Page 107 of Chain Reaction

“Disappointing,” she said. “Two steps forward, one step back. I was expecting Julia to have it all figured out. I did more than look at her website. I ran her through our whole system. She’s very good. She’s probably smarter than her husband was.”

“I never met him,” Reacher said. “So I can’t comment. But I thought she explained it all very well. That’s for sure. I even understood some of it.”

“She taught Hindi to a beagle. Although you looked more like a silverback gorilla with the baby. I saw a nature show on PBS. A very tender scene. You would have fit right in.”

“She’s a sweet kid. I never did that before. I enjoyed it.”

“Shame her mother couldn’t help us more.”

“I think she told us everything we needed to know.”

“Did she?”

“She made it clear that two pointy-head software hotshots had no explanation.”

“How does that help?”

“They did complicated math and reconstructed what must have been there from the numbers alone. Still no explanation. I bet they fussed at it for hours. Maybe even days. I bet they examined every single theoretical possibility. They turned them over and over in their highly educated minds. Eight years total at M.I.T., plus days and days of high-quality pointy-head thinking, and still they got nowhere. Then what happened?”

“What?”

“The only solid fact we ever knew for sure in this case is that Bisley went to Summertown, Colorado. He actually traveled there. He quit laying back in his armchair, staring up at the ceiling. He got his actual ass on an actual airplane. He left the theoretical world behind. Why would he do that? Because he decided he needed to go there and eyeball something. With his actual eyes. Because he had concluded that if a technical explanation was categorically impossible, then the explanation had to be purely physical. Like Sherlock Holmes said. When you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

“Physical how?”

“Something to do with gravel,” Reacher said. “That’s my bet. I knew all along we would be going back to Colorado. Which is fine with me. No bystanders. No risk of collateral casualties. It’s good terrain for a fight.”

“You’re going to need it,” Turner said. “Julia Bisley wasn’t the only name I ran through our system. I went looking for Hennessy too.”

“Did you find him?”

“He served twenty years in the 75th Ranger Regiment. Terminal at sergeant first class. He retired fifteen years ago, after a pretty solid career, apart from a glitch way back at the very beginning, when he was a private first class.”

“What kind of a glitch?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“Should I?”

“You busted him.”

Chapter 37

Reacher had no recollection of anyone called Hennessy. None at all. A Gaelic name, he knew, originally with the traditional O’ in front of it, meaning a descendant of hAonghusa, which was another Gaelic name, for a Celtic deity or mythological figure. Translated, transliterated, and anglicized. The O’ disappeared and hAon-ghus-a became Hen-nes-sy. Close enough. But no recollection. Certainly not of a private first class in the 75th Ranger Regiment. Based at Fort Benning in Georgia. Part of Joint Special Operations Command. Trained to deploy a whole battalion within eighteen hours. Good soldiers.

He said, “Did he change his name?”

“No,” Turner said. “I saw his birth certificate. He was always Hennessy. First names Matthew Joseph.”

“Why did I bust him?”

“He beat up a civilian in a bar over the line in Alabama. Some good old boy. The local police department was very upset. But JSOC got all sensitive about it and took it away from them and gave it to the 110th instead. Which was still yours at the time. You went down to Benning and arrested him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Your signature is on the paperwork.”

“I don’t remember.”