No Plan B

“Detective Harewood told me you used to be a cop. In the army. Well, a cop shows up at your door? He asks about someone, then says he has bad news? Doesn’t take a genius. What happened to her?”

“She got hit by a bus.”

“Seriously?”

Reacher nodded.

“I’m sorry. That’s awful. Was it an accident?”

“No.”

“Wait. Was it…She didn’t…”

“Jump? No.”

“She was murdered? That’s terrible. I told her not to move to Mississippi. People are crazy there, you know.”

“It happened right here. In Gerrardsville.”

“No. I don’t believe it. When?”

“Yesterday.”

“What was Angela doing in Gerrardsville yesterday?”

“The police think she came to see Sam.”

“Why? He was helping her with that accounting thing, but on the phone. And on email. There was no need for her to come all this way.”

“The police think there was something between them.”

“What, like romantically?”

Reacher nodded.

Hannah shook her head. “Not a chance.”

“Are you sure?”

“A thousand percent. See, one, if Sam was interested in someone, he’d tell me. And two, if he was looking for romance, you’d be more his cup of tea than Angela.”

“Was that common knowledge?”

“He worked in a prison. He started when he was eighteen. Thirty years ago that wasn’t the kind of thing you broadcast. Not in that environment, anyway.”

“Is that why you got divorced?”

“It’s why we got married. Things were different back then. For both of us. We worked together. Kind of. He was a corrections officer. I worked for a charity that helps ex-cons adjust to normal life. Still do, on a casual basis. So it made sense. But gradually attitudes changed. They improved. Or so we thought.”

“I hear you. But here’s the strange thing. I saw a bunch of emails between Sam and Angela. They went back weeks. And they wound up by setting a meeting for yesterday.”

Angela straightened up. “You hacked into Sam’s email?”

“No. I saw printouts. They came from Angela’s employer.”

Hannah thought for a moment. “Sam wasn’t scheduled to work yesterday. He mentioned he was planning to go out. If Angela was in town it’s conceivable they were going to meet. But not to hook up. Trust me.”

“So what about the emails I saw?”

“Could someone have impersonated Sam, online, to lure Angela here? If they wanted to kill her? Pedophiles do that kind of thing all the time. With kids, anyway. And Angela already knew Sam. She trusted him. It would be easier to use his identity to trick her than to invent a new one.”

“Good in theory, but no. Angela initiated everything. Said she wanted to rekindle an old flame.”

“But there wasn’t any old flame. There couldn’t have been.”

“Maybe the accounting thing they were dealing with was more serious than Sam let on. Maybe they set up a meeting to talk about it. Maybe Angela was going to bring some documents for him to see. Or some other kind of evidence. But someone found out. Decided to stop them. And replaced the genuine emails between them with fake ones.”

“Who would do that?”

“A co-worker with light fingers. A boss paying bribes. A supplier ripping off Angela’s employer. Plenty of candidates.”

“OK.” Hannah shrugged. “But I don’t know about planting fake emails. Why would anyone go to the trouble? Why not just delete the real ones?”

“To cover their asses. The last fake email from Angela hinted that if Sam didn’t take her back, she would kill herself. The guy who killed her made it look like she jumped under that bus. Add those things together and the police have no reason to dig any deeper.”

“If Sam hadn’t had his heart attack, he’d have gone to meet Angela. Waited around for a while. And when she didn’t show, and he was told she killed herself, what would he have done? Figured the stress of the whole thing had gotten too much for her? Maybe.”

“Hannah, did you notice anyone hanging around here recently? Anyone you didn’t recognize? On Sunday? Maybe Monday? Maybe in a car?”

“Wait. I’m still thinking through your idea. It might have flown. Worth a shot, I guess. As long as Sam bought Angela’s death as suicide. That’s the key because he wouldn’t have seen whatever evidence she was bringing. And he wouldn’t have known about the bogus emails because they wouldn’t have shown up on his computer. They couldn’t have, or he’d have been, like, What the hell?”

“The bogus emails couldn’t have shown up, but what about the real ones? What would have happened to those?”

“They’ll still be on his computer, I guess.”

“You have a key to his apartment?”

“Sure. Why?”

Reacher stood up. “I need to see that computer. Right now.”

Chapter 16

Hannah’s hand was shaking when she tried to get the key into the lock on Roth’s door.

She said, “I’m sorry. This is the first time I’ve been here since…”

Reacher said, “It’s OK. You don’t have to come inside.”

“No.” Hannah closed her eyes for a moment. She took a deep breath. “I’m doing this. For Sam. If his friend was murdered, he wouldn’t want people to think it was suicide. Angela has—had—a kid. And Sam was a prison guard. He wouldn’t want a murderer to go free.”