Lee Child - Running Blind

He sat like that for nearly twenty minutes, just waiting. Then Harper came back in. She was carrying a thick sheaf of new paperwork.

“More bureaucracy,” she said. “If we pay you, we’ve got to insure you. Travel desk regulations.”

She sat down opposite him and took a pen from her inside pocket.

“Ready for this?” she said.

He nodded.

“Full name?” she asked.

“Jack Reacher,” he said.

“That the whole thing?”

He nodded. “That’s it.”

“Not a very long name, is it?”

He shrugged. Said nothing. She wrote it down. Two words, eleven letters, in a space which ran the whole width of the form.

“Date of birth?”

He told her. Saw her calculating his age. Saw surprise in her face.

“Older or younger?” he asked.

“Than what?”

“Than you thought.”

She smiled. “Oh, older. You don’t look it.”

“Bullshit,” he said. “I look about a hundred. Certainly I feel about a hundred.”

She smiled again. “You probably clean up pretty good. Social Security number?”

His generation of servicemen, it was the same as his military ID. He rattled through it in the military manner, random monotone sounds representing whole numbers between zero and nine.

“Full address?”

“No fixed abode,” he said.

“You sure?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“What about Garrison?”

“What about it?”

“Your house,” she said. “That would be your address, right?”

He stared at her. “I guess so. Sort of. I never really thought about it.”

She stared back. “You own a house, you’ve got an address, wouldn’t you say?”

“OK, put Garrison.”

“Street name and number?”

He dredged it up from his memory and told her.

“Zip?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know your own zip code?”

He was quiet for a second. She looked at him.

“You’ve got it real bad, haven’t you?” she said.

“Got what?”

“Whatever. Call it denial, I guess.”

He nodded, slowly. “Yes, I guess I’ve got it real bad.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll get used to it.”

“Maybe you won’t.”

“What would you do?”

“People should do what they really want,” she said. “I think that’s important.”

“Is that what you do?”

She nodded. “My folks wanted me to stay in Aspen. They wanted me to be a teacher or something. I wanted to be in law enforcement. It was a big battle.”

“It’s not my parents doing this to me. They’re dead.”

“I know. It’s Jodie.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s not Jodie. It’s me. I’m doing this to myself.”

She nodded again. “OK.”

The room went quiet.

“So what should I do?” he asked.

She shrugged, warily. “I’m not the person to ask.”

“Why not?”

“I might not give the answer you want.”

“Which is?”

“You want me to say you should stay with Jodie. Settle down and be happy.”

“I do?”

“I think so.”

“But you can’t say that?”

She shook her head.

“No, I can’t,” she said. “I had a boyfriend. It was pretty serious. He was a cop in Aspen. There’s always tension, you know, between cops and the Bureau. Rivalry. Silly, really, no reason for it, but it’s there. It spread into personal things. He wanted me to quit. Begged me. I was torn, but I said no.”

“Was that the right choice?”

She nodded. “For me, yes, it was. You have to do what you really want.”

“Would it be the right choice for me?”

She shrugged. “I can’t say. But probably.”

“First I need to figure out what I really want.”

“You know what you really want,” she said. “Everybody always does, instinctively. Any doubt you’re feeling is just noise, trying to bury the truth, because you don’t want to face it.”

He looked away, back to the fake window.

“Occupation?” she asked.

“Silly question,” he said.

“I’ll put consultant.”

He nodded. “That dignifies it, somewhat.”

Then there were footsteps in the corridor and the door opened again and Blake and Poulton hurried inside. More paper in their hands, and the glow of progress in their faces.

“We’re maybe halfway to starting to get somewhere, ” Blake said. “News in from Spokane.”

“The local UPS driver quit three weeks ago,” Poulton said. “Moved to Missoula, Montana, works in a warehouse. But they spoke to him by phone and he thinks maybe he remembers the delivery.”

“So doesn’t the UPS office have paperwork?” Harper asked.

Blake shook his head. “They archive it after eleven days. And we’re looking at two months ago. If the driver can pinpoint the day, we might get it.”

“Anybody know anything about baseball?” Poulton asked.

Reacher shrugged. “Couple of guys worked out an overall all-time top ten and only two players had the letter u in their names.”

“Why baseball?” Harper asked.

“Day in question, some Seattle guy hit a grand slam,” Blake said. “The driver heard it on his radio, remembers it.”

“ Seattle, he would remember it,” Reacher said. “Rare occurrence.”

“Babe Ruth,” Poulton said. “Who’s the other one?”

“Honus Wagner,” Reacher said.

Poulton looked blank. “Never heard of him.”

“And Hertz came through,” Blake said. “They think they remember a real short rental, Spokane airport, the exact day Alison died, in and out inside about two hours.”

“They got a name?” Harper asked.

Blake shook his head. “Their computer’s down. They’re working on it.”

“Don’t the desk people remember?”

“Are you kidding? Lucky if those people remember their own names.”

“So when will we get it?”

“Tomorrow, I guess. Morning, with a bit of luck. Otherwise the afternoon.”

“Three-hour time difference. It’ll be the afternoon for us.”

“Probably.”

“So does Reacher still go?”

Blake paused and Reacher nodded.

“I still go,” he said “The name will be phony, for sure. And the UPS thing will lead nowhere. This guy’s way too smart for basic paper-trail errors.”

Everybody waited. Then Blake nodded.

“I guess I agree,” he said. “So Reacher still goes.”

THEY GOT A ride in a plain Bureau Chevrolet and were at the airport in D.C. before dark. They lined up for the United shuttle with the lawyers and the lobbyists. Reacher was the only person on the line not wearing a business suit, male or female. The cabin crew seemed to know most of the passengers and greeted them at the airplane door like regulars. Harper walked all the way down the aisle and chose seats right at the back.

“No rush to get off,” she said. “You’re not seeing Cozo until tomorrow.”

Reacher said nothing.

“And Jodie won’t be home yet,” she said. “Lawyers work hard, right? Especially the ones fixing to be partner. ”

He nodded. He’d just gotten around to figuring the same thing.

“So we’ll sit here,” she said. “It’s quieter.”

“The engines are right back here,” he said.

“But the guys in the suits aren’t.”

He smiled and took the window seat and buckled up.

“And we can talk back here,” she said. “I don’t like people listening.”

“We should sleep,” he said. “We’re going to be busy.”

“I know, but talk first. Five minutes, OK?”

“Talk about what?”

“The scratches on her face,” she said. “I need to understand what that’s about.”