Reacher compared the samples. The way the letters were formed. The size and the shape and the spacing. The punctuation. The phrasing. He factored in the passage of time. The effect of stress. He was no expert but he had to admit they did look like the work of the same person. He tucked the note back under the form where he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore, passed both pages to Harewood and said, “OK. Motive?”
“A love affair gone bad.”
“How do you figure?”
“Angela was an admin assistant at a prison. When we notified the local PD they contacted her work. It’s a private company. They have the right to monitor their employees’ personal email. It’s a security thing. Built into their contracts. Most people don’t know it’s there. Or they forget about it. So their IT guy pulled up her account. Standard procedure in the event of a sudden death. He found a message chain going back a few weeks. Evidently Angela wanted to rekindle an old flame. With an old boyfriend who lived near here. A guy named Roth. They set a rendezvous for Tuesday. Yesterday. She implied in her last email that if it didn’t work out, she didn’t want to live anymore. A little passive-aggressive, if you ask me.”
“Lived near here?”
“What?”
“You said the boyfriend lived.”
Harewood nodded. “Roth’s DOA. He had a heart attack.”
“When?”
“Monday night. Late. Maybe around midnight.”
“So this guy Roth died less than twelve hours before Angela was killed. You buy that as a coincidence?”
Harewood shrugged.
Reacher said, “Who found the body?”
“His ex-wife.”
“Where?”
“At his apartment. Yesterday morning. He was a big guy. As in ripped. Not fat. He had a home gym. He’d been working out. Which he did regularly. And then, bang. Game over. Just like that.”
“Steroids? Or whatever the latest thing is?”
“No indication of any.”
“Why was his ex-wife at his apartment?”
“For breakfast.”
“Is that normal?”
“For them, yes, apparently.”
“How did she get inside?”
“She has a key.”
“Sounds cozy.”
“I guess.”
“Maybe the ex was trying to get back into the picture. Found out about this reunion. Got jealous.”
Harewood shook his head. “I don’t think so. They’d been divorced ten years. She moved to the apartment next door when they split. Neighbors said they got on like brother and sister. Any kind of spark fizzled out years ago. There was no bad blood.”
“Had Roth had other relationships?”
Harewood shrugged.
Reacher said, “Did the ex know about his relationship with Angela?”
“We didn’t ask her about it. We had no reason to. Roth’s body was found before Angela got killed. We didn’t know anything about her until we pulled her out from under that bus.”
“So the ex didn’t confirm the rendezvous?”
“No. That’s not to say she didn’t know about it. But we already verified it another way.”
Harewood thumbed through his file, pulled out another piece of paper, and set it on the edge of the bed. Reacher wasn’t familiar with the format but he guessed it was a transcript of the emails that the Minerva IT guys had come up with. It was certainly made up of alternating messages between two people. He assumed they were Angela and Roth but the names weren’t shown in a way he could decipher. There were just bunches of letters and numbers with @ signs in the middle and .coms at the end. There were vertical lines at the left of the page, starting at the top of each separate message and running all the way down to the end of the last one. Each successive line was one space to the right so that the lowest message was all squashed up into less than half the width of the page. It was the oldest, from Angela. She had been putting out feelers about getting back together. Reacher could sense her excitement. Her trepidation. The newest message, at the top, written on Sunday morning, was also from Angela. The tone was flat. She sounded depressed. The tentative hope had faded away. All that was left was an undercurrent of despair. Plus a bunch of hints that she couldn’t carry on alone. Just as Harewood had reported.
Reacher put the paper down. “If Angela came here to meet Roth, where is her purse? Her car?”
Harewood took the paper and slipped it back into his file. “Her purse was in her car. Her car was in a parking lot. The first one you come to if you’re coming in from the east. Like she would have done.”