Lee Child - Running Blind

“Julia?” Blake called. “You OK?”

She took her hands away from her face. Gestured helplessly with her hands, yes, no, wait . Her face was white and contorted and anguished. Her eyes were closed. The room was silent. Just the rasp of her breathing.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped.

“Don’t be sorry,” Blake said. “It’s the stress.”

She shook her head, wildly. “No, I made a terrible mistake. Because I think Reacher’s right. He’s got to be. So I was wrong, all along. I screwed up. I missed it. I should have seen it before.”

“Don’t worry about it now,” Blake said.

She lifted her head and stared at him. “Don’t worry about it? Don’t you see? All the time we wasted?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Blake said, limply.

She stared on at him. “Of course it matters . Don’t you see? My sister died because I wasted all this time. It’s my fault. I killed her . Because I was wrong.”

Silence again. Blake stared at her, helplessly.

"You need to take time out,” he said.

She shook her head. Wiped her eyes. "No, no, I need to work. I already wasted too much time. So now I need to think. I need to play catch-up.”

“You should go home. Take a couple of days.”

Reacher watched her. She was collapsed in her chair like she had taken a savage beating. Her face was blotched red and white. Her breathing was shallow, and her eyes were blank and vacant.

“You need rest,” Blake said.

She stirred and shook her head.

“Maybe later,” she said.

There was silence again. Then she hauled herself upright in her chair and fought to breathe.

“Maybe later I’ll rest,” she said. “But first I work . First, we all work. We’ve got to think. We’ve got to think about the Army. What’s the racket?”

“I don’t know,” Reacher said again.

“Well think, for God’s sake,” she snapped. “What racket is he protecting?”

“Give us what you’ve got, Reacher,” Blake said. “You didn’t go this far without something on your mind.”

Reacher shrugged.

“Well, I had half an idea,” he said.

“Give us what you’ve got,” Blake said again.

“OK, what was Amy Callan’s job?”

Blake looked blank and glanced at Poulton.

“Ordnance clerk,” Poulton said.

“Lorraine Stanley’s?” Reacher asked.

“Quartermaster sergeant.”

Reacher paused.

“Alison’s?” he asked.

“Infantry close-support,” Lamarr said, neutrally.

“No, before that.”

“Transport battalion,” she said.

Reacher nodded. “Rita Scimeca’s job?”

Harper nodded. “Weapons proving. Now I see why you made her tell me.”

“Why?” Blake asked.

“Because what’s the potential link?” Reacher asked. “Between an ordnance clerk, a quartermaster sergeant, a transport driver, a weapons prover?”

“You tell me.”

“What did I take from those guys at the restaurant?”

Blake shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s James Cozo’s business, in New York. I know you stole their money.”

“They had handguns,” Reacher said. “M9 Berettas, with the serial numbers filed off. What does that mean?”

“They were illegally obtained.”

Reacher nodded. "From the Army. M9 Berettas are military-issue.”

Blake looked blank. “So what?”

“So if this is some Army guy protecting a racket, the racket most likely involves theft, and if the stakes are high enough for killing people, the theft most likely involves weapons, because that’s where the money is. And these women were all in a position where they could have witnessed weapons theft. They were right there in the chain, transporting and testing and warehousing weapons, all day long.”

There was silence. Then Blake shook his head.

“You’re crazy,” he said. “It’s too coincidental. The overlap is ridiculous. What are the chances all these witnesses would also be harassment victims?”

“It’s only an idea,” Reacher said. “But the chances are actually pretty good, the way I see it. The only real harassment victim was Julia’s sister. Caroline Cooke doesn’t count, because that was a technicality.”

“What about Callan and Stanley?” Poulton asked. “You don’t call that harassment?”

Reacher shook his head. But Lamarr beat him to the punch. She was leaning forward, fingers drumming on the table, life back in her eyes, completely on the ball.

“No, think about it, people,” she said. “Think about it laterally . They weren’t harassment victims and witnesses. They were harassment victims because they were witnesses. If you’re some Army racketeer and you’ve got a woman in your unit who’s not turning a blind eye to what you need her to be turning a blind eye to, what do you do about it? You get rid of her, is what. And what’s the quickest way to do that? You make her uncomfortable, sexually.”

There was silence. Then Blake shook his head again.

“No, Julia,” he said. “Reacher’s seeing ghosts, is all. It’s still way too coincidental. Because what are the chances he’d just happen to be in a restaurant alley one night and stumble across the back end of the same racket that’s killing our women? A million to one, minimum. ”

“A billion to one,” Poulton said.

Lamarr stared at them.

“ Think , for God’s sake,” she said. “Surely he’s not saying he saw the same racket that’s killing our women. Probably he saw a completely different racket. Because there must be hundreds of rackets in the Army. Right, Reacher?”

Reacher nodded.

“Right,” he said. “The restaurant thing set me thinking along those lines, is all, in general terms.”

There was silence again. Blake colored red.

“There are hundreds of rackets?” he said. “So how does that help us? Hundreds of rackets, hundreds of Army people involved, how are we going to find the right one? Needle in a damn haystack. It’ll take three years. We’ve got three weeks.”

“And what about the paint?” Poulton asked. “If he’s eliminating witnesses, he’d walk up and shoot them in the head, silenced.22. He wouldn’t mess with all this other stuff. All this ritual is classic serial homicide.”

Reacher looked at him.

“Exactly,” he said. “Your perception of the motive is defined by the manner of the killings. Think about it. If they had all got a silenced.22 in the head, what would you have thought?”

Poulton said nothing. But there was doubt in his eyes. Blake sat forward and put his hands on the table.

“We’d have called them executions,” he said. “Wouldn’t have altered our assessment of the motive.”

“No, be honest with me,” Reacher said. “I think you’d have been a little more open-minded. You’d have cast your net a little wider. Sure, you’d have considered the harassment angle, but you’d have considered other things too. More ordinary things. Bullets to the head, I think you’d have considered more routine reasons.”

Blake sat there, hesitant and silent. Which was the same thing as a confession.

“Bullets to the head are kind of normal , right?” Reacher said. “In your line of work? So you’d have looked at normal reasons too. Like eliminating witnesses to a crime. Bullets to the head, I think right now you’d be all over the Army scams, looking for some efficient enforcer. But the guy deflected you by dressing it up with all this bizarre bullshit. He hid his true motive. He smoke-screened it. He camouflaged it. He pushed you into this weird psychological arena. He manipulated you, because he’s very smart.”