“And?”

“He clammed up on us for a spell, but then our doctor took a look at his hand. The left thumb has been surgically removed. Well, not really surgically. Somewhere between severed and hacked off, our guy said. But there was an attempt at neatness. Andretti stuck to his carpentry story. Our doctor said, no way was that a saw. Like, no way. Andretti seemed pleased to be contradicted, and he talked some more.”

“And?”

“He lives alone. Widower. The two cop-like guys had wormed an invitation home with him. They were asking him, what would you do to protect your family? Like, what would you do? How far would you go? It was all rhetorical at first, and then it got practical fast. They told him he would have to give up his thumb or his granddaughters. His choice. They held him down and did it. They took his photographs and his address book. Told him now they knew what his granddaughters looked like and where they lived. Told him they’d take out their ovaries the same way they’d taken off his thumb. And he was ready to believe them, obviously. He would be, right? They’d just done it to him. They stole a cooler from the kitchen and some ice from the refrigerator to transport the thumb. They left and he made it to the hospital.”

Silence in the room.

“Descriptions?” Stuyvesant asked.

Bannon shook his head.

“Too scared,” he said. “My guys talked about Witness Protection for the whole family, but he’s not going to bite. My guess is we’ve got all we’re going to get.”

“Forensics in the house?”

“Andretti cleaned it thoroughly. They made him. They watched him do it.”

“What about the bar? Anybody see them talking?”

“We’ll ask. But this was nearly six weeks ago. Don’t hold your breath.”

Nobody spoke for a long time.

“Reacher?” Neagley said.

“What?”

“What are you thinking?”

He shrugged.

“I’m thinking about Dostoyevsky,” he said. “I just found a copy of Crime and Punishment that I sent Joe for a birthday present. I remember I almost sent him The Brothers Karamazov instead, but I decided against it. You ever read that book?”

Neagley shook her head.

“Part of it is about what the Turks did in Bulgaria,” he said. “There was all kinds of rape and pillage going on. They hanged prisoners in the mornings after making them spend their last night nailed to a fence by their ears. They threw babies in the air and caught them on bayonets. They said the best part was doing it in front of the mothers. Ivan Karamazov was seriously disillusioned by it all. He said no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel. Then I was thinking about these guys making Andretti clean his house while they watched. I guess he had to do it one-handed. He probably struggled with it. Dostoyevsky put his feelings in a book. I don’t have his talent. So now I’m thinking I’m going to find these guys and impress on them the error of their ways in whatever manner my own talent allows.”

“You didn’t strike me as a reader,” Bannon said.

“I get by,” Reacher said.

“And I would caution you against vigilantism.”

“That’s a big word for a Special Agent.”

“Whatever, I don’t want independent action.”

Reacher nodded.

“Noted,” he said.

Bannon smiled. “You done the math puzzle yet?”

“What math puzzle?”

“We’re assuming that Vaime rifle was in Minnesota on Tuesday and North Dakota yesterday. Now it’s here in D.C. today. They didn’t fly it in, that’s for damn sure, because putting long guns on a commercial flight leaves a paper trail a mile long. And it’s too far to drive in the time they had. So either one guy was on his own with the Heckler amp; Koch in Bismarck while the other guy was driving all the way from Minnesota to here with the Vaime. Or if both guys were in Bismarck then they must own two Vaimes, one there, one stashed here. And if both guys were in Bismarck but they own only one Vaime, then somebody else drove it in from Minnesota for them, in which case we’re dealing with three guys, not two.”

Nobody spoke.

“I’m going back to see Swain,” Reacher said. “I’ll walk. It’ll do me good.”

“I’ll come with you,” Neagley said.

It was a fast half mile west on Pennsylvania Avenue. The sky was still cloudless, which made the night air cold. There were some stars visible through the faint city smog and the orange glow of street lighting. There was a small moon, far away. No traffic. They walked past the Federal Triangle and the bulk of the Treasury Building came closer. The White House roadblocks had gone. The city was back to normal. It was like nothing had ever happened.

“You OK?” Neagley asked.

“Facing reality,” Reacher said. “I’m getting old. Slowing up, mentally. I was pretty pleased about getting to Nendick as fast as I did, but I was supposed to get there right away. So in fact I was terrible. Same with the thumbprint. We spent hours boxing around that damn print. Days and days. We twisted and turned to accommodate it. Never saw the actual intention.”

“But we got there in the end.”

“And I’m feeling guilty, as usual.”

“Why?”

“I told Froelich she was doing well,” Reacher said. “But I should have told her to double the sentries on the roof. One guy on the edge, one in the stairwell. Might have saved her.”

Neagley was silent. Six strides, seven.

“It was her job, not yours,” she said. “Don’t feel guilty. You’re not responsible for everybody in the world.”

Reacher said nothing. Just walked.

“And they were masquerading as cops,” Neagley said. “They’d have walked through two sentries just the same as one. They’d have walked through a dozen sentries. Fact is, they did walk through a dozen sentries. More than that. They must have. The whole area was crawling with agents. There’s nothing anybody could have done different. Shit happens.”

Reacher said nothing.

“Two sentries, they’d both have gotten killed,” Neagley said. “Another casualty wouldn’t have helped anybody.”

“You think Bannon looks like a cop?” Reacher asked.

“You think there are three guys?” Neagley asked back.

“No. Not a chance. This is a two-guy thing. Bannon’s missing something very obvious. Occupational hazard with a mind like his.”

“What’s he missing?”

“You think he looks like a cop?”

Neagley smiled, briefly.

“Exactly like a cop,” she said. “He probably was a cop before he joined the Bureau.”

“What makes him look like a cop?”

“Everything. Every single thing. It’s in his pores.”

Reacher went quiet. Walked on.

“Something in Froelich’s pep talk,” he said. “Just before Armstrong showed up. She was warning her people. She said it’s very easy to look a little like a homeless person, but very difficult to look exactly like a homeless person. I think it’s the same with cops. If I put a tweed sport coat on and gray pants and plain shoes and held up a gold badge, would I look like a cop?”

“A little. But not exactly.”

“But these guys do look exactly like cops. I saw one of them and never thought twice. And they’re in and out of everywhere without a single question.”

“It would explain a lot of things,” Neagley said. “They were right at home in the cop bar with Nendick. And with Andretti.”

“Like Bannon’s duck test,” Reacher said. “They look like cops, they walk like cops, they talk like cops.”

“And it would explain how they knew about DNA on envelopes, and the NCIC computer thing. Cops would know that the FBI networks all that information.”

“And the weapons. They might filter through to second-tier SWAT teams or State Police specialists. Especially refurbished items with nonstandard scopes.”

“But we know they aren’t cops. You went through ninety-four mug shots.”