Chapter 18

Reacher heard Knight calling his name. She was on the first floor. Reacher put his hand on the Glock in his waistband and took the stairs, two at a time, as quietly as possible. He paused in the hallway and heard her voice again. She said, "Reacher? In the kitchen."

Reacher found her standing next to an open door. It was about fifteen feet farther into the room than the door Reacher had come through after his encounter with Fletcher. Reacher moved up next to her and looked inside. It was a walk-in refrigerator. There were plastic containers of beef and chicken. Wooden crates of carrots and green beans. And on the floor, with pale skin and blank eyes and one ear resting on his shoulder, was a man's body.

Knight said, "Is it Gibson?"

Reacher said, "It must be. We know they brought him here. And there's another shirt just like the one he's wearing in a closet, upstairs."

"You don't recognize him? You were with him when he died."

Reacher crouched down and took a closer look at Gibson's face. His hands. His clothes. His shoes. There were a few things that were unnatural. The angle of his neck. The pallor of his skin. The utter, unworldly stillness that only settles on the dead. But as far as his features went, he appeared totally normal. Anonymous, even. There was nothing remarkable about his nose. His eyes. His mouth. His fingers. Reacher took it all in. He willed himself to remember something about the guy. Anything. His manner. His voice. Whether they had talked during the drive from the motel. Whether he had seemed confident. Happy. Scared. But nothing came. Reacher stood up and a question popped into his head. What if he hadn't stopped the car thieves from stealing Gibson's Lincoln? Would the guy still be alive? He pushed the thought away and turned to Knight. "It's like I never saw him before."

Knight took Reacher's place by the body. "Don't worry. I'm sure it'll come back." She pulled out her phone, experimented for a moment until she found the best angle, and took two pictures of Gibson's face. Then she stood up and took a bunch more shots to show his full body and the place where it had been dumped.

Knight moved to the regular refrigerator and took out a pack of butter. She said, "Have you seen any paper in the house?"

Reacher said, "On its way." He made his way back to Paris's room and took the spiral notebook from her desk. He took a pen, as well, just in case. And as he closed the door he again picked up the feeling that he was missing something.

Reacher handed the notebook to Knight. She opened it and set it down on Gibson's chest. Then she took the butter, smeared some on Gibson's thumb and each finger on his right hand, and pressed a greasy version of his prints onto the first page.

Knight stood and caught the look on Reacher's face. She said, "I know. You're horrified. You think I've contaminated the crime scene. Which in a way I have. But we're not going to be here all the time until the Feds show up. Anything could happen in the meantime. Fletcher could move the body. Kane could do God knows what to it. The house could burn down. And we want the Feds to be able—"

Reacher said, "Stop. Come with me."

—

Reacher led the way back to Paris's bedroom. He took the notebook from Knight, tore out the page with Gibson's prints, and put it back in its place on the table. He returned the pen to its mug. Continued to the bathroom. Opened the closet. Moved the tangle of towels out of the way, and lifted the lid off the crate.

Knight said, "Sand? What the…? What kind of bathroom product needs that kind of protection?"

Reacher said, "Like I'm an expert on bathroom products. Pass me the trash can?"

Knight grabbed it from next to the toilet, then realized what Reacher wanted it for. She said, "Move aside. I'll do it." She knelt down and started scooping out the sand and dumping it into the trash can. She moved carefully, beginning in the center, and working her way around in a circle. She soon came to the glass object Reacher had found earlier. She exposed more of it. Kept digging. Got down another three inches. Four. Then she stopped. Something silver colored was nestling in the liquid at the bottom of the vial. It was bright. Shiny. Metallic.

Reacher said, "The house is going to burn down. That's for sure. Only it won't be any kind of an accident."

"That metal is phosphorus. They must figure if it makes the fire hot enough it'll destroy Gibson's DNA. Prevent the Feds from identifying him."

"Is that possible? I didn't work much with DNA."

Knight nodded. "Sufficient heat can make it impossible to recover usable DNA. Obviously the fingerprints will be gone long before that. So will the teeth. It should be possible to tell that there are human remains in the heap of ash, but that'll be about it."

Knight picked up the trash can and started to pour the sand back into the crate. She worked it all the way around the vial, packed it tight, then smoothed it down at the top. She said, "Can you fix the lid on properly? Make it secure?"

Reacher said, "It was loose to start. That's how we should leave it."

"Is that safe? I don't want the damn stuff falling out in my car."

"Jenny, we can't take it."

"We have to. We can't let them destroy an agent's body."

"We have no choice. Think about it. They can come back and burnthe house down with the phosphorus. Or they can come back, find the phosphorus is missing, and do what? Run. And probably burn the place down anyway, hoping the fire will still get hot enough. Either way, the body is destroyed. But there's only one way the assholes don't escape."

