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legs, the low waist, the long arms. The shoulders were just skin and bone under a child’s T-shirt but somehow they already hinted at the simian bulk they would carry later. The eyes were Franz’s own, exactly, dark, cool, calm, reassuring. Like the boy was saying, Don’t worry, everything will turn out fine.
    Neagley asked him, “Charlie, is your mom home?”
    The boy nodded.
    “She’s in back,” he said. He let the handle go and stepped away to let them enter. Neagley went first. The house was too small for any one part of it to be really in back of any other part. It was like one generous room divided into four quadrants. Two small bedrooms on the right with a bathroom between, Reacher guessed. A small living room in the left front corner and a small kitchenette behind it. That was all. Tiny, but beautiful. Everything was off-white and pale yellow. There were flowers in vases. The windows were shaded with white wooden shutters. Floors were dark polished wood. Reacher turned and closed the door behind him and the street noise disappeared and silence clamped down over the house. A good feeling, once upon a time, he thought. Now maybe not so good.
    A woman stepped out of the kitchen area, from behind a half-wide dividing wall so abbreviated that it couldn’t have offered accidental concealment. Reacher felt she must have gone and hidden behind it, deliberately, when the doorbell rang. She looked a lot younger than him. A little younger than Neagley.
    Younger than Franz had been.
    She was a tall woman, white blonde, blue-eyed like a Scandinavian, and thin. She was wearing a light V-neck sweater and the bones showed in the front of her chest. She was clean and made up and perfumed and her hair was brushed. Perfectly composed, but not relaxed. Reacher could see wild bewilderment around her eyes, like a fright mask worn under the skin.
    There was awkward silence for a moment and then Neagley stepped forward and said, “Angela? I’m Frances Neagley. We spoke on the phone.”
    Angela Franz smiled in an automatic way and offered her hand. Neagley took it and shook it briefly and then Reacher stepped forward and took his turn. He said, “I’m Jack Reacher. I’m very sorry for your loss.” He took her hand, which felt cold and fragile in his.
    “You’ve used those words more than a few times,” she said. “Haven’t you?”
    “I’m afraid so,” Reacher said.
    “You’re on Calvin’s list,” she said. “You were an MP just like him.”
    Reacher shook his head. “Not just like him. Not nearly as good.”
    “You’re very kind.”
    “It’s how it was. I admired him tremendously.”
    “He told me about you. All of you, I mean. Many times. Sometimes I felt like a second wife. Like he had been married before. To all of you.”
    “It’s how it was,” Reacher said again. “The service was like a family. If you were lucky, that is, and we were.”
    “Calvin said the same thing.”
    “I think he got even luckier afterward.”
    Angela smiled again, automatically. “Maybe. But his luck ran out, didn’t it?”
    Charlie was watching them, Franz’s eyes half-open, appraising. Angela said, “Thank you very much for coming.”
    “Is there anything we can do for you?” Reacher asked.
    “Can you raise the dead?”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “The way he used to talk about you, I wouldn’t be surprised if you could.”
    Neagley said, “We could find out who did it. That’s what we were good at. And that’s as close as we can come to bringing him back. In a manner of speaking.”
    “But it won’t actually bring him back.”
    “No, it won’t. I’m very sorry.”
    “Why are you here?”
    “To give you our condolences.”
    “But you don’t know me. I came later. I wasn’t a part of all that.” Angela moved away, toward the kitchen. Then she changed her mind and turned back and squeezed sideways between Reacher and Neagley and sat down in the living room. Laid her palms on the arms of her chair. Reacher