Lee Child: Running Blind

“Upstairs,” he gasped.

He raced up, with Harper crowding his back. He ducked into a bedroom. Wrong bedroom. Inferior linens, a cold musty smell. A guest room. He ducked into the next door. The right bedroom. A made bed, dimpled pillows, the smell of sleep, a telephone and a water glass on the nightstand. A connecting door, ajar. He stepped across the room and shoved it open. He saw a bathroom.

Mirrors, a sink, a shower stall.

A tub full of hideous green water.

Scimeca in the water.

And Julia Lamarr.

Julia Lamarr, turning and rising and twisting off her perch on the rim of the tub, whirling around to face him. She was wearing a sweater and pants and black leather gloves. Her face was white with hate and fear. Her mouth was half-open. Her crossed teeth were bared in panic. He seized her by the front of the sweater and spun her around and hit her once in the head, a savage abrupt blow from a huge fist powered by blind anger and crushing physical momentum. It caught her solidly on the side of the jaw and her head snapped back and she bounced off the opposite wall and went down like she was hit by a truck. He didn’t see her make it to the floor because he was already turning back to the tub. Scimeca was arched up out of the slime, naked, rigid, eyes bulging, head back, mouth open in agony.

Not moving.

Not breathing.

He put a hand under her neck and held her head up and straightened the fingers on his other hand and stabbed them into her mouth. Couldn’t reach her tongue. He balled his hand and punched and forced his knuckles all the way inside. Her mouth made a giant ghastly O around his wrist and the skin of his hand tore against her teeth and he scrabbled in her throat and hooked a finger around her tongue and hauled it back. It was slippery, like a live thing. It was long and heavy and muscular. It curled tight against itself and eased up out of her throat and flopped back into her mouth. He pulled his hand free and tore more skin. Bent down to blow air into her lungs but as his face got near hers he felt a convulsive exhalation from her and a desperate cough and then her chest started heaving. Giant ragged breaths sucked in and out. He cradled her head. She was wheezing. Tortured cracked sounds in her throat.

“Set the shower running,” he screamed.

Harper ran to the stall and turned on the water. He slid his hand under Scimeca’s back and pulled the stopper out of the drain. The thick green water eddied away around her body. He lifted her under the shoulders and the knees. Stood up and stepped back and held her in the middle of the bathroom, dripping green slime everywhere.

“Got to get this stuff off of her,” he said, helplessly.

“I’ll take her,” Harper said gently.

She caught her under the arms and backed herself into the shower, fully dressed. Jammed herself into a corner of the stall and held the limp body upright like a drunk. The shower turned the paint light green, and then reddened skin showed through as it rinsed away. Harper held her tight, two minutes, three, four. She was soaked to the skin and her clothes were smeared with green. She moved around in a bizarre halting dance, so the shower could catch every part of Scimeca’s body. Then she maneuvered carefully backward until the water was rinsing the sticky green out of her hair. It kept on coming, endlessly. Harper was tiring. The paint was slick. Scimeca was sliding out of her grasp.

“Get towels,” she gasped. “Find a bathrobe.”

They were on a row of hooks, directly above where Lamarr was lying inert. Reacher took two towels and Harper staggered forward out of the stall. Reacher held a towel in front of him and Harper passed Scimeca to him. He caught her through the thickness of the towel and wrapped her in it. Harper turned off the hissing water and took the other towel. Stood there in the sudden silence, breathing hard, wiping her face. Reacher lifted Scimeca off her feet and carried her out of the bathroom, into the bedroom. Laid her down gently on the bed. Leaned over her and wiped the wet hair off her face. She was still wheezing hard. Her eyes were open, but they were blank.

“Is she OK?” Harper called.

“I don’t know,” Reacher said.

He watched her breathing. Her chest rose and fell, rose and fell, urgently, like she had just run a mile.

“I think so,” he said. “She’s breathing.”

He caught her wrist and felt for the pulse. It was there, strong and fast.

“She’s OK,” he said. “Pulse is good.”

“We should get her to the hospital,” Harper called.

“She’ll be better here,” Reacher said.

“But she’ll need sedation. This will have blown her mind.”

He shook his head. “She’ll wake up, and she won’t remember a thing.”

Harper stared at him. “Are you kidding?”

He looked up at her. She was standing there, holding a bathrobe, soaked to the skin and smeared with paint. Her shirt was olive green and transparent.

“She was hypnotized,” he said.

He nodded toward the bathroom.

“That’s how she did it all,” he said. “Everything, every damn step of the way. She was the Bureau’s biggest expert.”

“Hypnosis?” Harper said.

He took the bathrobe from her and laid it over Scimeca’s passive form. Tucked it tight around her. Bent his head and listened to her breathing. It was still strong, and it was slowing down. She looked like a person in a deep sleep, except her eyes were wide open and staring at nothing.

“I don’t believe it,” Harper said.

Reacher used the corner of the towel and dried Scimeca’s face.

“That’s how she did it all,” he said again.

He used his thumbs and closed Scimeca’s eyes. It seemed like the right thing to do. She breathed lower and turned her head an inch. Her wet hair dragged on the pillow. She turned her head the other way, scrubbing her face into the pillow, restlessly, like a sleeping woman confused by her dreams. Harper stared at her, immobile. Then she turned around and stared and spoke to the bathroom door.

“When did you know?” she asked.

“For sure?” he said. “Last night.”

“But how?” she said.

Reacher used the towel again, where thin green fluid was leaking down out of Scimeca’s hair.

“I just went around and around,” he said. “Right from the beginning, for days and days, thinking, thinking, thinking, driving myself crazy. It was a real what if thing. And then it turned into a so what else thing.”

Harper stared at him. He pulled the bathrobe higher on Scimeca’s shoulder.

“I knew they were wrong about the motive,” he said. “I knew it all along. But I couldn’t understand it. They’re smart people, right? But they were so wrong . I was asking myself why? Why? Had they gotten dumb all of a sudden? Were they blinded by their professional specialty? That’s what I thought it was, at first. Small units inside big organizations are so defensive, aren’t they? Innately? I figured a bunch of psychologists paid to unravel very complex things wouldn’t be too willing to give it up and say no, this is something very ordinary. I thought it might be subconscious. But eventually I passed on that. It’s just too irresponsible. So I went around and around. And in the end the only answer left was they were wrong because they wanted to be wrong.”

“And you knew Lamarr was driving the motive,” Harper said. “Because it was her case, really. So you suspected her.”

He nodded.

“Exactly,” he said. “Soon as Alison died, I had to think about Lamarr doing it, because there was a close connection, and like you said, close family connections are always significant. So then I asked myself what if she did them all? What if she’s camouflaging a personal motive behind the randomness of the first three? But I couldn’t see how. Or why. There was no personal motive. They weren’t best buddies, but they got along OK. There were no family issues. No unfairness about the inheritance, for instance. It was going to be equal. No jealousy there. And she couldn’t fly, so how could it be her?”