"I think she was happy where she was," he said. "She could have changed back, you know, afterward, if she wasn't. But she didn't. So I think that means she wanted to stay there. She was a fine agent, doing important work."
"How could she change back? Was she supposed to see him every day like nothing had happened?"
"I meant she could have waited the year, and then changed back."
"What difference does a year make? He broke her heart. How could she ever work for him again?"
Reacher said nothing.
"Is he coming here?" she asked.
"No," Reacher said. "He's not."
"Good," she said. "Because he wouldn't be welcome."
"No, I guess he wouldn't," Reacher said.
"I suppose he's too busy," she said.
She walked off, toward the dirt road. The clergyman followed her, and so did Froelich's father. But then he hesitated and turned back.
"She knows it's not really Joe's fault," he said. "We both know Mary Ellen was doing what she wanted."
Reacher nodded. "She was terrific at it."
"Was she?"
"Best they ever had."
The old man nodded, like he was satisfied.
"How is Joe?" he asked. "I met him a couple of times."
"He died," Reacher said. "Five years ago. In the line of duty."
There was quiet for a moment.
"I'm very sorry," the old man said.
"But don't tell Mrs. Froelich," Reacher said. "If it helps her not to know."
The old man nodded again and turned away and set off after his wife with a strange loping stride.
"See?" Neagley said quietly. "Not everything is your fault."
There was a notice board planted in the ground near the church door. It was like a very slim cabinet mounted on sturdy wooden legs. It had glass doors. Behind the doors was a square yard of green felt with slim cotton tapes thumbtacked diagonally all over it. Notices typed on a manual typewriter were slipped behind the tapes. At the top was a permanent list of regular Sunday services. The first was held every week at eight o'clock in the morning. This was clearly a denomination that demanded a high degree of commitment from its parishioners. Next to the permanent list was a hastily typed announcement that this Sunday's eight o'clock service would be dedicated to the memory of Mary Ellen Froelich. Reacher checked his watch and shivered in the cold.
"Twenty-two hours," he said. "Time to lock and load."
They brought the Yukon nearer to the church and opened the tailgate. Bent over together and loaded all four weapons. They took a Steyr each. Neagley took the H amp;K and Reacher took the M16. They distributed the spare rounds between them, as appropriate. Then they locked the car and left it.
"Is it OK to bring guns into a church?" Neagley asked.
"It's OK in Texas," Reacher said. "Probably compulsory here."
They hauled the oak door open and stepped inside. It was very similar to the Bismarck building. Reacher wondered briefly whether rural communities had bought their churches by mail order, the same as everything else. It had the same parchment-white paint, the same shiny pews, the same pulpit. The same three bell ropes hanging down inside the tower. The same staircase. They went all the way up to the high ledge and found a ladder bolted to the wall, with a trapdoor above it.
"Home sweet home," Reacher said.
He led the way up the ladder and through the trapdoor and into the bell chamber. The bell chamber was not the same as the one in Bismarck. It had a clock added into it. There was a four-foot cube of brass machinery mounted centrally on iron girders just above the bells themselves. The clock had two faces, both driven simultaneously by the same gears inside the cube. Long iron shafts ran straight out from the cube, through the walls, through the backs of the faces, all the way to the external hands. The faces were mounted in the openings where the louvers had been, to the east and the west. The machinery was ticking loudly. Gear wheels and ratchets were clicking. They were setting up tiny sympathetic resonances in the bells themselves.
"We've got no view east or west," Reacher said.
Neagley shrugged.
"North and south is all we need," she said. "That's where the road runs."
"I guess," he said. "You take the south."
He ducked under the girders and the iron shafts and crawled over to the louver facing north. Knelt up and looked out. Got a perfect view. He could see the bridge and the river. He could see the whole town. He could see