Tripwire

hands, with your tongue sticking out, concentrating. I watched you all the way, with my heart in my mouth in case you dropped it.”
    She smiled. “Well, you’re right, I’m afraid I don’t recall it. I was three? That’s an awful long time ago now.”
    Newman nodded. “That’s why I checked how old you looked. I didn’t mean for the sergeant to come right out and ask you straight. I wanted his subjective impression, is all. It’s not the sort of thing one should ask a lady, is it? But I was wondering if you could really be Leon’s daughter, come to visit me.”
    He squeezed her hand and let it go. Turned to Reacher and punched him lightly on the shoulder.
    “Jack Reacher,” he said. “Damn, it’s good to see you again.”
    Reacher caught Newman’s hand and shook it hard, sharing the pleasure.
    “General Newman was my teacher,” he said to Jodie. “He did a spell at staff college about a million years ago. Advanced forensics, taught me everything I know.”
    “He was a pretty good student,” Newman said to her. “Paid attention at least, which is more than most of them did.”
    “So what is it you do, General?” she asked.
    “Well, I do a little forensic anthropology,” Newman said.
    “He’s the best in the world,” Reacher said.
    Newman waved away the compliment. “Well, I don’t know about that.”
    “Anthropology?” Jodie said. “But isn’t that studying remote tribes and things? How they live? Their rituals and beliefs and so on?”
    “No, that’s cultural anthropology,” Newman said. “There are many different disciplines. Mine is forensic anthropology, which is a part of physical anthropology.”
    “Studying human remains for clues,” Reacher said.
    “A bone doctor,” Newman said. “That’s about what it amounts to.”
    They were drifting down the sidewalk as they talked, getting nearer the plain door in the blank wall. It opened up and a younger man was standing there waiting for them in the entrance corridor. A nondescript guy, maybe thirty years old, in a lieutenant’s uniform under a white lab coat. Newman nodded toward him. “This is Lieutenant Simon. He runs the lab for me. Couldn’t manage without him.”
    He introduced Reacher and Jodie and they shook hands all around. Simon was quiet and reserved. Reacher figured him for a typical lab guy, annoyed at the disruption to the measured routine of his work. Newman led them inside and down the corridor to his office, and Simon nodded silently to him and disappeared.
    “Sit down,” Newman said. “Let’s talk.”
    “So you’re a sort of pathologist?” Jodie asked him.
    Newman took his place behind his desk and rocked his hand from side to side, indicating a disparity. “Well, a pathologist has a medical degree, and we anthropologists don’t. We studied anthropology, pure and simple. The physical structure of the human body, that’s our field. We both work postmortem, of course, but generally speaking if a corpse is relatively fresh, it’s a pathologist’s job, and if there’s only a skeleton left, then it’s our job. So I’m a bone doctor.”
    Jodie nodded.
    “Of course, that’s a slight simplification,” Newman said. “A fresh corpse can raise questions concerning its bones. Suppose there’s dismemberment involved? The pathologist would refer to us for help. We can look at the saw marks on the bones and help out. We can say how weak or strong the perpetrator was, what kind of saw he used, was he left-handed or right-handed, things like that. But ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I’m working on skeletons. Dry old bones.”
    Then he smiled again. A private, amused smile. “And pathologists are useless with dry old bones. Really, really hopeless. They don’t know the first thing about them. Sometimes I wonder what the hell they teach them in medical school.”
    The office was quiet and cool. No windows, indirect lighting from concealed fixtures, carpet on the floor. A rosewood desk, comfortable leather chairs for the visitors. And an elegant clock on a low shelf, ticking quietly, already showing three-thirty in the afternoon. Just three and a half hours until the return flight.
    “We’re here for a reason, General,” Reacher said. “This isn’t entirely a social call, I’m afraid.”
    “Social enough to stop calling me General and start calling me Nash, OK? And tell me what’s on your mind.”
    Reacher nodded. “We need your help, Nash.”
    Newman looked up. “With the MIA