Without Fail

Service’s , Reacher thought. As well as their clothing allowance .
    Stuyvesant did the paperwork at the desk and came back with three key cards. Handed them around in an embarrassed little ceremony. Mentioned three room numbers. They were sequential. Then he scrabbled in his pocket and came out with the Suburban’s keys. Gave them to Froelich.
    “I’ll ride back with the guy who brought Neagley over,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, seven o’clock in the office, with Bannon, all of you.”
    Then he turned and left. Neagley juggled her key card and her soda and a garment bag and went looking for her room. Froelich and Reacher followed behind her, with a key card each. There was another marshal at the head of the bedroom corridor. He was sitting awkwardly on a plain dining chair. He had it tilted back against the wall for comfort. Reacher squeezed his untidy luggage past him and stopped at his door. Froelich was already two rooms down, not looking in his direction.
    He went inside and found a compact version of what he had seen a thousand times before. Just one bed, one chair, a table, a normal telephone, a smaller TV screen. But the rest was generic. Floral drapes, already closed. A floral bedspread, Scotchgarded until it was practically rigid. No-color bamboo-weave stuff on the walls. A cheap print over the bed, pretending to be a hand-colored architectural drawing of some part of some ancient Greek temple. He stowed his baggage and arranged his bathroom articles on the shelf above the sink. Checked his watch. Past midnight. Thanksgiving Day, already. He took off Joe’s jacket and dropped it on the table. Loosened his tie and yawned. There was a knock at the door. He opened up and found Froelich standing there.
    “Come in,” he said.
    “Just for a minute,” she said. He walked back and sat on the end of the bed, to let her take the chair. Her hair was a mess, like she had just run her fingers through it. She looked good like that. Younger, and vulnerable, somehow.
    “I am over him,” she said.
    “OK,” he said.
    “But I can see how you might think I’m not.”
    “OK,” he said again.
    “So I think we should be apart tonight. I wouldn’t want you to be worried about why I was here. If I was here.”
    “Whatever you want,” he said.
    “It’s just that you’re so like him. It’s impossible not to be reminded. You can see that, can’t you? But you were never a substitute. I need you to know that.”
    “Still think I got him killed?”
    She looked away.
    “Something got him killed,” she said. “Something on his mind, in his background. Something made him think he could beat somebody he couldn’t beat. Something made him think he was going to be OK when he wasn’t going to be OK. And the same thing could happen to you. You’re stupid if you don’t see that.”
    He nodded. Said nothing. She stood up and walked past him. He caught her perfume as she went by.
    “Call me if you need me,” he said.
    She didn’t reply. He didn’t get up.

    A half hour later there was another knock at the door and he opened it up expecting to find Froelich again. But it was Neagley. Still fully dressed, a little tired, but calm.
    “You on your own?” she asked.
    He nodded.
    “Where is she?” Neagley asked.
    “She left.”
    “Business or lack of pleasure?”
    “Confusion,” he said. “Half the time she wants me to be Joe, the other half she wants to blame me for getting him killed.”
    “She’s still in love with him.”
    “Evidently.”
    “Six years after their relationship ended.”
    “Is that normal?”
    She shrugged. “You’re asking me? I guess some people carry a torch for a long time. He must have been quite a guy.”
    “I didn’t really know him all that well.”
    “Did you get him killed?”
    “Of course not. I was a million miles away. Hadn’t spoken to him for seven years. I told you that.”
    “So what’s her angle?”
    “She says he was driven to be reckless because he was comparing himself to me.”
    “And was he?”
    “I doubt it.”
    “You said you felt guilty afterward. You told me that too, when we were watching those surveillance tapes.”
    “I think I said I felt angry, not guilty.”
    “Angry, guilty, it’s all the same thing. Why feel guilty if it wasn’t your fault?”
    “Now you’re saying it was my fault?”
    “I’m just asking, what’s the guilt about?”
    “He grew up under a false impression.”
    He went quiet and moved deeper into the