Lee Child - Running Blind

“Neighbors see anything?”

“Not so far.”

“And all three were done during the day?”

“Different times, but all during daylight hours.”

“None of the women worked?”

“Like you don’t. Very few of you ex-Army people seem to work. It’s a snippet I’m going to file away.”

He nodded and glanced at the weather. The roadway was streaming. The rain was a mile ahead.

“Why don’t you people work?” she asked.

“Us people ?” he repeated. “In my case because I can’t find anything I want to do. I thought about landscape gardening, but I wanted a challenge, not something that would take me a second and a half to master.”

She went silent again and the car hissed into a wall of rain. She set the wipers going and switched on the headlights and backed off the speed a little.

“Are you going to insult me all the time?” she asked.

“Making a little fun of you is a pretty small insult compared to how you’re threatening my girlfriend. And how you’re so ready and willing to believe I’m the type of guy could kill two women.”

“So was that a yes or a no?”

“It was a maybe. I guess an apology from you would help turn it into a no.”

“An apology? Forget about it, Reacher. I stand by my profile. If it wasn’t you, it was some scumbag just like you.”

The sky was turning black and the rain was intense. Up ahead, brake lights were shining red through the deluge on the windshield. The traffic was slowing to a crawl. Lamarr sat forward and braked sharply.

“Shit,” she said.

Reacher smiled. “Fun, right? And right now your risk of death or injury is ten thousand times higher than flying, conditions like these.”

She made no reply. She was watching her mirror, anxious the people behind her should slow down as smartly as she had. Ahead, the brake lights made a red chain as far as the eye could see. Reacher found the electric switch on the side of his seat and racked it back. He stretched out and got comfortable.

“I’m going to take a nap,” he said. “Wake me up when we get someplace.”

“We’re not through talking,” Lamarr said. “We have a deal, remember? Think about Petrosian. I wonder what he’s doing right now.”

Reacher glanced to his left, looking across her and out her window. Manhattan lay in that direction, but he could barely see the far shoulder of the highway.

“OK, we’ll keep on talking,” he said.

She was concentrating, riding the brake, crawling forward into the deluge.

“Where were we?” she said.

“He’s staked them out sufficient to know they’re alone, it’s daylight, somehow he walks right in. Then what?”

“Then he kills them.”

“In the house?”

“We think so.”

“You think so? Can’t you tell?”

“There’s a lot we can’t tell, unfortunately.”

“Well, that’s wonderful.”

“He leaves no evidence,” she said. “It’s a hell of a problem.”

He nodded. “So describe the scenes for me. Start with the plantings in their front yards.”

“Why? You think that’s important?”

He laughed. “No, I just thought you’d feel better telling me something you did know a little about.”

“You son of a bitch.”

The car was crawling forward. The wipers beat slowly across the glass, back and forth, back and forth. There were flashing red and blue lights up ahead.

"Accident,” he said.

“He leaves no evidence,” she said again. “Absolutely nothing. No trace evidence, no fibers, no blood, no saliva, no hair, no prints, no DNA, no nothing.”

Reacher locked his arms behind his head and yawned. “That’s pretty hard to do.”

Lamarr nodded, eyes fixed on the windshield. “It sure is. We’ve got lab tests now like you wouldn’t believe, and he’s beating all of them.”

“How would a person do that?”

“We don’t really know. How long have you been in this car?”

He shrugged. “Feels like most of my life.”

“It’s been about an hour. By now, your prints are all over everything, the door handles, the dash, the seat-belt buckle, the seat switch. There could be a dozen of your hairs on the headrest. A ton of fiber from your pants and your jacket all over the seat. Dirt from your backyard coming off your shoes onto the carpet. Maybe old fibers from your rugs at home.”

He nodded. “And I’m just sitting here.”

“Exactly. The violence associated with homicide, all that stuff would be spraying all over the place, plus blood maybe, saliva too.”

“So maybe he’s not killing them in the house.”

“He leaves the bodies in there.”

“So at least he’d have to drag them back inside.”

She nodded. “We know for sure he spends time in the house. There’s proof of that.”

“Where does he leave the bodies?”

“In the bathroom. In the tub.”

The Buick inched past the accident. An old station wagon was crumpled nose-first into the back of a sport-utility exactly like Reacher’s own. The station wagon’s windshield had two head-shaped holes broken through it. The front doors had been crowbarred open. An ambulance was waiting to U-turn through the divider. Reacher turned his head and stared at the sport-utility. It wasn’t his. Not that he thought it could be. Jodie wouldn’t be driving anywhere. Not if she had any sense.

“In the tub?” he repeated.

Lamarr nodded at the wheel. “In the tub.”

“All three of them?” he asked.

Lamarr nodded again. “All three of them.”

“Like a signature?”

“Right,” she said.

“How does he know they’ve all got tubs?”

“You live in a house, you’ve got a tub.”

“How does he know they all live in houses? He’s not selecting them on the basis of where they live. It’s random, right? They could live anyplace. Like I live in motels. And some of them just have showers.”

She glanced across at him. “You don’t live in motels. You live in a house in Garrison.”

He glanced down, like he had forgotten.

“Well, now I do, I guess,” he said. “But I was on the road, before. How does he know these women weren’t?”

“That’s a catch- 22,” she said. “If they were homeless, they wouldn’t be on his list. I mean, to be on his list, they need to live somewhere, so he can find them.”

“But how does he know they all have tubs?”

She shrugged. “You live somewhere, you’ve got a tub. Takes a pretty small studio to have just a shower stall.”

Reacher nodded. This was not his area of expertise. Real estate was pretty much foreign terrain to him. “OK, they’re in the tub.”

“Naked. And their clothes are missing.”

She was clear of the crash site and was accelerating into the rain. She put the windshield wipers on high.

“He takes their clothes with him?” he asked. “Why?”

“Probably as a trophy. Taking trophies is a very common phenomenon in serial crimes like these. Maybe it’s symbolic. Maybe he thinks they should still be in uniform, so he robs them of their civilian gear. As well as their lives.”

“He take anything else?”

She shook her head. “Not as far as we can tell. There was nothing obviously removed. No big spaces anywhere. Cash and cards were all still where they should be.”

“So he takes their clothes and leaves nothing behind. ”

She was quiet for a beat.

“He does leave something behind,” she said. “He leaves paint.”

“Paint?”

“Army camouflage green. Gallons of it.”

“Where?”

“In the tub. He puts the body in there, naked, and then he fills the tub with paint.”

Reacher stared past the beating wipers into the rain. “He drowns them? In paint?”