No Plan B

The main room of Roth’s apartment was laid out the same as Hannah’s. It had the same kind of furniture, maybe a decade older, a little more tired, with fewer colors. There was no TV and the top of one of the bookcases was filled with a line of framed photographs. Reacher could smell incense coming from somewhere, and right away the sense of trespass he always felt when he had to search a dead person’s home started to creep up his spine.

Hannah started toward an archway at the side of the kitchen area but paused when she drew level with the bookcase. She looked down at the photographs. They were all of her. There was a whole series. She was wearing the same gi in each one. In the first picture she had a white belt. By the last, the belt was brown. Hannah stretched out and flipped each photo in turn facedown. She said, “I can’t believe he kept those. He knew I hated them.” She sniffed and wiped a tear from her cheek.

Reacher said, “Do you still train?”

Hannah shook her head. “Not much. I haven’t graded since I moved next door. I only started as a way for Sam and me to go to the gym together. Working out is so boring. He was always nagging me to step it up again.”

Another tear welled up in the corner of Hannah’s eye. She blinked it away and began to move again. Through the archway. It led to a doglegged staircase that opened onto a corridor with three more doors. The first one was open a crack. Hannah pushed it the rest of the way and stepped into Roth’s bedroom. It was a small space. Tidy. Impersonal. The bed was made. There was no clothing strewn around. No shoes on the floor. No pictures on the walls. Just a book on the nightstand and a glass of water. The blinds were drawn. There were mirrors on the closet doors, which were closed. And in the far corner there was a small desk. It was made of metal and wood, and looked like it could fold down when not in use. There was no chair.

“Not much of an office space.” Hannah took a silver laptop computer from the desk and sat down on the bed. “The other room’s full of his weights and workout stuff. That was more important to him.”

Hannah opened the computer and started tapping away on the keyboard and dragging her finger up and down on a little shiny rectangle below it. After a couple of minutes she turned the screen so that Reacher could see.

She said, “This is weird. There are no emails from Angela. Plenty from other people. Even a bunch of spam he never got rid of. But none from her. Not even from years ago. None in his inbox. None in any of his folders. And none in the trash. Which is extra weird because Sam had his mail set to keep deleted messages in the trash for a week. I just checked.”

“Are there any emails from Danny Peel?”

Hannah tapped and swiped and clicked for another minute, then nodded her head. “A few. Mostly from before Danny moved.”

“So what happened to the messages from Angela?”

“Sam must have found a way to permanently delete them. Instantly. I just can’t see why he’d do that.”

“Could an expert recover them?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Can you tell if it was definitely Sam who deleted them?”

“No one else had access to his computer. He never takes it anywhere. It’s a laptop, but he only bought it because it’s small. Not to carry around.”

“Could they be deleted remotely?”

“I don’t know. I’m no expert. They could probably be wiped off the central server remotely, I guess. But after he downloaded them? Maybe some high-level hacker could do it. Probably not a regular person.”

“Have you noticed anyone hanging around the building the last few days? Any cars you didn’t recognize?”

“Why are you asking that again? You think someone broke in here after Sam died and wiped his computer?”

Reacher said nothing.

“Oh.” Hannah slowly closed the computer. “No. You think he was murdered? Like Angela was? No way.”

“Angela was murdered on her way to meet him. In secret. Probably with some critical evidence to show him. Even if Sam believed it was suicide, he had still seen Angela’s emails. He knew something was going on. He knew what kind of material she was bringing. That paints a pretty big target on his back.”

“No. It was totally natural causes. I saw him, remember. I found him.”

“Heart attacks can be faked. There are drugs. Chemicals.”

“Not in this case. Because you know the really sad thing? When I saw him, I wasn’t even surprised.”

“I heard he was in good health. Ripped, Harewood said.”

“He worked out a lot, yes. Too much, actually. It’s how he dealt with stress. But healthy? Not so much.”

“Sam was stressed?”

“He had a stressful job.”

“He had that job for thirty years.”

“The stress had gotten worse.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“New boss? Staff cuts? Some kind of disciplinary situation?”

“None of those things. He was just…having trouble. He didn’t say anything but I know him. Knew him. Knew the signs. He wasn’t eating properly. He wasn’t sleeping. He was working out too much. Pushing himself too hard. I should have done more to help him. He was a heart attack waiting to happen and I knew it.”