled car and some bold lane changes to get past it. Then the flow freed up and everyone continued on their way at seventy miles an hour like nothing had happened. Reacher and Neagley were at the county facility ten minutes later. Ten miles in forty minutes. Average speed, fifteen miles an hour. Not great.
    They ignored the morgue and parked in the hospital’s visitor lot. They walked through the sun to the main entrance. Reacher saw O’Donnell’s Honda in the lot, and then Dixon’s. The main