“Who would do that?”
“A co-worker with light fingers. A boss paying bribes. A supplier ripping off Angela’s employer. Plenty of candidates.”
“OK.” Hannah shrugged. “But I don’t know about planting fake emails. Why would anyone go to the trouble? Why not just delete the real ones?”
“To cover their asses. The last fake email from Angela hinted that if Sam didn’t take her back, she would kill herself. The guy who killed her made it look like she jumped under that bus. Add those things together and the police have no reason to dig any deeper.”
“If Sam hadn’t had his heart attack, he’d have gone to meet Angela. Waited around for a while. And when she didn’t show, and he was told she killed herself, what would he have done? Figured the stress of the whole thing had gotten too much for her? Maybe.”
“Hannah, did you notice anyone hanging around here recently? Anyone you didn’t recognize? On Sunday? Maybe Monday? Maybe in a car?”
“Wait. I’m still thinking through your idea. It might have flown. Worth a shot, I guess. As long as Sam bought Angela’s death as suicide. That’s the key because he wouldn’t have seen whatever evidence she was bringing. And he wouldn’t have known about the bogus emails because they wouldn’t have shown up on his computer. They couldn’t have, or he’d have been, like, What the hell?”
“The bogus emails couldn’t have shown up, but what about the real ones? What would have happened to those?”
“They’ll still be on his computer, I guess.”
“You have a key to his apartment?”
“Sure. Why?”
Reacher stood up. “I need to see that computer. Right now.”
Chapter 16
Hannah’s hand was shaking when she tried to get the key into the lock on Roth’s door.
She said, “I’m sorry. This is the first time I’ve been here since…”
Reacher said, “It’s OK. You don’t have to come inside.”
“No.” Hannah closed her eyes for a moment. She took a deep breath. “I’m doing this. For Sam. If his friend was murdered, he wouldn’t want people to think it was suicide. Angela has—had—a kid. And Sam was a prison guard. He wouldn’t want a murderer to go free.”
The main room of Roth’s apartment was laid out the same as Hannah’s. It had the same kind of furniture, maybe a decade older, a little more tired, with fewer colors. There was no TV and the top of one of the bookcases was filled with a line of framed photographs. Reacher could smell incense coming from somewhere, and right away the sense of trespass he always felt when he had to search a dead person’s home started to creep up his spine.
Hannah started toward an archway at the side of the kitchen area but paused when she drew level with the bookcase. She looked down at the photographs. They were all of her. There was a whole series. She was wearing the same gi in each one. In the first picture she had a white belt. By the last, the belt was brown. Hannah stretched out and flipped each photo in turn facedown. She said, “I can’t believe he kept those. He knew I hated them.” She sniffed and wiped a tear from her cheek.
Reacher said, “Do you still train?”
Hannah shook her head. “Not much. I haven’t graded since I moved next door. I only started as a way for Sam and me to go to the gym together. Working out is so boring. He was always nagging me to step it up again.”
Another tear welled up in the corner of Hannah’s eye. She blinked it away and began to move again. Through the archway. It led to a doglegged staircase that opened onto a corridor with three more doors. The first one was open a crack. Hannah pushed it the rest of the way and stepped into Roth’s bedroom. It was a small space. Tidy. Impersonal. The bed was made. There was no clothing strewn around. No shoes on the floor. No pictures on the walls. Just a book on the nightstand and a glass of water. The blinds were drawn. There were mirrors on the closet doors, which were closed. And in the far corner there was a small desk. It was made of metal and wood, and looked like it could fold down when not in use. There was no chair.
“Not much of an office space.” Hannah took a silver laptop computer from the desk and sat down on the bed. “The other room’s full of his weights and workout stuff. That was more important to him.”
Hannah opened the computer and started tapping away on the keyboard and dragging her finger up and down on a little shiny rectangle below it. After a couple of minutes she turned the screen so that Reacher could see.