Bad Luck and Trouble

owner who had just stepped in behind him. Questions, complaints, shouts, calls to the postal police, a potential federal case. Reacher had no doubt at all that he could get out of the lobby unharmed, but he didn’t want to get out empty-handed.
    He heard Neagley say: “Good morning.”
    He glanced left and saw her at the head of the counter line. Saw her leaning forward, commanding attention. Saw the counter clerk’s eyes lock in on hers. He dropped the pen and took the key from his pocket. Stepped unobtrusively to the wall of boxes and tried the first lock on the left, three up from the floor.
    Failure.
    He rocked the key clockwise and counterclockwise. No movement. He pulled it out and tried the lock below. Failure. The one below that. Failure.
    Neagley was asking a long complicated question about air mail rates. Her elbows were on the counter. She was making the clerk feel like the most important guy in the world. Reacher shuffled right and tried again, one box over, three up from the floor.
    Failure.
    Four down, fifty to go. Twelve seconds consumed, odds now improved from one-point-eight-five chances in a hundred to two chances in a hundred. He tried the next box down. Failure. He crouched, and tried the box nearest to the floor.
    Failure.
    He stayed in a crouch and shuffled right. Started the next column from the bottom up. No luck with the lowest. No luck with the one above. No luck with the third up. Nine down, twenty-five seconds elapsed. Neagley was still talking. Then Reacher was aware of a woman squeezing in on his left. Opening her box, high up. Raking out a dense mass of curled junk. Sorting it, as she stood there. Move, he begged her. Step away to the trash receptacle. She backed away. He stepped to his right and tried the fourth row. Neagley was still talking. The clerk was still listening. The key didn’t fit the top box. It didn’t fit the middle box. It didn’t fit the bottom box.
    Twelve down. Odds now one in forty-two. Better, but not good. The key didn’t fit anything in the fifth row. Nor the sixth. Eighteen down. One-third gone. Odds improving all the time. Look on the bright side. Neagley was still talking. He could hear her. He knew that behind her people in the line would be getting impatient. They would be shuffling their feet. They would be looking around, bored and inquisitive.
    He started on the seventh row, at the top. Rocked the key. It didn’t move. No go with the middle box. Nor the lowest. He shuffled right. Neagley had stopped talking. The clerk was explaining something. She was pretending not to understand. Reacher moved right again. The eighth row. The key didn’t fit the top box. The lobby was going quiet. Reacher could feel eyes on his back. He dropped his hand and tried the middle box in the eighth row.
    Rocked the key. The small metallic sound was very loud.
    Failure.
    The lobby was silent.
    Reacher tried the lowest box in the eighth row.
    Rocked the key.
    It moved.
    The lock opened.
    Reacher stepped back a foot and swung the little door all the way open and crouched down. The box was stuffed. Padded envelopes, big brown envelopes, big white envelopes, letters, catalogs, magazines wrapped in plastic, postcards.
    Sound came back to the lobby.
    Reacher heard Neagley say, “Thank you very much for your help.” He heard her footsteps on the tile. Heard the line behind her move up. Sensed people refocusing on their chances of getting their business done before they grew old and died. He slid his hand into the box and raked the contents forward. Butted everything together into a steady stack and clamped it between his palms and stood up. Jammed the stack under his arm and relocked the box and pocketed the key and walked away like the most natural thing in the world.

    Neagley was waiting in the Mustang, three doors down. Reacher leaned in and dumped the stack of mail on the center console and then followed it inside. Sorted through the stack and pulled out four small padded envelopes self-addressed in Franz’s own familiar handwriting.
    “Too small for CDs,” he said.
    He arranged them in date order according to the postmarks. The most recent had been stamped the same morning that Franz had disappeared.
    “But mailed the night before,” he said.
    He opened the envelope and shook out a small silver object. Metal, flat, two inches long, three-quarters of an inch wide, thin, capped with plastic. Like something that would go on a keyring. It had 128 MB printed on