Without Fail - Lee Child [43]
“Why did you break up?” he asked.
The doorbell rang downstairs. It sounded loud in the Sunday hush.
“The food,” Froelich said.
They went down and ate together at the kitchen table, silently. It felt curiously intimate, but also distant. Like sitting next to a stranger on a long plane ride. You feel connected, but also not connected.
“You can stay here tonight,” she said. “If you like.”
“I didn’t check out of the hotel.”
She nodded. “So check out tomorrow. Then base yourself here.”
“What about Neagley?”
Silence for a beat.
“Her, too, if she wants. There’s another bedroom on the third floor.”
“OK,” he said.
They finished the meal and he put the containers in the trash and rinsed the plates. She set the dishwasher going. Then her phone rang. She stepped through to the living room to answer it. Talked for a long moment and then hung up and came back.
“That was Stuyvesant,” she said. “He’s giving you the formal go-ahead.”
He nodded. “So call Neagley and tell her to get her ass in gear.”
“Now?”
“Get a problem, solve a problem,” he said. “That’s my way. Tell her to be out front of the hotel in thirty minutes.”
“Where are you going to start?”
“With the video,” he said. “I want to watch the tapes again. And I want to meet with the guy who runs that part of the operation.”
Thirty minutes later they scooped Neagley off the sidewalk in front of the hotel. She had changed into a black suit with a short jacket. The pants were cut tight. They looked pretty good from the back, in Reacher’s opinion. He saw Froelich arrive at the same conclusion. But she said nothing. Just drove, five minutes, and then they were back in the Secret Service offices. Froelich headed straight for her desk and left Reacher and Neagley with the agent who ran the video surveillance. He was a small thin nervous guy in Sunday clothes who had come in at short notice to meet with them. He looked a little dazed about it. He led them to a closet-sized equipment room full of racks of recorders. One wall was a floor-to-ceiling shelving unit with hundreds of VHS tapes stacked neatly in black plastic boxes. The recorders themselves were plain gray industrial units. The whole tiny space was full of neat wiring and procedural memos tacked to the walls and soft noise from small motors turning and the smell of warm circuit boards and the green glow of LED numbers ticking over relentlessly.
“System really looks after itself,” the guy said. “There are four recorders slaved to each camera, six hours to a tape, so we change all the tapes once a day, file them away, keep them three months, and then reuse them.”
“Where are the originals from the night in question?” Reacher asked.
“Right here,” the guy said. He fiddled in his pocket and came out with a bunch of small brass keys on a ring. Squatted down in the limited space and opened a low cupboard. Took out three boxes.
“These are the three I copied for Froelich,” he said, on his knees.
“Some place where we can look at them?”
“They’re no different than the copies.”
“Copying causes detail loss,” Reacher said. “First rule, start with the originals.”
“OK,” the guy said. “You can look at them right here, I guess.”
He stood up awkwardly and pushed and pulled some equipment around on a bench and angled a small monitor outward and switched on a stand-alone player. A blank gray square appeared on the screen.
“No remotes on these things,” he said. “You have to use the buttons.”
He stacked the three tape boxes in the correct time sequence.
“Got chairs?” Reacher asked.
The guy ducked out and came back dragging two typist’s chairs. They tangled in the doorway and he had trouble fitting them both in front of the narrow bench. Then he glanced around like he was unhappy about leaving strangers alone in his little domain.
“I guess I’ll wait in the foyer,” he said. “Call me when you’re through.”
“What’s your name?” Neagley asked.
“Nendick,” the guy said, shyly.
“OK, Nendick,” she