by Lee Child
“Me?” Harper said. “Twenty-nine. I told you that. It’s an FAQ.”
“From Colorado, right?”
“Aspen.”
“Family?”
“Two sisters, one brother.”
“Older or younger?”
“All older. I’m the baby.”
“Parents?”
“Dad’s a pharmacist, Mom helps him out.”
“You take vacations when you were kids?”
She nodded. “Sure. Grand Canyon, Painted Desert, all over. One year we camped in Yellowstone.”
“You drove there, right?”
She nodded again. “Sure. Big station wagon full of kids, happy family sort of thing. What’s this about?”
“What do you remember about the drives?”
She made a face. “They were endless.”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly what?”
“This is a real big country.”
“So?”
“Caroline Cooke was killed in New Hampshire and Lorraine Stanley was killed three weeks later in San Diego. That’s about as far apart as you can get, right? Maybe thirty-five hundred miles by road. Maybe more.”
“Is he traveling by road?”
Reacher nodded. “He’s got hundreds of gallons of paint to haul around.”
“Maybe he’s got a stockpile stashed away someplace. ”
“That just makes it worse. Unless his stash just happened to be on a direct line between where he’s based now and New Hampshire and southern California, he’d have to detour to get it. It would add distance, maybe a lot of distance.”
"So?”
“So he’s got a three-, four-thousand-mile road trip, plus surveillance time on Lorraine Stanley. Could he do that in a week?”
Harper made a face. “Call it seventy hours at fifty-five miles an hour.”
“Which he couldn’t average. He’d pass through towns and road construction. And he wouldn’t break the speed limit. A guy this meticulous isn’t going to risk some trooper sniffing around his vehicle. Hundreds of gallons of camouflage basecoat is going to arouse some suspicions these days, right?”
“So call it a hundred hours on the road.”
“At least. Plus a day or two surveillance when he gets there. That’s more than a week, in practical terms. It’s ten or eleven days. Maybe twelve.”
“So?”
"You tell me.”
"This is not some guy working two weeks on, one week off.”
Reacher nodded. “No, it’s not.”
THEY WALKED OUTSIDE and around toward the block with the cafeteria in it. The weather had settled to what fall should be. The air was ten degrees warmer, but still crisp. The lawns were green and the sky was a shattering blue. The dampness had blown away and the leaves on the surrounding trees looked dry and two shades lighter.
“I feel like staying outside,” Reacher said.
“You need to work,” Harper said.
“I read the damn files. Reading them over again isn’t going to help me any. I need to do some thinking.”
“You think better outside?”
“Generally.”
“OK, come to the range. I need to qualify on handguns. ”
“You’re not qualified already?”
She smiled. “Of course I am. We have to requalify every month. Regulations.”
They took sandwiches from the cafeteria and ate as they walked. The outdoor pistol range was Sunday-quiet, a large space the size of a hockey rink, bermed on three sides with high earth walls. There were six separate firing lanes made out of shoulder-high concrete walls running all the way down to six separate targets. The targets were heavy paper, clipped into steel frames. Each paper was printed with a picture of a crouching felon, with target rings radiating out from his heart. Harper signed in with the rangemaster and handed him her gun. He reloaded it with six shells and handed it back, together with two sets of ear defenders.
“Take lane three,” he said.
Lane three was in the center. There was a black line painted on the concrete floor.
“Seventy-five feet,” Harper said.
She stood square-on and slipped the ear defenders into position. Raised the gun two-handed. Her legs were apart and her knees slightly bent. Her hips were forward and her shoulders back. She loosed off the six shots in a stream, half a second between them. Reacher watched the tendons in her hand. They were tight, rocking the muzzle up and down a fraction each time she pulled.
“Clear,” she said.
He looked at her.
“That means you go get the target,” she said.
He expected to see the hits arranged on a vertical line maybe a foot long, and when he got down to the other end of the lane, that is exactly what he found. There were two holes in the heart, two in the next ring, and two in the ring connecting the throat with the stomach. He unclipped the paper and carried it back.
“Two fives, two fours, two threes,” she said. “Twenty-four points. I pass, just.”
“You should use your left arm more,” he said.
“How?”
“Take all the weight with your left, and just use your right for pulling the trigger.”
She paused.
“Show me,” she said.
He stepped close behind her and stretched around with his left arm. She raised the gun in her right and he cupped her hand in his.
“Relax the arm,” he said. “Let me take the weight.”
His arms were long, but hers were too. She shuffled backward and pressed hard against him. He leaned forward. Rested his chin on the side of her head. Her hair smelled good.
“OK, let it float,” he said.
She clicked the trigger on the empty chamber a couple of times. The muzzle was rock steady.
“Feels good,” she said.
“Go get some more shells.”
She peeled away from in front of him and walked back to the rangemaster’s cubicle and got another clip, part loaded with six. He moved into the next lane, where there was a new target. She met him there and nestled back against him and raised her gun hand. He reached around her and cupped it and took the weight. She leaned back against him. Fired twice. He saw the holes appear in the target, maybe an inch apart in the center ring.
