Tripwire

visit.
    The name of the supervising cardiologist was the only constant feature throughout the paperwork, a Dr. McBannerman, who Reacher pictured in his mind as a kindly old guy, white hair, erudite, wise and sympathetic, maybe of ancient Scottish extraction, until Jodie told him she had met with her several times and she was a woman from Baltimore aged about thirty-five. He was driving Jodie’s jeep around the small, curving roads, while she was scanning left and right for the correct office. She recognized it at the end of a cul-de-sac, a low brick structure, white trim, somehow glowing with an antiseptic halo like medical buildings do. There were a half dozen cars parked outside, with one spare slot which Reacher backed into.
    The receptionist was a heavy old busybody who welcomed Jodie with a measure of sympathy. She invited them to wait in McBannerman’s inner office, which earned them glares from the other patients in the waiting room. The inner office was an inoffensive place, pale and sterile and silent, with a token examination table and a large colored cutaway diagram of the human heart on the wall behind the desk. Jodie was staring up at it like she was asking so which part finally failed? Reacher could feel his own heart, huge and muscular and thumping gently in his chest. He could feel the blood pumping and the pulses ticking in his wrists and his neck.
    They waited like that for ten minutes, and then the inner door opened and Dr. McBannerman stepped in, a plain dark-haired woman in a white coat, a stethoscope around her neck like a badge of office, and concern in her face.
    “Jodie,” she said, “I’m terribly sorry about Leon.”
    It was 99 percent genuine, but there was a stray edge of worry there, too. She’s worried about a malpractice suit, Reacher thought. The patient’s daughter was a lawyer, and she was right there in her office straight from the funeral ceremony. Jodie caught it, too, and she nodded, a reassuring little gesture.
    “I just came to say thank you. You were absolutely wonderful, every step of the way. He couldn’t have had better care.”
    McBannerman relaxed. The one percent of worry washed away. She smiled and Jodie glanced up at the big diagram again.
    “So which part finally failed?” she asked.
    McBannerman followed her gaze and shrugged gently.
    “Well, all of it, really, I’m afraid. It’s a big complex muscle, it beats and it beats, thirty million times a year. If it lasts twenty-seven hundred million beats, which is ninety years, we call it old age. If it lasts only eighteen hundred million beats, sixty years, we call it premature heart disease. We call it America’s biggest health problem, but really all we’re saying is sooner or later, it just stops going.”
    She paused and looked directly at Reacher. For a second he thought she had spotted some symptom he was displaying. Then he realized she was waiting for an introduction.
    “Jack Reacher,” he said. “I was an old friend of Leon’s.”
    She nodded slowly, like a puzzle had just been solved.
    “The famous Major Reacher. He spoke about you, often.”
    She sat and looked at him, openly interested. She scanned his face, and then her eyes settled on his chest. He wasn’t sure if that was because of her professional specialty, or if she was looking at the scorch mark from the muzzle blast.
    “Did he speak about anything else?” Jodie asked. “I got the impression he was concerned about something.”
    McBannerman turned to her, puzzled, like she was thinking well, all of my patients are concerned about something, like life and death.
    “What sort of thing?”
    “I don’t really know,” Jodie said. “Maybe something one of the other patients might have involved him with?”
    McBannerman shrugged and looked blank, like she was about to dismiss it, but then they saw her remember.
    “Well, he did mention something. He told me he had a new task.”
    “Did he say what it was?”
    McBannerman shook her head.
    “He mentioned no details. Initially, it seemed to bore him. He was reluctant about it, at first. Like somebody had landed him with something tedious. But then he got a lot more interested, later. It got to where it was overstimulating him. His EKGs were way up, and I wasn’t at all happy about it.”
    “Was it connected to another patient?” Reacher asked her.
    She shook her head again.
    “I really don’t know. It’s possible, I guess. They spend a lot of time together, out there in