Lee Child - Running Blind

Harper led Reacher to a seat at the far end from the blackboard. The back of the class. She sat one place nearer the action, so he had to look past her shoulder. Blake took the chair nearest the board. Poulton and Lamarr came in together, carrying files, absorbed in low conversation. Neither of them glanced anywhere except at Blake. He waited until the door closed behind them and then stood up and flipped the blackboard over.

The top right quarter was occupied by a large map of the United States, dotted with a forest of flags. Ninety-one of them, Reacher guessed, without trying to count them all. Most of them were red, but three of them were black. Opposite the map on the left was an eight-by-ten color photograph, cropped and blown up from a casual snapshot taken through a cheap lens onto grainy film. It showed a woman, squinting against the sun and smiling. She was in her twenties, and pretty, a plump happy face framed by curly brown hair.

“Lorraine Stanley, ladies and gentlemen,” Blake said. “Recently deceased in San Diego, California.”

Underneath the smiling face were more eight-by-tens pinned up in a careful sequence. The crime scene. They were crisper photographs. Professional. There was a long shot of a small Spanish-style bungalow, taken from the street. A close-up of the front door. Wide shots of a hallway, a living room, the master bedroom. The master bathroom. The back wall was all mirror above twin sinks. The photographer was reflected in the mirror, a large person bundled into a white nylon coverall, a shower cap on his head, latex gloves on his hands, a camera at his eye, the bright halo of the strobe caught by the mirror. There was a shower stall on the right, and a tub on the left. The tub was low, with a wide lip. It was full of green paint.

“She was alive three days ago,” Blake said. “Neighbor saw her wheeling her garbage to the curb, eight forty-five in the morning, local time. She was discovered yesterday, by her cleaner.”

“We got a time of death?” Lamarr asked.

“Approximate,” Blake said. “Sometime during the second day.”

“Neighbors see anything?”

Blake shook his head. “She took her garbage can back inside, the same day. Nobody saw anything after that.”

“MO?”

“Exactly identical to the first two.”

“Evidence?”

“Not a damn thing, so far. They’re still looking, but I’m not optimistic.”

Reacher was focusing on the picture of the hallway. It was a long narrow space leading past the mouth of the living room, back to the bedrooms. On the left was a narrow shelf at waist height, crowded with tiny cactus plants in tiny terra-cotta pots. On the right were more narrow shelves, fixed to the wall at random heights and in random lengths. They were packed with small china ornaments. Most of them looked like dolls, brightly painted to represent national or regional costumes. The sort of things a person buys when she’s dreaming of having a home of her own.

“What did the cleaner do?” he asked.

Blake looked all the way down the table. “Screamed a bit, I guess, and then called the cops.”

“No, before that. She has her own key?”

“Obviously.”

“Did she go straight to the bathroom?”

Blake looked blank and opened a file. Leafed through it and found a faxed copy of an interview report. “Yes, she did. She puts stuff in the toilet bowl, leaves it to work while she does the rest of the house, comes back to it last.”

“So she found the body right away, before she did any cleaning?”

Blake nodded.

“OK,” Reacher said.

“OK what?”

“How wide is that hallway?”

Blake turned and examined the picture. “Three feet? It’s a small house.”

Reacher nodded. “OK.”

“OK what?”

“Where’s the violence? Where’s the anger? She answers the door, this guy somehow forces her back through the hallway, through the master bedroom, into the bathroom, and then carries thirty gallons of paint through after her, and he doesn’t knock anything off those shelves.”

“So?”

Reacher shrugged. “Seems awful quiet to me. I couldn’t wrestle somebody down that hallway without touching all that stuff. No way. Neither could you.”

Blake shook his head. “He doesn’t do any wrestling. Medical reports show the women probably aren’t touched at all. It’s a quiet scene, because there is no violence.”

“You happy with that? Profile-wise? An angry soldier looking for retribution and punishment, but there’s no uproar?”

“He kills them, Reacher. The way I see it, that’s retribution enough.”

There was silence. Reacher shrugged again. “Whatever. ”

Blake faced him down the length of the table. “You’d do it differently?”

“Sure I would. Suppose you keep on pissing me off and I come after you. I don’t see myself being especially gentle about it. I’d probably smack you around a little. Maybe a lot. If I was mad with you, I’d have to, right? That’s what being mad is all about.”

“So?”

“And what about the paint? How does he bring it to the house? We should go to the store and check out what thirty gallons looks like. He must have a car parked outside for twenty, thirty minutes at least. How does nobody see it? A parked car, or a wagon, or a truck?”

“Or a sport-utility, rather like yours.”

“Maybe totally identical to mine. But how come nobody sees it?”

“We don’t know,” Blake said.

“How does he kill them without leaving any marks?”

“We don’t know.”

“That’s a lot you don’t know, right?”

Blake nodded. “Yes, it is, smart guy. But we’re working on it. We’ve got eighteen days. And with a genius like you helping us, I’m sure that’s all we’re going to need.”

“You’ve got eighteen days if he sticks to his interval, ” Reacher said. “Suppose he doesn’t?”

“He will.”

“You hope.”

Silence again. Blake looked at the table, and then at Lamarr. “Julia?”

“I stand by my profile,” she said. “Right now I’m interested in Special Forces. They’re stood down one week in three. I’m sending Reacher to poke around.”

Blake nodded, reassured. “OK, where?”

Lamarr glanced at Reacher, waiting. He looked at the three black flags on the map.

“Geography is all over the place,” he said. “This guy could be stationed anywhere in the United States.”

“So?”

“So Fort Dix would be the best place to start. There’s a guy I know there.”

“Who?”

“A guy called John Trent,” Reacher said. “He’s a colonel. If anybody’s going to help me, he might.”

“ Fort Dix?” Blake said. “That’s in New Jersey, right?”

“It was last time I was there,” Reacher said.

“OK, smart guy,” Blake said. “We’ll call this Colonel Trent, get it set up.”

Reacher nodded. “Make sure you mention my name loud and often. He won’t be very interested unless you do.”

Blake nodded. “That’s exactly why we brought you on board. You’ll leave with Harper, first thing in the morning.”

Reacher nodded, and looked straight at Lorraine Stanley’s pretty face.

YES, MAYBE IT’S time to throw them a curve. Maybe tighten the interval, just a little bit. Maybe tighten it a lot. Maybe cancel it altogether. That would really unsettle them. That would show them how little they know. Keep everything else the same, but alter the interval. Make it all a little unpredictable. How about it? You need to think.

Or maybe let a little of the anger show, too. Because anger is what this is about, right? Anger, and justice. Maybe it’s time to make that a little clearer, a little more obvious. Maybe it’s time to take the gloves off. A little violence never hurt anybody. And a little violence could make the next one a little more interesting. Maybe a lot more interesting. You need to think about that, too.