Without Fail

never knew. There was a fine line, with some personality types. The NCIC database was always slow, so she shoved drifts of accumulated paperwork into drawers and then left her desk and refilled her coffee cup. Strolled back to find a negative arrest-or-conviction record waiting on her screen. Plus a short note to say UNSUB had an FBI file somewhere in their records. Interesting . She closed NCIC and went straight to the FBI’s database. She found the file and couldn’t open it. But she knew enough about the Bureau’s classification system to be able to decode the header flags. It was a simple narrative file, inactive. Nothing more. UNSUB wasn’t a fugitive, wasn’t wanted for anything, wasn’t currently in trouble.
    She wrote it all down, and then clicked her way into the nationwide DMV database. Bad news again. UNSUB didn’t have a driver’s license. Which was very weird. And which was a very big pain in the butt . Because no driver’s license meant no current photograph and no current address listing. She clicked her way into the Veterans’Administration computer in Chicago. Searched by name, rank, and number. The inquiries came up blank. UNSUB wasn’t receiving federal benefits and hadn’t offered a forwarding address. Why not? Where the hell are you? She went back into Social Security and asked for contributions records. There weren’t any. UNSUB hadn’t been employed since leaving the military, at least not legally. She tried the IRS for confirmation. Same story. UNSUB hadn’t paid taxes in five years. Hadn’t even filed.
    OK, so let’s get serious . She hitched straighter in her chair and quit the government sites and fired up some illicit software that took her straight into the banking industry’s private world. Strictly speaking she shouldn’t be using it for this purpose. Or for any purpose. It was an obvious breach of official protocol. But she didn’t expect to get any comeback. And she did expect to get a result. If UNSUB had even a single bank account anywhere in the fifty states, it would show up. Even a humble little checking account. Even an empty or abandoned account. Plenty of people got by without bank accounts, she knew that, but she felt in her gut UNSUB wouldn’t be one of them. Not somebody who had been a U.S. Army major. With medals.
    She entered the Social Security number twice, once in the SSN field and once in the taxpayer ID field. She entered the name. She hit search .

    One hundred and eighty miles away, Jack Reacher shivered. Atlantic City in the middle of November wasn’t the warmest spot on earth. Not by any measure. The wind came in off the ocean carrying enough salt to keep everything permanently damp and clammy. It whipped and gusted and blew trash around and flattened his pants against his legs. Five days ago he had been in Los Angeles, and he was pretty sure he should have stayed there. Now he was pretty sure he should go back. Southern California was a very attractive place in November. The air was warm down there, and the ocean breezes were soft balmy caresses instead of endless lashing fusillades of stinging salt cold. He should go back there. He should go somewhere , that was for damn sure.
    Or maybe he should stick around like he’d been asked to, and buy a coat.
    He had come back east with an old black woman and her brother. He had been hitching rides east out of L.A. in order to take a one-day look at the Mojave Desert. The old couple had picked him up in an ancient Buick Roadmaster. He saw a microphone and a primitive PA system and a boxed Yamaha keyboard among the suitcases in the load space and the old lady told him she was a singer heading for a short residency all the way over in Atlantic City. Told him her brother accompanied her on the keyboard and drove the car, but he wasn’t much of a talker anymore, and he wasn’t much of a driver anymore, and the Roadmaster wasn’t much of a car anymore. It was all true. The old guy was completely silent and they were all in mortal danger several times inside the first five miles. The old lady started singing to calm herself. She gave it a few bars of Dawn Penn’s “You Don’t Love Me” and Reacher immediately decided to go all the way east with her just to hear more. He offered to take over the driving chores. She kept on singing. She had the kind of sweet smoky voice that should have made her a blues superstar long ago, except she was probably in the wrong place too many times and it had never