Without Fail by Lee Child Page B

back to triple speed in time to catch her opening Stuyvesant's door for a second. She held on to the handle and leaned inside with one foot off the ground and turned immediately and closed the door. Rushed around the square space and collected her purse and an umbrella and a coat and disappeared into the gloom at the far end of the corridor. Froelich doubled the playback speed once again and the time counter unspooled faster but the picture remained entirely static. The stillness of a deserted office descended and held steady as time rushed by.
    "When do the cleaners come in?" Reacher asked.
    "Just before midnight," Froelich said.
    "That late?"
    "They're night workers. This is a round-the-clock operation."
    "And there's nothing else visible before then?"
    "Nothing at all."
    "So spool ahead. We get the picture." Froelich operated the buttons and shuttled between fast forward with snow on the screen and regular-speed playback with a picture to check the timecode. At eleven.fifty p.m. she let the tape run. The counter clicked ahead, a second at a time. At eleven fifty-two there was motion at the far end of the corridor. A team of three people emerged from the gloom. There were two women and a man, all of them wearing dark overalls. They looked Hispanic. They were all short and compact, dark-haired, stoic. The man was pushing a cart. It had a black garbage bag locked into a hoop at the front, and trays stacked with cloths and spray bottles on shelves at the rear.
    One of the women was carrying a vacuum cleaner. It rode on her back like a pack. It had a long hose with a broad nozzle. The other woman was carrying a bucket in one hand and a mop in the other. The mop had a square foam pad on the head and a complicated hinge halfway up the handle, for squeezing excess water away. All three of them were wearing rubber gloves. The gloves looked pale on their hands. Maybe clear plastic, maybe light yellow. All three of them looked tired. Like night workers. But they looked neat and clean and professional. They had tidy haircuts and their expressions said: we know this ain't the world's most exciting job, but we're going to do it properly. Froelich paused the tape and froze them as they approached Stuyvesant's door.
    "Who are they?" Reacher asked.
    "Direct government employees," Froelich said. "Most office cleaners in this city are contract people, minimum wage, no benefits, high turnover nobodies. Same in any city-. But we hire our own. The FBI, too. We need a high degree of reliability, obviously. We keep two crews at all times. They're properly interviewed, they're background-checked, and they don't get in the door unless they're good people. Then we pay them real well, and give them full health plans, and dental, and paid vacations, the whole nine yards. They're department members, same as anybody else."
    "And they respond?"
    She nodded. "They're terrific, generally."
    "But you think this crew smuggled the letter in."
    "No other conclusion to come to."
    Reacher pointed at the screen. "So where is it now?"
    "Could be in the garbage bag, in a stiff envelope. Could be in a page protector, taped underneath one of the trays or the shelves. Could be taped to the guy's back, under his overalls."
    She hit play and the cleaners continued onward into Stuyve sant's office. The door swung shut behind them. The camera stared forward blankly. The time counter ticked on, five minutes, seven, eight. Then the tape ran out.
    "Midnight," Froelich said.
    She ejected the cassette and put the second tape in. Pressed play and the date changed to Thursday and the timer restarted at midnight exactly. It crawled onward, two minutes, four, six.
    "They certainly do a thorough job," Neagley said. "Our office cleaners would have done the whole building by now. A lick and a promise."
    "Stuyvesant likes a clean working environment," Froelich said.
    At seven minutes past midnight the door opened and the crew filed out.
    "So now you figure the letter is there on the