Knight was silent for a moment. Then she said, "I guess you're right. Damn it. I hate to think of the family. No body to bury. No chance to properly say goodbye."

Reacher said nothing. He figured it was how you treat a person while they're alive that counts, and he couldn't quite banish the thought that he had made Gibson's accident possible, even if he had been trying to help the guy.

Knight said, "Could we switch the phosphorus for something else? Something that looks the same, but is harmless in a fire?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Could we sabotage it? Fix it so it doesn't burn? Or at least, not so hot?"

"Do I look like a chemist?"

"Damn. You're right. OK. So let's finish this search. Maybe we can find something that will help us catch them before they can set the fire."

"Any rooms left to check downstairs?"

"Just one."

—

Knight left Paris's room and made for the stairs. Reacher got as far as the doorway then stopped and called her back.

She said, "What? Come on. We're wasting time."

Reacher said, "There's something else wrong here. I could feel it before but I've only just figured out what it is. Look at the rug."

Knight came back as far as the threshold. She said, "The colors are awful. The pattern is gross. The woman obviously has no taste. But I don't see any other major problem."

"Look at where it is."

"On the floor? That's where rugs are supposed to be."

"It's off-center. People only put a rug off-center if there's a reason. Like they want it close enough to the bed that they don't have to step on the cold floor with bare feet when they get up. But this one isn't close to the bed. And look where it is in relation to the desk. And how thick it is. You pull the chair out far enough to sit on and the back legs will snag on the rug, every time. It would drive you crazy."

"Maybe she just has a weird sense of the aesthetic."

"Maybe. But let's make sure."

Reacher went back into the room and rolled up the rug. He pushed it to one side and systematically examined the entire space it had been covering. Left to right, near to far. He saw nothing problematic. Then he got on his knees. He bent down and tipped his head to the side so that he was looking parallel with the floor. Nothing seemed out of place. He focused on each board. Each joint. And spotted something. A piece of black hair, about an inch long. It was sticking up between a regular-sized board and a shorter section, almost level with the nearest table leg. He moved closer and tugged at the hair. It was stuck fast. He bent down again and checked the join. The gap on one side was wider. Not by much. A fraction of an inch. But there was a difference. Reacher could see it. He worked his thumbnail into the crack. Pressed against the small board. Levered it upward. Felt the wood shift. Just a little. He levered it again. It moved a tiny bit more. A sixteenth of an inch. Then an eighth. A quarter. Enough for Reacher to grip on to. He pulled and twisted. The board raised up farther, then came free. Knight had crowded in close and was ready with the flashlight on her phone. She shone it into the space Reacher had revealed. It was maybe a foot deep and spanned the whole width between the floor joists. It was a great hiding place. Plenty could be concealed in there. But Reacher could only see one thing. A notebook. He took it out, stood next to Knight, and opened it.

The first page was blank. Reacher turned it over and saw that the second and third pages had been combined. They had been divided into columns. There were nine. The first was relatively narrow. It looked like it contained a list of dates. The fifth was the same. The entries in the ninth all included @ signs, so must have been email addresses. And the other columns all contained groups of three digits, all separated by commas. There were twenty rows, plus twenty more on pages four and five, twenty more on pages six and seven, and fourteen on pages eight and nine. The next pages were blank. Reacher flicked through all the way to the end and only found one other set of entries. They were on the final pair of facing pages, and were written the other way up. Reacher turned the book around. If there were multiple sets of pages, they would work back to the center from the opposite end, but only one pair of pages was used. They were divided into eight columns. Not nine, this time. Three looked like dates. One, email addresses. And the rest, more groups of three digits. The entries at this end seemed to be newer. The ink was darker, and there were only two rows.

Reacher handed the notebook to Knight. He said, "Can you take pictures with your phone?"

She said, "Sure. All the pages? Or just a sample?"

"All of them."

Knight worked through, page by page. She checked the images were legible then passed the notebook back to Reacher. She said, "What does it mean? Any idea?"

"It's a book code. Each group of digits represents a word. The first digit tells you the page number. The second, the line. The third, the word itself."

"How do you know which book to look in?"

"You don't. Not unless the person who did the encryption tells you. That's why it's so simple, yet so hard to crack. Even if you find out the title of the book you still need to know which edition, and whether it's the hardcover or paperback."

"So we can't read it?"

"Not immediately." Reacher pointed to the books on the desk and the shelf. "My guess is one of these will be the key."

"I'll get pictures. We can identify the right one and order it online."

Reacher said, "Or we could go to a bookstore."