The Hard Way

You hear hoof beats, you look for horses, not zebras. A guy calls in that his wife has been kidnapped, you assume it’s true. You don’t start assuming it’s a complex plot to do away with her. And it was all plausible. There were real phone calls, there was real cash money in a bag.”
    “But?”
    Brewer went quiet for a moment. Took a long pull on his mug of coffee, swallowed, exhaled, rested his head back on the sofa.
    “Patti kinds of sucks you in,” he said. “You know? Sooner or later you have to admit it’s just as plausible the other way around.”
    “Gut feeling?”
    “I just don’t know,” Brewer said. “Which is a weird feeling in itself, for me. I mean, sometimes I’m wrong, but I always
know.
”
    “So what are you doing about it?”
    “Nothing,” Brewer said. “It’s an ice-cold case outside of our jurisdiction. Hell will freeze over before the NYPD voluntarily books another unsolved homicide.”
    “But you keep on showing up here.”
    “Like I said, the kid needs an ear. Grief is a long and complicated process.”
    “You do this for all the relatives?”
    “Only the ones that look like they belong in
Playboy
magazine.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “What’s your interest here?” Brewer asked again.
    “Like I said.”
    “Bullshit. Lane was a combat soldier. Now he’s a mercenary. You’re not worried about whether he offed someone he shouldn’t have five years ago. Find me a guy like Lane who didn’t.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “Something’s on your mind,” Brewer said.
    Silence for a moment.
    “One thing Patti told me,” Brewer said. “She hasn’t seen the new Mrs. Lane for a couple of days. Or the kid.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    Brewer said, “Maybe she’s missing and you’re looking for parallels in the past.”
    Reacher stayed quiet.
    Brewer said, “You were a cop, not a combat soldier. So now I’m wondering what kind of thing Edward Lane would want to hire you for.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    Brewer said, “Anything you want to tell me?”
    “I’m asking,” Reacher said. “Not telling.”
    More silence. A long hard look, cop to cop.
    “As you wish,” Brewer said. “It’s a free country.”
    Reacher finished his coffee and stepped into the kitchen. Rinsed his mug under the tap and left it in the sink. Then he leaned his elbows on the counter and stared straight ahead. The living room in front of him was framed by the pass-through. The high-backed chair was at the window. On the sill was the neat surveillance array. The notebook, the pen, the camera, the binoculars.
    “So what do you do with the stuff she calls in? Just bury it?”
    Brewer shook his head.
    “I pass it on,” he said. “Outside the department. To someone with an interest.”
    “Who?”
    “A private detective, downtown. A woman. She’s cute, too. Older, but hey.”
    “NYPD is working with private detectives now?”
    “This one is in an unusual position. She’s retired FBI.”
    “They’re all retired something.”
    “This one was the lead agent on the Anne Lane case.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    Brewer smiled. “So like I said, this one has an interest.”
    Reacher said, “Does Patti know?”
    Brewer shook his head. “Better that Patti doesn’t. Better that Patti never finds out. It would make for a bad combination.”
    “What’s this woman’s name?”
    “I thought you’d never ask,” Brewer said.

CHAPTER 22
    REACHER LEFT PATTI Joseph’s apartment with two business cards. One was Brewer’s official NYPD issue and the other was an elegant item with
Lauren Pauling
engraved at the top and
Private Investigator
under the name. Then:
Ex–Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation.
At the bottom was a downtown address, with 212 and 917 phone numbers for landline and cell, and e-mail, and a website URL. It was a busy card. But the whole thing looked crisp and expensive, professional and efficient. Better than Brewer’s NYPD card, and better even than Gregory’s OSC card.
    Reacher tossed Brewer’s card in a Central Park West trash can and put Lauren Pauling’s in his shoe. Then he took a circuitous route back toward the Dakota. It was close to one o’clock in the morning. He circled the block and saw a cop car on Columbus Avenue.
Cops,
he thought. The word hung up in his mind the same way it had down in SoHo. The way a twig on a swirling current catches on a riverbank. He stopped walking and closed his eyes and tried to catch it. But it spun away again. He gave it