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Then he turned to Rosemary Barr.
"Meanwhile we'll put you somewhere safe," he told her. "Your tutorials will start as soon as the soldier is buried. "
The outer western suburbs were bedroom communities for people who worked in the city, so the traffic stayed bad all the way out. The houses were much grander than in the east. They were all two-story, all varied, all well maintained. They all had big lots and pools and ambitious evergreen landscaping. With the last of the sunset behind them they looked like pictures in a brochure.
"Tight-ass middle class," Reacher said.
"What we all aspire to," Yanni said.
"They won't want to talk," Reacher said. "Not their style. "
"They'll talk," Yanni said. "Everyone talks to me. "
They drove past the Archer place slowly. There was a cast-metal sign on thin chains under the mailbox: Ted and Oline Archer. Beyond it, across a broad open lawn, the house looked closed-up and dark and silent. It was a big Tudor place. Dull brown beams, cream stucco. Three-car garage. Nobody home, Reacher thought.
The neighbor they were looking for lived across the street and one lot to the north. Hers was a place about the same size as the Archers' but done in an Italianate style. Stone accents, little crenellated towers, dark green sun awnings on the south-facing ground-floor windows. The evening light was fading away to darkness and lamps were coming on behind draped windows. The whole street looked warm and rested and quiet and very satisfied with itself. Reacher said, "They sleep safely in their beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do them harm. "
"You know George Orwell?" Yanni asked.
"I went to college," Reacher said. "West Point is technically a college. "
Yanni said, "The existing social order is a swindle and its cherished beliefs mostly delusions. "
"It is not possible for any thinking person to live in such a society as our own without wanting to change it," Reacher said.
"I'm sure these are perfectly nice people," Helen said.
"But will they talk to us?"
"They'll talk," Yanni said. "Everyone talks. "
Helen pulled into a long limestone driveway and parked about twenty feet behind an imported SUV that had big chrome wheels. The front door of the house was made of ancient gray weathered oak with iron banding that had nail heads as big as golf balls. It felt like you could step through it straight into the Renaissance.
"Property is theft," Reacher said.
"Proudhon," Yanni said. "Property is desirable, is a positive good in the world. "
"Abraham Lincoln," Reacher said. "In his first State of the Union. "
There was an iron knocker shaped like a quoit in a lion's mouth. Helen lifted it and used it to thump on the door. Then she found a discreet electric bell push and pressed that, too. They heard no answering sound inside the house. Heavy door, thick walls. Helen tried again with the bell, and before she got her finger off the button, the door sucked back off copper weatherproofing strips and opened like a vault. A guy was standing there with his hand on the inside handle.
"Yes?" he said. He was somewhere in his forties, solid, prosperous, probably a golf club member, maybe an Elk, maybe a Rotarian. He was wearing corduroy pants and a patterned sweater. He was the kind of guy who gets home and immediately changes clothes as a matter of routine.
"Is your wife at home?" Helen asked. "We'd like to speak with her about Oline Archer. "
"About Oline?" the guy said. He was looking at Ann Yanni.
"I'm a lawyer," Helen said.
"What is there to be said about Oline?"
"Maybe more than you think," Yanni said.
"You're not a lawyer. "
"I'm here as a journalist," Yanni said. "But not on a human interest story. Nothing tacky. There might have been a miscarriage of justice. That's the issue here. "
"A miscarriage in what way?"
"They might have arrested the wrong man for the shootings. That's why I'm here. That's why we're all here. "
Reacher watched the guy. He was standing there, holding the door, trying to decide. In the end he just sighed and stepped back.
"You better come in," he said.
Everyone talks.
He led the way through a muted yellow hallway to a living room. It was spacious and immaculate. Velvet furniture, little mahogany tables, a stone fireplace. No television. There was probably a separate room for that. A den, or a home theater. Or perhaps they didn't watch television. Reacher saw Ann Yanni calculating the odds.
"I'll get my wife," the guy said.
He came back a minute later with a handsome woman a little younger than himself. She was wearing pressed jeans and a sweatshirt the same yellow as the hallway walls. Penny loafers on her feet. No socks. She had hair that had been expensively styled to look casual and windswept. She was medium height and lean in a way that spoke of diet books and serious time in aerobics classes.
"What's this about?" she asked.
"Ted Archer," Helen said.
"Ted? I thought you told my husband it was about Oline. "
"We think there may be a connection. Between his situation and hers. "
"How could there be a connection? Surely what happened to Oline was completely out of the blue. "
"Maybe it wasn't. "
"I don't understand. "
"We suspect that Oline might have been a specific target, kind of hidden behind the confusion of the other four victims. "
"Wouldn't that be a matter for the police?"
