“Sure do,” he said. “You were our last customer. Nobody in between to muddle me up.”
I nodded. That’s what a soft-nose bullet does. It goes in and flattens out as it does so. Becomes a blob of lead about the size of a quarter tumbling through whatever tissue it meets. Rips a great big exit hole for itself. And a nice slow soft-nose.22 makes sense with a silencer. No point using a silencer except with a subsonic muzzle velocity. Otherwise the bullet is making its own sonic boom all the way to the target, like a tiny fighter plane.
“So how long is this exposure going to last?” I asked him.
“Your husband felt bad, OK?” I said. “He got hold of some kind of an investigator, a government guy, and they were trying to fix the situation. But the government guy got killed. And I’m afraid my interest is in the government guy, more than your husband.”
“Right,” I said. “I’m Reacher. From Friday. What was the deal?”
“I can’t answer that,” he said. “I’d be telling you more than I should.”