Page 97 of Chain Reaction

He said, “Do you have cameras down there?”

“They’re not working tonight. They went out about an hour ago. Some kind of technical glitch.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Never seen it before.”

“Does the elevator run straight up from there?”

“Sure,” the doorman said.

“Has anyone used it in the last hour?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t recall hearing it move. This is generally a quiet time of night.”

“OK,” Reacher said. “Thank you.”

“Which tenant?” the doorman asked.

“Mrs. Bisley,” Reacher said. “You know her?”

“Nice lady,” the doorman said. “Not doing so well. Her husband was killed.”

Reacher nodded.

“It’s a sad situation,” he said.

“Actually you just missed her.”

“Did I?”

“She went out for a walk.”

“Now? It’s kind of late for a walk.”

“She takes the baby in a stroller. She does it every night. It’s the only way to get the kid to sleep. Otherwise she cries for hours and the neighbors complain.”

“Where does she walk?”

“I don’t know.”

Chapter 34

Reacher looked up and down the street and saw no one. Which way would she go? How far would she go? How long did it take for a baby to fall asleep? He had no idea. It depended, he supposed. The kid was upset. It was sensing some kind of nameless dread in the air all around it. Hard to dispel. Might take hours. On the other hand maybe fresh nighttime air and random forward motion knocked the kid right out. Who knew?

He assumed she would stick to the wide lit-up streets. No narrow alleys. No dark corners. She was an educated person and a logical thinker. She would aim to have the baby fall asleep just before they got back to the building. No wasted distance. But maybe the task was too unpredictable for detailed planning. In which case she would always want to be ready to head back by the shortest possible route as soon as the miracle happened. Not no wasted distance, but the least wasted distance. Which meant she would walk a big square, maybe two blocks out, under the street lamps, using the crosswalks, using the hum of the traffic as a soothing lullaby.

Which way did she turn when she came out the lobby? Left, almost certainly. Most people did, given a random choice. No one knew why. Reacher got back in the car. He U-turned in front of the building, heading to the right where she went to the left, so he would meet her head-on as she walked around her square in one direction, and he drove around it in the other. He took it slow. The city speed limit was twenty-five miles an hour. He did less. He felt like Elwood in Palo Alto. There was no sign of her on the home straight. He turned right two blocks further on. Drove the top edge of the square. No sign. He turned right again, four blocks later. Down the back straight. No sign. He turned right again and drove the bottom edge of the square. Empty sidewalks. No sign of her. He turned right for the fourth time and arrived back at her building. No sign of her anywhere.

He concluded the kid was not yet asleep. He concluded now she was lapping an inner square, one block tighter. Like a spiral. He made the first turn. An empty sidewalk. No one there. Just the wash of light from the nighttime storefronts, and pools of light from the street lamps, and the glittering reflections of both in the big glass windows in the high-rise buildings all around. Overall there was a lot of glass. Crystal City. The place lived up to its name. He made the next turn.

And there she was. A hundred feet away. Coming right toward him. A slender woman in a thin T-shirt, pushing an elaborate stroller the size of a garden wheelbarrow. In it was a tiny kid, writhing around, batting the air with tiny fists. He pulled over at the curb. The woman walked on toward him. He buzzed his window down. He heard thin wails of rage and fatigue and frustration. He killed the motor and opened his door.

He stood still next to the car. Uncertain. In his life he had faced down people with guns and knives and baseball bats and cans of gasoline and hammers and axes and all manner of other weapons. As recently as that afternoon. But a grieving widow with a howling infant was a whole different proposition. He waited.

She took notice of him about fifty feet away. She slowed a little and glanced all around. No obvious danger. A bright street, passing traffic, everything normal. Except for a huge unkempt man apparently waiting for her. Weird. But she kept on walking. The baby kept on fussing. Reacher raised his hand, palm out, fingers spread. A greeting, and an ancient reassurance. From caveman days. No rock, no stone. Unarmed. I mean you no harm. She steered the stroller one-handed and took out her phone. Ready to call 911, he guessed. He backed away a step and leaned on the car, as if making room for her to pass, polite, deferential, unthreatening.

She stopped ten feet away. The baby grizzled and grumbled and scrubbed its head against the upholstery.