Without Fail

the box. I thought that would be the end of it, but he dragged the kids into the yard and got some logging chain and some padlocks and got them chained up to a tree. They were kneeling down, facing each other around the trunk. My dad’s mind was gone. His temper had kicked in. He was hitting them with the broken bat. I was trying to stop him, but it was impossible. Then he said he was going to show them a good time with the bat, with the broken end, unless they begged him not to. So they begged. They begged long and loud.”
    He went quiet again.
    “I was there all the time,” he said. “I was trying to calm my father down, that’s all. But these guys were looking at me like I was participating . There was this thing in their eyes, like I was a witness to their worst moment. Like I was seeing them being totally humiliated, which I guess is the worst thing you can do to a bully. There was absolute hatred in their eyes. Against me . Like they were saying, you’ve seen this, so now you have to die. It was literally as bad as that.”
    “What happened?” Neagley asked.
    “My father kept them there. He said he was going to leave them there all night and start up again in the morning. We went inside and he went to bed and I snuck out again an hour later. I was going to let them go. But they were already gone. They’d gotten out of the chains somehow. Escaped. They never came back. I never saw them again. I went off to college, never really came home again except for visits.”
    “And your father died.”
    Armstrong nodded. “He had blood pressure problems, which was understandable, I guess, given his personality. I kind of forgot about the two kids. It was just an episode that had happened in the past. But I didn’t really forget about them. I always remembered the look in their eyes. I can see it right now. It was stone-cold hatred. It was like two cocky thugs who couldn’t stand to be seen any other way than how they chose to be seen. Like I was committing a mortal sin just for happening to see them losing. Like I was doing something to them. Like I was their enemy. They stared at me. I gave up trying to understand it. I’m no kind of a psychologist. But I never forgot that look. When that package came I wasn’t puzzled for a second who had sent it, even though it’s been nearly thirty years.”
    “Did you know their names?” Reacher asked.
    Armstrong shook his head. “I didn’t know much about them, except I guess they lived in some nearby town. What are you going to do?”
    “I know what I’d like to do.”
    “What’s that?”
    “I’d like to break both your arms and never see you again as long as I live. Because if you’d spoken up on Election Day, Froelich would still be alive.”
    “Why the hell didn’t you?” Neagley asked.
    Armstrong shook his head. There were tears in his eyes.
    “Because I had no idea it was serious,” he said. “I really didn’t, I promise you, on my daughter’s life. Don’t you see? I just thought it was supposed to remind me or unsettle me. I wondered whether maybe in their minds they still thought I was in the wrong back then, and it was supposed to be a threat of political embarrassment or exposure or something. Obviously I wasn’t worried about that because I wasn’t in the wrong back then. Everybody would understand that. And I couldn’t see any other logical reason for sending it. I was thirty years older, so were they. I’m a rational adult, I assumed they were. So I thought it was maybe just an unpleasant joke. I didn’t conceive of any danger in it. I absolutely promise you that. I mean, why would I? So it unsettled me for an hour, and then I dropped it. Maybe I half-expected some kind of lame follow-up, but I figured I’d deal with that when it happened. But there was no follow-up. It didn’t happen. Not as far as I knew. Because nobody told me . Until now. Until you told me. And according to Stuyvesant you shouldn’t be telling me even now. And people have suffered and died . Christ, why did he keep me out of the loop? I could have given him the whole story if he’d just asked .”
    Nobody spoke.
    “So you’re right and you’re wrong,” he said. “I knew who and why, but I didn’t know all along. I didn’t know the middle. I knew the beginning, and I knew the end. I knew as soon as the shooting started, believe me. I mean, I just knew . It was an unbelievable shock, out of the blue. Like, this is the follow-up? It was an insane