Nothing to Lose

The guy was still tucked tight under the sheet, but he had taken his last breath some hours previously. That was clear. And maybe he had taken it alone. He looked untended. His skin was cold and set and waxy. His eyes were clouded and open. His hair was thin and messy, like he had been tossing on the pillow, listlessly, looking for companionship or comfort. His chart had not been added to or amended since the last time Reacher had seen it. The long list of symptoms and complaints was still there, unresolved and apparently undiagnosed.

“TCE?” Vaughan said.

“Possible,” Reacher said.

We’re doing the best we can,Thurman had said.We’re hoping he’ll get better. I’ll have him taken to the hospital in Halfway tomorrow.

Bastard,Reacher thought.

“This could happen in Hope,” Vaughan said. “We need the data for Colorado Springs. For the lab.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Reacher said.

They stood by the bedside for a moment longer and then they backed out. They closed the door gently, as if it would make a difference to the guy, and headed down the steps and then up the line to the office marked Purchasing. Its door was secured with a padlock through a hasp. The padlock was strong and the hasp was strong but the screws securing the hasp to the jamb were weak. They yielded to little more than the weight of the wrecking bar alone. They pulled out of the wood frame and fell to the ground and the door sagged open an inch. Vaughan turned the flashlight on and hid its beam in her palm. She led the way inside. Reacher followed and closed the door and propped a chair against it.

There were three desks inside and three phones and a whole wall of file cabinets, three drawers high, maybe forty inches tall. A hundred and forty cubic feet of purchase orders, according to Reacher’s automatic calculation.

“Where do we start?” Vaughan whispered.

“TryT for TCE.”

The T drawers were about four-fifths of the way along the array, as common sense and the alphabet dictated they should be. They were crammed with papers. But none of the papers referred to trichloroethylene. Everything was filed according to supplier name. The T drawers were all about corporations called Tri-State and Thomas and Tomkins and Tribune. Tri-State had renewed a fire insurance policy eight months previously, Thomas was a telecommunications company that had supplied four new cell phones three months previously, Tomkins had put tires on two front-loaders six months ago, and Tribune delivered binding wire on a two-week schedule. All essential activity for the metal plant’s operation, no doubt, but none of it chemical in nature.

“I’ll start atA, ” Vaughan said.

“And I’ll start atZ, ” Reacher said. “I’ll see you atM orN, if not before.”

Vaughan was faster than Reacher. She had the flashlight. He had to rely on stray beams spilling from the other end of the array. Some things were obviously irrelevant. Anything potentially questionable, he had to haul it out and peer at it closely. It was slow work. The clock in his head ticked around, relentlessly. He started to worry about the dawn. It wasn’t far away. At one point he found something ordered in the thousands of gallons, but on close inspection it was only gasoline and diesel fuel. The supplier was Western Energy of Wyoming and the purchaser was Thurman Metals of Despair, Colorado. He crammed the paper back in place and moved left to theV drawers. The first file he pulled was for medical supplies. Saline solution, IV bags, IV stands, miscellaneous requisites. Small quantities, enough for a small facility.

The supplier was Vernon Medical of Houston, Texas.

The purchaser was Olympic Medical of Despair, Colorado.

Reacher held the paper out to Vaughan. An official purchase order, on an official company letterhead, complete with the same corporate logo they had seen twice on the billboards south of Colorado Springs. Main office address, inside the metal plant, two cabins down.

“Thurman owns Olympic,” Reacher said. “Where your husband is.”

Vaughan was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, “I don’t think I like that.”

Reacher said, “I wouldn’t either.”

“I should get him out of there.”

“Or get Thurman out of there.”

“How?”

“Keep digging.”

They got back to work. Reacher got throughV, andU, and skippedT because they had already checked it. He learned that Thurman’s oxyacetylene supplier was Utah Gases and his kerosene supplier was Union City Fuels. He found no reference to trichloroethylene. He was opening the last of the S drawers when Vaughan said, “Got it.”

“Kearny Chemical of New Jersey,” she said. “TCE purchases going back seven years.”

She lifted the whole file cradle out of the drawer and shone the flashlight on it and riffed through the papers with her thumb. Reacher saw the word trichloroethylene repeated over and over, jumping around from line to line like a kid’s badly drawn flip cartoon.