Without Fail - Lee Child [183]
“Happily?” he repeated.
Reacher gathered the badges and the IDs and the licenses from his pockets. Stuyvesant cupped his hands to take them all.
“Maybe more happily than we thought,” Reacher said. “They weren’t yours, that’s for sure. They were cops, from Idaho, near Boise. You’ve got the addresses there. I’m sure you’ll find what you need. The computer, the paper and the printer, Andretti’s thumb in the freezer. Something else, maybe.”
He took a scrap of paper from his pocket.
“I found this too,” he said. “It was in one of the wallets. It’s a register receipt. They went to the grocery store late on Friday and bought six TV dinners and six big bottles of water.”
“So?” Stuyvesant said.
Reacher smiled. “My guess is they weren’t doing their regular weekly marketing, not in the middle of everything else they were doing. I think maybe they were making sure Mrs. Nendick could eat while they came out here. I think she’s still alive.”
Stuyvesant snatched the receipt and ran for the helicopter.
Reacher and Neagley said their good-byes at the Denver airport late the next morning, Monday. Reacher signed over his fee check to her and she bought him a first-class ticket on United to New York La Guardia. He walked her to the gate for her Chicago flight. People were already boarding. She didn’t say anything. Just placed her bag on the floor and stood still directly in front of him. Then she stretched up and hugged him, fast, like she didn’t really know how to do it. She let go after a second and picked up her bag and walked down the jetway. Didn’t look back.
He made it into La Guardia late in the evening. Took a bus and a subway to Times Square and walked Forty-second Street until he found B. B. King’s new club. A four-piece guitar band was just finishing its first set. They were pretty good. He listened until the set ended and then walked back to the ticket taker.
“Was there an old woman here last week?” he asked. “Sounded a little like Dawn Penn? With an old guy on keyboards?”
The ticket taker shook his head.
“Nobody like that,” the guy said. “Not here.”
Reacher nodded once and stepped out into the shiny darkness. It was cold on the street. He headed west for the Port Authority and a bus out of town.