“See?” he said. “Let the left do the work.”
“Sounds like a political statement.”
She stayed where she was, leaning back against him. He could feel the rise and fall of her breathing. He stepped away from behind her and she tried again, by herself. Two shots, fast. The shell cases rang on the concrete. Two more holes appeared in the heart ring. There was a tight cluster of four, in a diamond shape a business card would have covered.
She nodded. “You want the last two?”
She stepped close and handed him the pistol, butt-first. It was a SIG-Sauer, identical to the one Lamarr had held next to his head throughout the car ride into Manhattan. He stood with his back to the target and weighed the gun in his hand. Then he spun abruptly and fired the two bullets, one into each of the target’s eyes.
“That’s how I’d do it,” he said. “If I was real mad with somebody, that’s what I’d do. I wouldn’t mess around with a damn tub and twenty gallons of paint.”
THEY MET BLAKE on the way back to the library room. He looked aimless and agitated all at the same time. There was worry in his face. He had a new problem.
“Lamarr’s father died,” he said.
“Stepfather,” Reacher said.
“Whatever. He died, early this morning. The hospital in Spokane called for her. Now I’ve got to call her at home.”
“Give her our condolences,” Harper said.
Blake nodded vaguely and walked away.
“He should take her off the case,” Reacher said.
Harper nodded. “Maybe he should, but he won’t. And she wouldn’t agree, anyway. Her job is all she’s got.”
Reacher said nothing. Harper pulled the door and ushered
him back into the room with the oak tables and the leather chairs and the files. Reacher sat down and checked his watch. Three twenty. Maybe two more hours of daydreaming and then he could eat and escape to the solitude of his room.
IT WAS THREE hours, in the end. And it wasn’t daydreaming. He sat and stared into space and thought hard. Harper watched him, anxious. He took the file folders and arranged them on the table, Callan’s at the bottom right, Stanley’s at the bottom left, Cooke’s at the top right, and stared at them, musing about the geography again. He leaned back and closed his eyes.
“Making any progress?” Harper asked.
“I need a list of the ninety-one women,” he said.
“OK,” she said.
He waited with his eyes closed and heard her leave the room. Enjoyed the warmth and the silence for a long moment, and then she was back. He opened his eyes and saw her leaning over near him and handing him another thick blue file.
“Pencil,” he said.
She backed away to a drawer and found a pencil. Rolled it across the table to him. He opened the new file and started reading. First item was a Defense Department printout, four pages stapled together, ninety-one names in alphabetical order. He recognized some of them. Rita Scimeca was there, the woman he’d mentioned to Blake. She was next to Lorraine Stanley. Then there was a matching list with addresses, most of them obtained through the VA’s medical insurance operation or mail-forwarding instructions. Scimeca lived in Oregon. Then there was a thick sheaf of background information, Army postdischarge intelligence reports, extensive for some of the women, sketchy for others, but altogether enough for a basic conclusion. Reacher flipped back and forth between pages and went to work with the pencil and twenty minutes later counted up the marks he’d made.
“It was eleven women,” he said. “Not ninety-one.”
“It was?” Harper said.
He nodded.
“Eleven,” he said again. “Eight left, not eighty-eight. ”
“Why?”
“Lots of reasons. Ninety-one was always absurd. Who would seriously target ninety-one women? Five and a quarter years? It’s not credible. A guy this smart would break it down into something manageable, like eleven.”
“But how?”
“By limiting himself to what’s feasible. A subcategory. What else did Callan and Cooke and Stanley have in common?”
“What?”
“They were alone. Positively and unequivocally alone. Unmarried or separated, single-family houses in the suburbs or the countryside.”
“And that’s crucial?”
“Of course it is. Think about the MO. He needs somewhere quiet and lonely and isolated. No interruptions. And no witnesses nearby. He has to get all that paint into the house. So look at this list. There are married women, women with new babies, women living with family, parents, women in apartment houses and condos, farms, communes even, women gone back to college. But he wants women who live alone, in houses.”
Harper shook her head. “There are more than eleven of those. We did the research. I think it’s more than thirty. About a third.”
“But you had to check. I’m talking about women who are obviously living alone and isolated. At first glance. Because we have to assume the guy hasn’t got anybody doing research for him. He’s working alone, in secret. All he’s got is this list to study.”
“But that’s our list.”
“Not exclusively. It’s his, too. All this information came straight from the military, right? He had this list before you did.”
FORTY-THREE MILES AWAY, slightly east of north, the exact same list was lying open on a polished desk in a small windowless office in the darkness of the Pentagon’s interior. It was two Xerox generations newer than Reacher’s version, but it was otherwise identical. All the same pages were there. And they had eleven marks on them, against eleven names. Not hasty check marks in pencil, like Reacher had scrawled, but neat under-linings done with a fountain pen and a beveled ruler held away from the paper so the ink wouldn’t smudge.
Three of the eleven names had second lines struck through them.
