CHAPTER 54

PAULING SAID, “THAT’S absurd. Lane wouldn’t employ anyone who can’t talk. Why would he? And nobody mentioned it. You asked about Taylor several times. They said he was a good soldier. They didn’t say he was a good soldier except he can’t talk. They’d have mentioned that little detail, don’t you think?”

“Two words,” Reacher said. “All we need to do is add two words and the whole thing makes perfect sense.”

“What two words?”

“We’ve been saying the guy can’t talk. Truth is, he can’t afford to talk.”

Pauling paused a long moment.

Then she said: “Because of his accent.”

Reacher nodded. “Exactly. All along we’ve been saying nobody was missing, but by definition Taylor was missing from the start. And Taylor was behind this whole damn thing. He planned it, and he set it up, and he executed it. He rented the apartment and he bought the chair. He probably did other stuff we didn’t catch up with yet. And everywhere he went, he couldn’t risk opening his mouth. Not even once. Because he’s English. Because of his accent. He was realistic. He knew he had to be leaving a trail. And if whoever was tracking him came along later and heard all about an average-looking forty-year-old man with an English accent, they would have made him in a second. It would have been a total no-brainer. Who else would anyone have thought of? Because he was the last one to see Kate and Jade alive.”

“He did the same thing as Knight, five years ago. That’s how the takedown worked.”

“Exactly,” Reacher said again. “It’s the only way to explain it. Possibly he drove them to Bloomingdale’s but certainly he didn’t stop there. He just pulled a gun and kept on going. Maybe threatened to shoot Kate in front of the kid. That would have kept her quiet. Then he just dropped off the radar and started relying on a kind of double alibi he had created for himself. First, he was presumed dead. And second, all anyone would ever remember of him was a guy that couldn’t speak. A guy with no tongue. It was a perfect piece of misdirection. Weird, exotic, absolutely guaranteed to get us chasing off in the wrong direction.”

Pauling nodded. “Brilliant, in a way.”

“It was all anyone remembered,” Reacher said. “Like that old Chinese man? All he really recalled was the way the guy gulped like a fish. And the super on Sixth Avenue? We said, tell us about the guy, and he said he keeps his mouth tight shut all the time because he’s embarrassed that he can’t talk. That was the beginning and the end of his description. The obvious thing and the only thing. Everything else was trivial by comparison.”

“Open the envelope,” Pauling said. “Confirm it.”

So Reacher lifted the envelope’s flap and slid the two photographs out, facedown. He tapped the back of the top picture like a cardsharp looking for luck.

Then he flipped it over.

It was the guy he had seen twice before.

No question about it.

Taylor.

White, a little sunburned, lean, chiseled, clean-shaven, jaw clamped, not smiling, maybe forty years old. Blue jeans, blue shirt, blue ball cap, white sneakers. All the clothing worn and comfortable. It was clearly a very recent shot. Patti Joseph had caught him coming out of the Dakota one late-summer morning. It looked like he had paused on the sidewalk and lifted his gaze to check the weather. By doing so he had met the angle of Patti’s long Nikon lens perfectly.

“No doubt about it,” Reacher said. “That’s the guy I saw getting into the Mercedes and the Jaguar.”

He turned the second picture over. It was a closer shot. Maximum zoom, and therefore not quite as clear. There was a little camera shake. The focus wasn’t perfect. But it was a viable photograph. Same location, same angle, different day. Same guy. But this time his mouth was open. His lips were drawn back. He wasn’t smiling. Maybe he was just grimacing against the sudden glare of the sun after stepping out of the dark Dakota lobby. He had terrible teeth. Some were missing. The rest were gappy and uneven.

“There you go,” Reacher said. “There’s another reason. No wonder everyone told us he kept his mouth clamped shut all the time. He’s not dumb. He was concealing two pieces of evidence at the same time, not just one. His English accent, and his British dentistry. Because that’s really a no-brainer. Someone from Lane’s crew hears about a Brit with bad teeth? It would have been like wearing a nametag around his neck.”

“Where is he now? England?”

“That’s my guess. He flew home, where he feels safe.”

“With the money?”

“Checked luggage. Three bags.”

“Could he do that? With all the X-rays?”

“I don’t see why not. I once had a lesson about paper money from an expert. Right here in New York City, as a matter of fact. At Columbia University. The paper isn’t really paper, as such. It’s mostly linen and cotton fibers. More in common with the shirt on your back than a newspaper. I think it would show up like clothing on an X-ray machine.”

Pauling slid the photographs across the table and butted them together side by side in front of her. Looked at one, looked at the other. Reacher sensed her running through an explanation in her head. An analysis. A narrative.

“He’s tan from the Hamptons,” she said. “He was there all summer with the family. And then he was worried about someone checking his apartment from the street, afterward. That’s why he took the lightbulb out of the guest room and covered the window. The place had to look empty, if anyone ever checked.”

“He was very thorough.”

“And very unsentimental. He walked away from that great apartment.”

“He can rent ten apartments now.”

“That’s for sure.”

“It’s a shame,” Reacher said. “I liked him when I thought he was dead. Everyone spoke well of him.”

“I wouldn’t take recommendations from those guys.”

“I guess not. But I usually like Brits. Gregory seems OK.”

Pauling said, “He’s probably as bad as the rest of them.”

Then she stacked the photographs and slid them back.

“Well, you’ve got the name to give to Lane,” she said.

Reacher didn’t reply.

“A unified theory of everything,” she said. “Like a physicist. I don’t see why you say it’s only partial. Taylor did it all.”

“He didn’t,” Reacher said. “He didn’t make the phone calls. An American made the phone calls.”