Lee Child - Running Blind

“What?”

“I’m not being straight with you,” he said.

“How not?”

“I don’t think Kruger’s our guy.”

“What?”

There was silence. They were inches apart, on the bed. Her hand was still laced behind his head, in his hair.

“He’s Leighton’s guy,” Reacher said. “I don’t think he’s ours. I never really did.”

“ What? You always did. This was your theory, Reacher. Why back away from it now?”

“Because I didn’t really mean it, Harper. I was just thinking aloud. Bullshitting, basically. I’m very surprised there even is such a guy.”

She pulled her hand away, astonished.

“But this was your theory,” she said again.

He shrugged. “I just made it up. I didn’t mean any of it. I just wanted some kind of a plausible excuse to get me out of Quantico for a spell.”

She stared at him. “You made it up ? You didn’t mean it?”

He shrugged. “It was halfway convincing, I guess. But I didn’t believe in it.”

“So why the hell say it?”

“I told you. I just wanted to get out of there. To give myself time to think. And it was an experiment. I wanted to see who would support it and who would oppose it. I wanted to see who really wants this thing solved.”

“I don’t believe this,” she said. “Why?”

“Why not?”

“We all want it solved,” she said.

“Poulton opposed it,” Reacher said.

She stared at him, from a foot away.

“What is this to you? A game ?” she said.

He said nothing. She was silent, a minute, two, three.

“What the hell are you doing ?” she said. “There are lives at stake here.”

Then there was pounding at the door. Loud, insistent knocking. She pulled away from him. He let her go and put his feet on the floor and stood up. Ran his hand through his hair and walked toward the door. A new barrage started up. A heavy hand, knocking hard.

“OK,” he called. “I’m coming.”

The pounding stopped. He opened the door. There was an Army Chevrolet parked at an angle outside the room. Leighton was standing on the stoop, his hand raised, his jacket open, raindrops on the shoulders.

“Kruger’s our guy,” he said.

He pushed past, inside the room. Saw Harper buttoning her shirt.

“Excuse me,” he said.

“It’s hot in here,” she said, looking away.

Leighton looked down at the bed, like he was surprised.

“He’s our guy, for sure,” he said. “Everything fits like a glove.”

Harper’s mobile started ringing. It was over by the ice bucket, on the dresser, squawking like an alarm clock. Leighton paused. Gestured I can wait . Harper scrambled over the bed and flipped the phone open. Reacher heard a voice, feathery and distorted and faraway. Harper listened to it and Reacher watched the color drain out of her face. Watched her close the phone and put it down like it was fragile as crystal.

“We’re recalled to Quantico,” she said. “Effective immediately. Because they got Caroline Cooke’s full record. You were right, she was all over the place. But she was never anywhere near weapons. Not ever. Not within a million miles, not for a minute.”

“That’s what I’m here to tell you,” Leighton said. “Kruger’s our guy, but he isn’t yours.”

Reacher just nodded.

LEIGHTON WALKED THE length of the room and sat down at the table, in the right-hand chair. Same chair as Reacher had used. He put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. Same gesture.

“First thing, there was no list,” he said. He looked up at Harper. “You asked me to check thefts where the women worked, so I needed a list of the women to do that, obviously, so I tried to find one, but I couldn’t, OK? So I made some calls, and what happened was when your people came to us a month ago, we had to generate a list from scratch. It was a pain in the ass, trawling through all the records. So some guy had a bright idea, took a shortcut, called one of the women herself, some bullshit pretext. We think it was actually Alison Lamarr, and she supplied the list. Seems they’d set up a big support group among themselves, couple of years ago.”

“Scimeca called them her sisters,” Reacher said. “Remember that? She said four of my sisters are dead.”

“It was their own list?” Harper said.

“We didn’t have one,” Leighton said again. “And then Kruger’s records started coming in, and the dates and places didn’t match. Not even close.”

“Could he have falsified them?”

Leighton shrugged. “He could have. He was an ace at falsifying his inventories, that’s for damn sure. But you haven’t heard the kicker yet.”

“Which is?”

“Like Reacher said, Special Forces to supply battalion needs some explaining. So I checked it out. He was a top boy in the Gulf. Big star, a major. They were out in the desert, behind the lines, looking for mobile SCUD launchers, small unit, bad radio. Nobody else had any real clear idea of where they were, hour to hour. So they start the artillery barrage and Kruger’s unit gets all chewed up under it. Friendly fire. Bad casualties. Kruger himself was seriously hurt. But the Army was his life, so he wanted to stay in, so they gave him the promotion all the way up to bird colonel and stuck him somewhere his injuries wouldn’t disqualify him, hence the desk job in supply. My guess is we’ll find he got all bitter and twisted afterward and started running the rackets as a kind of revenge or something. You know, against the Army, against life itself.”

“But what’s the kicker?” Harper asked.

Leighton paused.

“The friendly fire,” he said. “The guy lost both his legs.”

Silence.

“He’s in a wheelchair.”

“Shit,” she said.

“Yeah, shit. No way he’s running up and down any stairs to any bathrooms. Last time he did that was ten years ago.”

She stared at the wall.

“OK,” she said slowly. “Bad idea.”

“I’m afraid so, ma’am. And they’re right about Cooke. I checked her too, and she never held anything heavier than a pen, her whole short career. That was something else I was going to have to tell you.”

“OK,” she said again.

She examined the wall.

“But thanks anyway,” she said. “And now we’re out of here. Back to Quantico, face the music.”

“Wait,” Leighton said. “You need to hear about the paint.”

“More bad news?”

“Weird news,” Leighton said. “I started a search for reports about missing camo green, like you asked me to. Only definitive thing was hidden in a buried file, closed-access. A theft of a hundred and ten three-gallon cans.”

“That’s it,” Harper said. “Three hundred thirty gallons. Eleven women, thirty gallons each.”

“Evidence was clear,” Leighton said. “They fingered a supply sergeant in Utah.”

“Who was he?”

“She,” Leighton said. “She was Sergeant Lorraine Stanley.”

Total silence.

“But that’s impossible,” Harper said. “She was one of the victims.”

Leighton shook his head. “I called Utah. Got hold of the investigating officer. I got him out of bed. He says it was Stanley, no doubt about it. Means and opportunity. She’d tried to cover her tracks, but she wasn’t smart enough about it. It was clear-cut. They didn’t proceed against her because it was politically impossible right then. She’d just come off of the harassment thing, not long before. No way were they going to start in on her at that point. So they just watched her, until she quit. But it was her.”

“One victim stole the paint?” Reacher said. “And another provided the list of names?”