Without Fail

outside the windows. Thanksgiving Day was grinding to a close.
    “His name is Andretti,” Bannon said. “Age seventy-three, retired carpenter, retired volunteer firefighter. He’s got granddaughters. That’s where the pressure came from.”
    “Is he talking?” Neagley asked.
    “Some,” Bannon said. “Sounds like he’s made of slightly sterner stuff than Nendick.”
    “So how did it go down?”
    “He frequents a cop bar outside of Sacramento, from his firefighting days. He met two guys in there.”
    “Were they cops?” Reacher asked.
    “Cop-like,” Bannon said. “That was his description. They got to talking, they got to showing each other pictures of the family. They got to talking about what a rotten world it is, and what they would do to protect their families from it. It was gradual, he said.”
    “And?”
    “He clammed up on us for a spell, but then our doctor took a look at his hand. The left thumb has been surgically removed. Well, not really surgically . Somewhere between severed and hacked off, our guy said. But there was an attempt at neatness. Andretti stuck to his carpentry story. Our doctor said, no way was that a saw. Like, no way . Andretti seemed pleased to be contradicted, and he talked some more.”
    “And?”
    “He lives alone. Widower. The two cop-like guys had wormed an invitation home with him. They were asking him, what would you do to protect your family? Like, what would you do ? How far would you go? It was all rhetorical at first, and then it got practical fast. They told him he would have to give up his thumb or his granddaughters. His choice. They held him down and did it. They took his photographs and his address book. Told him now they knew what his granddaughters looked like and where they lived. Told him they’d take out their ovaries the same way they’d taken off his thumb. And he was ready to believe them, obviously. He would be, right? They’d just done it to him . They stole a cooler from the kitchen and some ice from the refrigerator to transport the thumb. They left and he made it to the hospital.”
    Silence in the room.
    “Descriptions?” Stuyvesant asked.
    Bannon shook his head.
    “Too scared,” he said. “My guys talked about Witness Protection for the whole family, but he’s not going to bite. My guess is we’ve got all we’re going to get.”
    “Forensics in the house?”
    “Andretti cleaned it thoroughly. They made him. They watched him do it.”
    “What about the bar? Anybody see them talking?”
    “We’ll ask. But this was nearly six weeks ago. Don’t hold your breath.”
    Nobody spoke for a long time.
    “Reacher?” Neagley said.
    “What?”
    “What are you thinking?”
    He shrugged.
    “I’m thinking about Dostoyevsky,” he said. “I just found a copy of Crime and Punishment that I sent Joe for a birthday present. I remember I almost sent him The Brothers Karamazov instead, but I decided against it. You ever read that book?”
    Neagley shook her head.
    “Part of it is about what the Turks did in Bulgaria,” he said. “There was all kinds of rape and pillage going on. They hanged prisoners in the mornings after making them spend their last night nailed to a fence by their ears. They threw babies in the air and caught them on bayonets. They said the best part was doing it in front of the mothers. Ivan Karamazov was seriously disillusioned by it all. He said no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel . Then I was thinking about these guys making Andretti clean his house while they watched. I guess he had to do it one-handed. He probably struggled with it. Dostoyevsky put his feelings in a book. I don’t have his talent. So now I’m thinking I’m going to find these guys and impress on them the error of their ways in whatever manner my own talent allows.”
    “You didn’t strike me as a reader,” Bannon said.
    “I get by,” Reacher said.
    “And I would caution you against vigilantism.”
    “That’s a big word for a Special Agent.”
    “Whatever, I don’t want independent action.”
    Reacher nodded.
    “Noted,” he said.
    Bannon smiled. “You done the math puzzle yet?”
    “What math puzzle?”
    “We’re assuming that Vaime rifle was in Minnesota on Tuesday and North Dakota yesterday. Now it’s here in D.C. today. They didn’t fly it in, that’s for damn sure, because putting long guns on a commercial flight leaves a paper trail a mile long. And it’s too far to drive