There was a long, long pause.

Then the man with the jeans and the hair asked, “Did she speak to him?”

“To McCann?” his contact said. “No.”

“But she has his phone number.”

“Actually she has two phone numbers. Although one of them seems to be in a public library. Apparently McCann volunteers there.”

“She already knows where he works?”

“Volunteering is not the same thing as working.”

“Why hasn’t she spoken to him?”

“She tried to. She called his cell, but he didn’t answer.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“How would I know?”

“I’m asking you, as a professional. I want analysis. That’s what I pay you for. What are the possible reasons for not answering a cell phone call?”

“Sudden decease of the cell phone owner, loss of the cell phone under the seat of a city bus or similar, not recognizing the incoming caller ID while in a misanthropic mood, being in a location or environment where taking a call would be socially unacceptable. There are hundreds of reasons.”

“What’s her next move?”

“She’ll keep trying the cell number, and she’ll go through the main switchboard at the library to get whatever data is kept on the volunteers.”

“Like an address?”

“That might be difficult. There would be privacy issues.”

“So what then?”

“She’ll go to Chicago. She’ll go anyway. If McCann was Keever’s client, she’ll want to interview him. And she can’t expect him to fly out to her.”

“And Reacher will go with her to Chicago.”

“Most likely.”

“I can’t let them do that. They’re too close already.”

“How do you propose to stop them?”

“Your boy Hackett is right there.”

“At the moment Hackett is engaged for surveillance only.”

“That might need to change. You told me about the menu.”

“You need to think about this carefully. Not just the money. It’s a big step.”

“I can’t let them get to Chicago.”

“You need to be very sure. This kind of decision benefits from absolute certainty.”

“We should have stopped them ourselves, when we had the chance.”

“I’ll need a formal instruction.”

The man with the jeans and the hair said, “Tell Hackett to stop them now. Permanently.”

Chapter 29

The shower made for a slow and gentle transition between what they had been doing and what they had to do next. The tub was narrow, but the curtain was on a bowed-out rail, and the spray was wide and warm, and they didn’t want to get more than an inch away from each other anyway, so all was comfortable. They washed each other, like a game, top to bottom, slowly, carefully, soap and shampoo, no crevice neglected, and some lingered over. They took their time. There was a certain amount of fooling around. Steam rose, and filled the room, and the mirror fogged.

Then eventually they climbed out and dried off with thin towels, and they rubbed circles in the steam on the mirror, one high up, one lower down, and they combed their hair, Reacher with his fingers, Chang with a tortoiseshell implement she fetched from her suitcase. They collected their clothes from where they had fallen, on the floor and the chair and the bed, and they dragged them on over still-damp skin.

Then it was back to business. Reacher re-opened the drapes, and saw nothing outside except bright sun and blue sky. It was a spectacular day. Southern California, in late summer. Even the band of smog low down looked golden. Chang tried the 501 cell again. As before, it rang endlessly, without an answer. She kept it going. It purred dolefully but relentlessly on the speaker. On and on. Reacher said, “I never had this happen before. Either someone answers or it goes to an answering machine.”

“Maybe those old burners didn’t have voice mail yet. Or maybe he didn’t set it up. Or he disabled it.”

“Can you do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why isn’t he answering? He can’t have it both ways. Either you use voice mail or you answer your damn phone.”

“He’s given up. No one would listen to him. So he dumped the phone. It’s ringing in a drawer somewhere.”

Reacher was a need-to-know person, where technology was concerned. He understood faxes and telexes and military radio and the United States Postal Service, but he had never needed to know anything about civilian cell phones. He had never owned one. Why would he? Who would he call? Who would call him? The little he understood came from everyday observation. He pictured the phone in his mind, ringing and ringing. Vibrating too, probably. Ringing and buzzing. Powerful, and energetic. He said, “The battery must be charged. If it went dead the phone would switch off and the network would know. So he must plug it in from time to time.”

“So maybe he went out to the store and left it behind.”

Reacher glanced out the window and didn’t answer.

The phone kept on ringing.

Chang said, “What?”

“Nothing.” But in his mind’s eye he was getting a lonely picture, of a phone on the floor, alive, hopping around, like a faithful spaniel pawing at its dead master, trying to get his attention, not understanding. Out on the moors, maybe, or in a grand living room. A heart attack, perhaps, or gout, or whatever guys with spaniels died of. But he was a need-to-know data-driven person, so all he said was, “Shut it down and try the library switchboard instead.”

Chang killed the call and the room went quiet. She woke her computer and clicked her way to a web page for the Chicago library system. The Lincoln Park branch had its own inquiries number. A 773 area code, plus seven more digits, not far removed from the volunteer room number they had gotten before. She dialed, and got a menu. English or Spanish. Touch one for this, touch two for that. To speak with a person, touch nine.

She touched nine. There was ring tone, and then a woman’s voice came on and said, “How may I help you?”

Chang introduced herself the same way she had to Westwood, the very first time. She said her name, and said she was a private inquiry agent, now based in Seattle, but previously with the FBI, and that last part seemed to help. The woman in Chicago seemed impressed.

Chang said, “I understand you have volunteers helping out.”

“That’s correct,” the woman said.

“Do you have a volunteer named McCann?”

“We did.”

“But not anymore?”

“We haven’t seen him for three or four weeks.”

“Did he quit?”

“Not as such. But volunteers tend to come and go.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

“Why do you need to know? Is he in trouble?”

“He was my firm’s client. But we lost touch. We’re trying to reconnect. To see if he still needs our help.”

“He’s an older man, very quiet, keeps himself to himself. But he does good work. We’d like to reconnect too.”

“Did he have any burning interests, or things on his mind?”

“I’m not sure. He was never exactly a chatterbox.”

“Is he local? Do you have an address for him?”

Dead air from Chicago. Then the woman said, “I’m sorry, but I’m really not permitted to give out that kind of information. We have to respect our volunteers’ privacy.”

“Do you have a phone number for him? At his home? Perhaps you could call him and ask him to call us.”

Silence from Chicago. Just tiny plastic clicks. A database, possibly. A long list, on a computer. Lots of scrolling required. M for McCann would be exactly halfway.

Then the woman came back on the line and said, “No, I’m afraid we don’t have a phone number for him.”

After that they checked Chang’s secret private-eye databases for guys named McCann in Chicago, in case he stood out some other way, but they got hundreds of random hits, as was to be expected, Reacher supposed, given ethnic names and historic patterns of migration. Maybe their McCann was one of them, but there was no way of knowing. He was hidden like a grain of sand on a beach.