Without Fail

shoulder of one of the suits through the plastic.
    “I figured he’d come back for them,” she said. “But he didn’t, the whole year. I guess he didn’t need them.”
    “He must have had a lot of suits.”
    “Couple dozen, I guess,” she said.
    “How can a person have twenty-four suits?”
    “He was a dresser,” she said. “You must remember that.”
    He stood still. The way he remembered it, Joe had lived in one pair of shorts and one T-shirt. In the winters he wore khakis. When it was very cold he added a worn-out leather pilot’s jacket. That was it. At their mother’s funeral he wore a very formal black suit, which Reacher had assumed was rented. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe working in Washington had changed his approach.
    “You should have them,” Froelich said. “They’re your property, anyway. You were his next of kin, I guess.”
    “I guess I was,” he said.
    “There’s a box, too,” she said. “Stuff he left around and never came back for.”
    He followed her gaze to the closet floor and saw a cardboard box sitting underneath the hanging rail. The flaps were folded over each other.
    “Tell me about Molly Beth Gordon,” he said.
    “What about her?”
    “After they died I kind of inferred they’d had a thing going.”
    She shook her head. “They were close. No doubt about that. But they worked together. She was his assistant. He wouldn’t date people in the office.”
    “Why did you break up?” he asked.
    The doorbell rang downstairs. It sounded loud in the Sunday hush.
    “The food,” Froelich said.
    They went down and ate together at the kitchen table, silently. It felt curiously intimate, but also distant. Like sitting next to a stranger on a long plane ride. You feel connected, but also not connected.
    “You can stay here tonight,” she said. “If you like.”
    “I didn’t check out of the hotel.”
    She nodded. “So check out tomorrow. Then base yourself here.”
    “What about Neagley?”
    Silence for a beat.
    “Her, too, if she wants. There’s another bedroom on the third floor.”
    “OK,” he said.
    They finished the meal and he put the containers in the trash and rinsed the plates. She set the dishwasher going. Then her phone rang. She stepped through to the living room to answer it. Talked for a long moment and then hung up and came back.
    “That was Stuyvesant,” she said. “He’s giving you the formal go-ahead.”
    He nodded. “So call Neagley and tell her to get her ass in gear.”
    “Now?”
    “Get a problem, solve a problem,” he said. “That’s my way. Tell her to be out front of the hotel in thirty minutes.”
    “Where are you going to start?”
    “With the video,” he said. “I want to watch the tapes again. And I want to meet with the guy who runs that part of the operation.”

    Thirty minutes later they scooped Neagley off the sidewalk in front of the hotel. She had changed into a black suit with a short jacket. The pants were cut tight. They looked pretty good from the back, in Reacher’s opinion. He saw Froelich arrive at the same conclusion. But she said nothing. Just drove, five minutes, and then they were back in the Secret Service offices. Froelich headed straight for her desk and left Reacher and Neagley with the agent who ran the video surveillance. He was a small thin nervous guy in Sunday clothes who had come in at short notice to meet with them. He looked a little dazed about it. He led them to a closet-sized equipment room full of racks of recorders. One wall was a floor-to-ceiling shelving unit with hundreds of VHS tapes stacked neatly in black plastic boxes. The recorders themselves were plain gray industrial units. The whole tiny space was full of neat wiring and procedural memos tacked to the walls and soft noise from small motors turning and the smell of warm circuit boards and the green glow of LED numbers ticking over relentlessly.
    “System really looks after itself,” the guy said. “There are four recorders slaved to each camera, six hours to a tape, so we change all the tapes once a day, file them away, keep them three months, and then reuse them.”
    “Where are the originals from the night in question?” Reacher asked.
    “Right here,” the guy said. He fiddled in his pocket and came out with a bunch of small brass keys on a ring. Squatted down in the limited space and opened a low cupboard. Took out three boxes.
    “These are the three I copied for Froelich,” he said, on his knees.
    “Some place