Without Fail - Lee Child [110]
“So, what’s the verdict?” Neagley asked. “You going to be walking around from now on thinking you killed your brother?”
“A little bit, maybe,” he said. “But I’ll get over it.”
She nodded. “You will. And you should. It wasn’t your fault. He was thirty-eight. He wasn’t waiting for his little brother to show up.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“About what?”
“Something else Froelich said.”
“She wonders why we aren’t doing it?”
“You’re quick,” he said.
“I could sense it,” Neagley said. “She came across as a little concerned. A little jealous. Cold, even. But then, I’d just kicked her ass with the audit thing.”
“You sure had.”
“We’ve never even touched, you know that, you and me? We’ve never had any physical contact of any kind at all. You’ve never patted me on the back, never even shaken my hand.”
He looked at her, and thought back through fifteen years.
“Haven’t I?” he said. “Is that good or bad?”
“It’s good,” she said. “But don’t ask why.”
“OK,” he said.
“Reasons of my own. Don’t ask what they are. But I don’t like to be touched. And you never touched me. I always figured you could sense it. And I always appreciated that. It’s one of the reasons I always liked you so much.”
He said nothing.
“Even if you should have been in reform school,” she said.
“You probably should have been in there with me.”
“We’d have made a good team,” she said. “We are a good team. You should come back to Chicago with me.”
“I’m a wanderer,” he said.
“OK, I won’t push,” she said. “And look on the bright side with Froelich. Cut her some slack. She’s probably worth it. She’s a nice woman. Have some fun. You’re good together.”
“OK,” he said. “I guess.”
Neagley stood up and yawned.
“You OK?” he asked.
She nodded. “I’m fine.”
Then she put a kiss on the tips of her fingers and blew it to him from six feet away. Walked out of the room without saying another word.
He was tired, but he was agitated and the room was cold and the bed was lumpy and he couldn’t sleep. So he put his pants and shirt back on and walked to the closet and pulled out Joe’s box. He didn’t expect to find anything of interest in it. It would be abandoned stuff, that was all. Nobody leaves important things in a girlfriend’s house when he knows he’s going to skip out someday soon.
He put the box on the bed and pulled the flaps open. First thing he saw was a pair of shoes. They were packed heel-to-toe sideways across one end of the box. They were formal black shoes, good leather, reasonably heavy. They had proper stitched welts and toe caps. Thin laces in five holes. Imported, probably. But not Italian. They were too substantial. British, maybe. Like the Air Force tie.
He placed them on the bedcover. Put the heels six inches apart and the toes a little farther. The right heel was worn more than the left. The shoes were fairly old, fairly battered. He could see the whole shape of Joe’s feet in them. The whole shape of his body, towering above them, like he was standing right there wearing them, invisible. They were like a death mask.
There were three books in the box, packed edge-up. One was Du côté de chez Swann, which was the first volume of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. It was a French paperback with a characteristic severe plain cover. He leafed through it. He could manage the language, but the content passed over his head. The second book was a college text about statistical analysis. It was heavy and dense. He leafed through it and gave up on both the language and the content. Piled it on top of Proust on the bed.
He picked up the third book. Stared at it. He recognized it. He had bought it for Joe himself, a long time ago, for his thirtieth birthday. It was Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment . It was in English, but he had bought it in Paris at a used bookstore. He could even remember exactly what it had cost, which wasn’t very much. The Paris bookseller had relegated it to the foreign-language section, and it wasn’t a first edition or anything. It was just a nice-looking volume, and a great story.
He opened it to