The list was framed on the desk by the uniformed forearms of the office’s occupant. They were flat on the wood, and the wrists were cocked upward to keep the hands clear of the surface. The left hand held a ruler. The right hand held a pen. The left hand moved and placed the ruler exactly horizontal along the inked line under a fourth name. Then it slid upward a fraction and rested across the name itself. The right hand moved and the pen scored a thick line straight through it. Then the pen lifted off the page.
"SO WHAT DO we do about it?” Harper asked.
Reacher leaned back and closed his eyes again.
“I think you should gamble,” he said. “I think you should stake out the surviving eight around the clock and I think the guy will walk into your arms within sixteen days.”
She sounded uncertain.
“Hell of a gamble,” she said. “It’s very tenuous. You’re guessing about what he’s guessing about when he looks at the list.”
“I’m supposed to be representative of the guy. So what I guess should be what he guesses, right?”
“Suppose you’re wrong?”
“As opposed to what? The progress you’re making?”
She still sounded uncertain. “OK. I guess it’s a valid theory. Worth pursuing. But maybe they thought of it already.”
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?”
She was quiet for a second. “OK, talk to Lamarr, first thing tomorrow.”
He opened his eyes. “You think she’ll be here?”
Harper nodded. “She’ll be here.”
“Won’t there be a funeral for her father?”
Harper nodded again. “There’ll have to be a funeral, obviously. But she won’t go. She’d miss her own funeral, a case like this.”
“OK, but you do the talking, and talk to Blake instead. Keep it away from Lamarr.”
“Why?”
“Because her sister clearly lives alone, remember? So her odds just went all the way down to eight to one. Blake will have to pull her off now.”
“If he agrees with you.”
“He should.”
“Maybe he will. But he won’t pull her off.”
“He should.”
“Maybe, but he won’t.”
Reacher shrugged. “Then don’t bother telling him anything. I’m just wasting my time here. The guy’s an idiot.”
“Don’t say that. You need to cooperate. Think about Jodie.”
He closed his eyes again and thought about Jodie. She seemed a long way away. He thought about her for a long time.
“Let’s go eat,” Harper said. “Then I’ll go talk to Blake.”
FORTY-THREE MILES AWAY, slightly east of north, the uniformed man stared at the paper, motionless. There was a look on his face appropriate to a man making slow progress through a complicated undertaking. Then there was a knock at his door.
“Wait,” he called.
He clicked the ruler down onto the wood and capped his pen and clipped it into his pocket. Folded the list and opened a drawer in his desk and slipped the list inside and weighted it down with a book. The book was a Bible, King James Version, black calfskin binding. He placed the ruler flat on top of the Bible and slid the drawer closed. Took keys from his pocket and locked the drawer. Put the keys back in his pocket and moved in his chair and straightened his jacket.
“Come,” he called.
The door opened and a corporal stepped inside and saluted.
“Your car is here, Colonel,” he said.
“OK, Corporal,” the colonel said.
THE SKIES ABOVE Quantico were still clear, but the crispness in the air was plummeting toward a real night chill. Darkness was creeping in from the east, behind the buildings. Reacher and Harper walked quickly and the lights along the path came on in sequence, following their pace, as if their passing was switching the power. They ate alone, at a table f
or two in a different part of the cafeteria. They walked back to the main building through full darkness. They rode the elevator and she unlocked his door with her key.
“Thanks for your input,” she said.
He said nothing.
“And thanks for the handgun tutorial,” she said.
He nodded. “My pleasure.”
“It’s a good technique.”
“An old master sergeant taught it to me.”
She smiled. “No, not the shooting technique. The tutorial technique.”
He nodded again, remembering her back pressed close against his chest, her hips jammed against his, her hair in his face, her feel, her smell.
“Showing is always better than telling. I guess,” he said.
“Can’t beat it,” she replied.
She closed the door on him and he heard her walk away.
14
HE WOKE EARLY, before daybreak. Stood at the window for a spell, wrapped in a towel, staring out into the darkness. It was cold again. He shaved and showered. He was halfway through the Bureau’s bottle of shampoo. He dressed standing next to the bed. Took his coat from the closet and put it on. Ducked back into the bathroom and clipped his toothbrush into the inside pocket. Just in case today was the day.
He sat on the bed with the coat wrapped around him against the cold and waited for Harper. But when the key went into the lock and the door opened, it wasn’t Harper standing there. It was Poulton. He was keeping his face deliberately blank, and Reacher felt the first stirrings of triumph.
“Where’s Harper?” he asked.
“Off the case,” Poulton said.
“Did she talk to Blake?”
“Last night.”
“And?”
Poulton shrugged. “And nothing.”
“You’re ignoring my input?”
“You’re not here for input.”
Reacher nodded. “OK. Ready for breakfast?”
Poulton nodded back. “Sure.”
The sun was coming up in the east and sending color into the sky. There was no cloud. No damp. No wind. It was a pleasant walk through the early gloom. The place felt busy again. Monday morning, the start of a new week. Blake was at the usual table in the cafeteria, over by the window. Lamarr was sitting with him. She was wearing a black blouse in place of her customary cream. It was slightly faded, like it had been washed many times. There was coffee on the table, and mugs, and milk and sugar, and doughnuts. But no newspapers.
