"What are the categories? What are we looking at? Seven of what?"
Dixon nodded. "That's the key. We need to understand that first."
"Can't be medical tests. Can't be any kind of tests. Why stick twenty-seven questions in the middle of a sequence where everything else is twenty-six questions? That would destroy consistency."
Dixon shrugged and stood up straight. She took off her jacket and dumped it on a chair. Walked to the window and pulled a faded drape aside and looked out and down. Then up at the hills.
"I like LA," she said.
"Me too, I guess," Reacher said.
"I like New York better."
"Me too, probably."
"But the contrast is nice."
"I guess."
"Shitty circumstances, but it's great to see you again, Reacher. Really great."
Reacher nodded. "Likewise. We thought we'd lost you. Didn't feel good."
"Can I hug you?"
"You want to hug me?"
"I wanted to hug all of you at the Hertz office. But I didn't, because Neagley wouldn't have liked it."
"She shook Angela Franz's hand. And the dragon lady's, at New Age."
"That's progress," Dixon said.
"A little," Reacher said.
"She was abused, way back. That was always my guess."
"She'll never talk about it," Reacher said.
"It's sad."
"You bet."
Karla Dixon turned to him and Reacher took her in his arms and hugged her hard. She was fragrant. Her hair smelled of shampoo. He lifted her off her feet and spun her around, a complete slow circle. She felt light and thin and fragile. Her back was narrow. She was wearing a black silk shirt, and her skin felt warm underneath it. He set her back on her feet and she stretched up tall and kissed his cheek.
"I've missed you," she said. "Missed you all, I mean."
"Me too," he said. "I didn't realize how much."
"You like life after the army?" she asked.
"Yes, I like it fine."
"I don't. But maybe you're reacting better than me."
"I don't know how I'm reacting. I don't know whether I'm reacting at all. I look at you people and I feel like I'm just treading water. Or drowning. You all are swimming."
"Are you really broke?"
"Almost penniless."
"Me too," she said. "I earn three hundred grand a year and I'm on the breadline. That's life. You're well out of it."
"I feel that way, usually. Until I have to get back in it. Neagley put a thousand and thirty bucks in my bank account."
"Like a ten-thirty radio code? Smart girl."
"And for my airfare. Without that I'd still be on my way down here, hitch-hiking."
"You'd be walking. Nobody in their right mind would pick you up."
Reacher glanced at himself in an old spotted mirror. Six-five, two-fifty, hands as big as frozen turkeys, hair all over the place, unshaven, torn shirtcuffs up on his forearms like Frankenstein's monster.
A bum.
From the big green machine to this.
Dixon said, "Can I ask you a question?"
"Go ahead."
"I always wished we had done more than just work together."
"Who?"
"You and me."
"That was a statement, not a question."
"Did you feel the same way?"
"Honestly?"
"Please."
"Yes, I did."
"So why didn't we do more?"
"Wouldn't have been right."
"We ignored all kinds of other regulations."
"It would have wrecked the unit. The others would have been jealous."
"Including Neagley?"
"In her way."
"We could have kept it a secret."
Reacher said, "Dream on."
"We could keep it a secret now. We've got three hours."
Reacher said nothing.
Dixon said, "I'm sorry. It's just that all of this bad stuff makes me feel that life is so short."
Reacher said, "And the unit is wrecked now anyway."
"Exactly."
"Don't you have a boyfriend back East?"
"Not right now."
Reacher stepped back to the bed. Karla Dixon came over and stood right next to him, her hip against his thigh. The seven sheets of paper were still laid out in a line.
"Want to look at these some more?" Reacher asked.
"Not right now," Dixon said.
"Me either." He gathered them up and butted them together. Placed them on the nightstand and trapped them under the phone. Asked, "You sure about this?"
"I've been sure for thirteen years."
"Me too. But it has to stay a secret."
"Agreed."
He took her in his arms and kissed her mouth. The shape of her teeth was new to his tongue. The buttons on her shirt were small and awkward.
26
Afterward they lay in bed together and Dixon said, "We need to get back to work." Reacher rolled over to take the stack of papers off the nightstand, but Dixon said, "No, let's do it in our heads. We'll see more that way."
"Will we?"
"Total of one hundred and eighty-three numbers," she said. "Tell me about one hundred and eighty-three, as a number."
"Not prime," Reacher said. "It's divisible by three and sixty-one."
"I don't care whether it's prime or not."
"Multiply it by two and you get three hundred and sixty-six, which is the number of days in a leap year."
"So is this half a leap year?"
"Not with seven lists," Reacher said. "Half of any kind of a year would be six months and six lists."
Dixon went quiet.
Reacher thought: Half a year.
Half.
More than one way to skin a cat.
Twenty-six, twenty-seven.
He said, "How many days are there in half a year?"
"A regular year? Depends which half. Either one hundred and eighty-two or one hundred and eighty-three."
"How do you make half?"
"Divide by two."
"Suppose you multiplied by seven over twelve?"
"That's more than half."
"Then again by six over seven?"
"That would bring it back to exactly half. Forty-two over eighty-four."
"There you go."
"I don't follow."
"How many weeks in a year?"
"Fifty-two."
"How many working days?"
"Two hundred sixty for five-day weeks, three hundred twelve for six-day weeks."
"So how many days would there be in seven months' worth of six-day working weeks?"
Dixon thought for a second. "Depends on which seven months you pick. Depends on where the Sundays fall. Depends on what day of the week January first is. Depends on whether you're looking at a continuous run of months or cherry-picking."
"Run the numbers, Karla. There are only two possible answers."
Dixon paused a beat. "One hundred and eighty-two or one hundred and eighty-three."
"Exactly," Reacher said. "Those seven sheets are seven months' worth of six-day working weeks. One of the long months only had four Sundays. Hence the twenty-seven-day anomaly."
Dixon slid out from under the sheet and walked naked to where she had left her briefcase and came back with a leather Filofax diary. She opened it and put it on the bed and took the papers off the nightstand and arranged them in a line below the diary. Her eyes flicked back and forth, seven times.