Helen paused. "At the moment the police seem satisfied with what they've got. "
The woman glanced at her husband.
"Then I'm not sure we should talk about it," he said.
"At all?" Yanni asked. "Or just to me?"
"I'm not sure if we would want to be on television. "
Reacher smiled to himself. The other side of the tracks.
"This is deep background only," Yanni said. "It's entirely up to you whether your names are used. "
The woman sat down on a sofa and her husband sat next to her, very close. Reacher smiled to himself again. They had subconsciously adopted the standard couple-on-a-sofa pose that television interviews used all the time. Two faces close together, ideally framed for a tight camera shot. Yanni took her cue and sat in an armchair facing them, perched right on the edge, leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, a frank and open expression on her face. Helen took another chair. Reacher stepped away to the window. Used a finger to move the drapes aside. It was fully dark outside.
Time ticking away.
"Tell us about Ted Archer," Yanni said. "Please. " A simple request, only six words, but her tone said: I think you two are the most interesting people in the world and I would love to be your friend. For a moment Reacher thought Yanni had missed her way. She would have been a great cop.
"Ted had business problems," the woman said.
"Is that why he disappeared?" Yanni asked.
The woman shrugged. "That was Oline's initial assumption. "
"But?"
"Ultimately she rejected that explanation. And I think she was right to. Ted wasn't that kind of a man. And his problems weren't those kind of problems. The fact is, he was getting screwed rotten and he was mad as hell about it and he was fighting. And people who fight don't just walk away. I mean, do they?"
"How was he getting screwed?"
The woman glanced at her husband. He leaned forward. Boy stuff. "His principal customer stopped buying from him. Which happens. Power in the marketplace ebbs and flows. So Ted offered to renegotiate. Offered to drop his price. No dice. So he offered to drop it more. He told me he got to the point where he was giving it away. Still no dice. They just wouldn't buy. "
"What do you think was happening?" Yanni asked. Keep talking, sir.
"Corruption," the guy said. "Under-the-table inducements. It was completely obvious. One of Ted's competitors was offering kickbacks. No way for an honest man to compete with that. "
"When did this start?"
"About two years ago. It was a major problem for them. Financially they went downhill very fast. No cash flow. Ted sold his car. Oline had to go out to work. The DMV thing was all she could find. They made her supervisor after about a month. " He smiled a thin smile, proud of his class. "Another year, she'd have been running the place. She'd have been Commissioner. "
"What was Ted doing about it? How was he fighting?"
"He was trying to find out which competitor it was. "
"Did he find out?"
"We don't know. He was trying for a long time, and then he went missing. "
"Didn't Oline include this in her report?"
The guy sat back and his wife leaned forward again. Shook her head. "Oline didn't want to. Not back then. It was all unproven. All speculation. She didn't want to throw accusations around. And it wasn't definitely connected. I guess the way we're telling it now it sounds more obvious than it was at the time. I mean, Ted wasn't Sherlock Holmes or anything. He wasn't on the case twenty-four/ seven. He was still doing normal stuff. He was just talking to people when he could, you know, asking questions, comparing notes, comparing prices, trying to put it all together. It was a two-year period. Occasional conversations, phone calls, inquiries, things like that. It didn't seem dangerous, certainly. "
"Did Oline ever go to anyone with this? Later, maybe?"
The woman nodded. "She stewed for two months after he disappeared. We talked. She was up and down with it. Eventually she decided there had to be a connection. I agreed with her. She didn't know what to do. I told her she should call the police. "
"And did she?"
"She didn't call. She went personally. She felt they would take her more seriously face-to-face. Not that they did, apparently. Nothing happened. It was like dropping a stone down a well and never hearing the splash. "
"When did she go?"
"A week before the thing in the plaza last Friday. "
Nobody spoke. Then, kindly, gently, Ann Yanni asked the obvious question: "You didn't suspect a connection?"
The woman shook her head. "Why would we? It seemed to be a total coincidence. The shootings were random, weren't they? You said so yourself. On the television news. We heard you say it. Five random victims, in the wrong place at the wrong time. "
Nobody spoke.
Reacher turned away from the window.
"What business was Ted Archer in?" he asked.
"I'm sorry, I assumed you knew," the husband said. "He owns a quarry. Huge place about forty miles north of here. Cement, concrete, crushed stone. Vertically integrated, very efficient. "
"And who was the customer who backed off?"
"The city," the guy said.
"Big customer. "
"As big as they come. All this construction going on right now is manna from heaven for people in that business. The city sold ninety million in tax-free municipals just to cover the first year. Add in the inevitable overruns and it's a nine-figure bonanza for somebody. "
