Bad Luck and Trouble

September. Last in line was a thin stack of printed papers. Forms. Five of them. Five names, five addresses, five telephone numbers. The old unit, less two dead and two already present.
    Reacher said, “Tell me about Stan Lowrey.”
    “Not much to tell. He quit the army, moved to Montana, got hit by a truck.”
    “Life’s a bitch and then you die.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    “What was he doing in Montana?”
    “Raising sheep. Churning butter.”
    “Alone?”
    “There was a girlfriend.”
    “She still there?”
    “Probably. They had a lot of acres.”
    “Why sheep? Why butter?”
    “No call for private eyes in Montana. And Montana was where the girlfriend was.”
    Reacher nodded. At first glance Stan Lowrey had not been an obvious candidate for a rural fantasy. He had been a big-boned black guy from some scruffy factory town in Western Pennsylvania, smart as a whip and hard as a railroad tie. Dark alleys and pool halls had seemed to be his natural habitat. But somewhere in his DNA there had been a clear link with the earth. Reacher wasn’t surprised he had become a farmer. He could picture him, in a raggedy old barn coat, knee-high in prairie grass, under a huge blue sky, cold but happy.
    “Why can’t we raise the others?” he asked.
    “I don’t know,” Neagley said.
    “What was Franz working on?”
    “Nobody seems to have that information.”
    “Didn’t the new wife say anything?”
    “She isn’t new. They were married five years.”
    “She’s new to me,” Reacher said.
    “I couldn’t interrogate her, exactly. She was on the phone, telling me her husband was dead. And maybe she doesn’t know anyway.”
    “We’re going to have to go ask her. She’s the obvious starting point here.”
    “After we try the others again,” Neagley said.

    Reacher picked up the five sheets of printed paper and gave three to Neagley and kept two for himself. She used her cell phone and he used a room phone on a credenza. They started dialing. His numbers were for Dixon and O’Donnell. Karla and Dave, the East Coast residents, New York and D.C. Neither one of them answered. He got their business office machines instead, and heard their long-forgotten voices. He left the same message for both of them: “This is Jack Reacher with a ten-thirty from Frances Neagley at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Get off your ass and call her back.” Then he hung up and turned to where Neagley was pacing and leaving the same kind of message for Tony Swan.
    “Don’t you have home numbers for them?” he asked.
    “They’re all unlisted. Which is only to be expected. Mine is, too. My guy in Chicago is working on it. But it’s not easy these days. Phone company computers have gotten a lot more secure.”
    “They must be carrying cell phones,” he said. “Doesn’t everyone now?”
    “I don’t have those numbers either.”
    “But wherever they are they can call in and check their office voice mail remotely, can’t they?”
    “Easily.”
    “So why haven’t they? In three whole days?”
    “I don’t know,” Neagley said.
    “Swan must have a secretary. He’s an assistant director of something. He must have a whole staff.”
    “All they’re saying is that he’s temporarily out of the office.”
    “Let me try.” He took Swan’s number from her and hit nine for a line. Dialed. Heard the connection go through, heard Swan’s phone ringing on the other end.
    And ringing, and ringing.
    “No answer,” he said.
    “Someone answered a minute ago,” Neagley said. “It’s his direct line.”
    No answer. He held the phone at his ear and listened to the patient electronic purr. Ten times, fifteen, twenty. Thirty. He hung up. Checked the number and tried again. Same result.
    “Weird,” he said. “Where the hell is he?”
    He checked the paper again. Name and number. The address line was blank.
    “Where is this place?” he asked.
    “I’m not sure.”
    “Does it have a name?”
    “New Age Defense Systems. That’s how they’ve been answering.”
    “What kind of a name is that for a weapons manufacturer? Like they kill you with kindness? They play Pan pipe music until you save them the trouble and slit your wrists?” He dialed information. Information told him there was no listing for New Age Defense Systems anywhere in the United States. He hung up.
    “Can corporations be unlisted, too?” he asked.
    Neagley said, “I guess so. In the defense business, certainly. And they’re