Without Fail

brother? Inside Treasury, Joe Reacher is practically a saint. So your ass is covered. And mine is too. Because of Joe I’ll get automatic credibility from the start. And I was a good investigator in the military. So was Neagley. You know that, because you just checked. My guess is you just spent twenty-five minutes talking to the Pentagon and the National Security Agency. That’s why you wanted those details. They ran us through their computers and we came out clean. More than clean, probably, because I’m sure our security clearances are still on file, and I’m sure they’re still way higher than you actually need them to be.”
    Stuyvesant nodded. He looked satisfied.
    “An excellent analysis,” he said. “You get the job, just as soon as I get hard copies of those clearances. They should be here in an hour or two.”
    “You can do this?” Neagley said.
    “I can do what I want,” Stuyvesant said. “Presidents tend to give a lot of authority to the people they hope will keep them alive.”
    Silence in the room.
    “Will I be a suspect?” Stuyvesant asked.
    “No,” Reacher said.
    “Maybe I should be. Maybe I should be your number-one suspect. Perhaps I felt forced to promote a woman because of contemporary pressures to do so, but I secretly resent it, so I’m working behind her back to panic her and thereby discredit her.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “I could have found a friend or a relative who had never been fingerprinted. I could have placed the paper on my desk at seven-thirty Wednesday evening and instructed my secretary not to notice it. She’d have followed my orders. Or I could have instructed the cleaners to smuggle it in that night. They’d have followed my orders, too. But they’d have followed Froelich’s orders equally. She should be your number-two suspect, probably. Maybe she has a friend or a relative with no prints on file either, and maybe she’s setting this whole thing up in order to deal with it spectacularly and earn some enhanced credibility.”
    “Except I’m not setting it up,” Froelich said.
    “Neither of you is a suspect,” Reacher said.
    “Why not?” Stuyvesant asked.
    “Because Froelich came to me voluntarily, and she knew something about me from my brother. You hired us directly after seeing our military records. Neither of you would have done those things if you had something to hide. Too much risk.”
    “Maybe we think we’re smarter than you are. An internal investigation that missed us would be the best cover there is.”
    Reacher shook his head. “Neither of you is that dumb.”
    “Good,” Stuyvesant replied. He looked satisfied. “So let’s agree it’s a jealous rival elsewhere in the department. Let’s assume he conspired with the cleaners.”
    “Or she,” Froelich said.
    “Where are the cleaners now?” Reacher asked.
    “Suspended,” Stuyvesant said. “At home, on full pay. They live together. One of the women is the man’s wife and the other woman is his sister-in-law. The other crew is working overtime to make up, and costing me a fortune.”
    “What’s their story?”
    “They know nothing about anything. They didn’t bring in any sheet of paper, they never saw it, it wasn’t there when they were there.”
    “But you don’t believe them.”
    Stuyvesant was quiet for a long moment. He fiddled with his shirt cuffs and then laid his hands flat on the table again.
    “They’re trusted employees,” he said. “They’re very nervous about being under suspicion. Very upset. Frightened, even. But they’re also calm . Like we won’t be able to prove anything, because they didn’t do anything. They’re a little puzzled. They passed a lie-detector test. All three of them.”
    “So you do believe them.”
    Stuyvesant shook his head. “I can’t believe them. How can I? You saw the tapes. Who else put the damn thing there? A ghost?”
    “So what’s your opinion?”
    “I think somebody they knew inside the building asked them to do it, and explained it away as a routine test procedure, like a war game or a secret mission, said there was no harm in it, and coached them through what would happen afterward in terms of the video and the questioning and the lie detector. I think that might give a person enough composure to pass the polygraph. If they were convinced they weren’t in the wrong and there would be no adverse consequences. If they were convinced they were really helping the department somehow.”
    “Have you pursued