Bad Luck and Trouble

Lived for eighteen years. Broke him up when it died.”
    “Possibility, then. But that’s six. We’ve only got three tries.”
    “We’ve got twelve tries,” Reacher said. “Four envelopes, four flash memories. If we start with the earliest postmark we can afford to burn the first three. That information is old anyway.”

    Neagley laid the four flash memories on the hotel desk in strict date order. “You sure he wouldn’t have changed his password daily?”
    “Franz?” Reacher said. “Are you kidding? A guy like Franz latches onto a word that means something to him and he sticks with it forever.”
    Neagley clicked the oldest memory unit into the port and waited until the corresponding icon appeared on the screen. She clicked on it and tabbed the cursor straight to the password box.
    “OK,” she said. “You want to nominate a priority order?”
    “Do the people names first. Then the place names. I think that’s how it would have worked for him.”
    “Is Dodgers a people name?”
    “Of course it is. Baseball is played by people.”
    “OK. But we’ll start with music.” She typed MilesDavis and hit enter. There was a short pause and then the screen redrew and came back with the dialog box again and a note in red: Your first attempt was incorrect.
    “One down,” she said. “Now sports.”
    She tried Dodgers.
    Incorrect.
    “Two down.” She typed Koufax.
    The hard drive inside her laptop chattered and the screen went blank.
    “What’s happening?” Reacher asked.
    “It’s dumping the data,” she said. “Erasing it. It wasn’t Koufax. Three down.”
    She pulled the flash memory out of the port and tossed it through a long silver arc into the trash can. Inserted the second unit in its place. Typed Jennifer.
    Incorrect.
    “Four down,” she said. “Not his puppy.”
    She tried Panama.
    Incorrect.
    “Five down.” She tried Brooklyn.
    The screen went blank and the hard drive chattered.
    “Six down,” she said. “Not his old hood. You’re zip for six, Reacher.”
    The second unit clattered into the trash and she plugged in the third.
    “Ideas?”
    “Your turn. I seem to have lost my touch.”
    “What about his old service number?”
    “I doubt it. He was a words guy, not a numbers guy. And for me anyway my number was the same as my Social Security number. Same for him, probably, which would make it too obvious.”
    “What would you use?”
    “Me? I am a numbers guy. Top row of the keyboard, all in a line, easy to get to. No typing skills required.”
    “What number would you use?”
    “Six characters? I’d probably write out my birthday, month, day, year, and find the nearest prime number.” Then he thought for a second and said, “Actually, that would be a problem, because there would be two equally close, one exactly seven less and one exactly seven more. So I guess I’d use the square root instead, rounded to three decimal places. Ignore the decimal point, that would give me six numbers, all different.”
    “Weird,” Neagley said. “I think we can be sure Franz wouldn’t do anything like that. Probably nobody else in the world would do anything like that.”
    “Therefore it would be a good password.”
    “What was his first car?”
    “Some piece of shit, probably.”
    “But guys like cars, right? What was his favorite car?”
    “I don’t like cars.”
    “Think like him, Reacher. Did he like cars?”
    “He always wanted a red Jaguar XKE.”
    “Would that be worth a try?”
    A man of interests and enthusiasms. Full of affections and loyalties.
    “Maybe,” Reacher said. “It’s certainly going to be something special to him. Something talismanic, something that would give him a feeling of warmth just recalling the word. Either an early role model or a longstanding object of desire or affection. So the XKE might work.”
    “Should I try it? We’ve only got six left.”
    “I’d try it for sure if we had six hundred left.”
    “Wait a minute,” Neagley said. “What about what Angela told us? The way he kept on saying you do not mess with the special investigators?”
    “That would make a hell of a long password.”
    “So break it down. Either special investigators, or do not mess. ”
    A memory like an elephant. Reacher nodded. “We had a good time back then, basically, didn’t we? So remembering the old days might have given him a warm feeling. Especially stuck out there in Culver City, busy doing nothing much. People enjoy nostalgia, don’t they?