by Child, Lee
“How is that different?”
“Because it was unconnected. The guy was screwing her because she was happy to let him, and he didn’t promote her because she wasn’t good enough at her job. The two things weren’t connected.”
“Maybe she saw the year in bed as an implied bargain. ”
“Then it was a contractual issue. Like a hooker who gets bilked. That’s not harassment.”
“So you did nothing?”
Reacher shook his head. “No, I arrested the colonel, because by then there were rules. Sex between people of different rank was effectively outlawed.”
“And?”
“And he was dishonorably discharged and his wife dumped him and he killed himself. And Cooke quit anyway.”
“And what happened to you?”
“I transferred out of NATO HQ.”
“Why? Upset?”
“No, I was needed someplace else.”
“You were needed? Why you?”
“Because I was a good investigator. I was wasted in Belgium. Nothing much happens in Belgium.”
“You see much sexual harassment after that?”
“Sure. It became a very big thing.”
“Lots of good men getting their careers ruined?” Lamarr asked.
Reacher turned to face her. “Some. It became a witch-hunt. Most of the cases were genuine, in my opinion, but some innocent people were caught up. Plenty of normal relationships were suddenly exposed. The rules had suddenly changed on them. Some of the innocent victims were men. But some were women, too.”
“A mess, right?” Blake said. “All started by pesky little women like Callan and Cooke?”
Reacher said nothing. Cozo was drumming his fingers on the mahogany.
“I want to get back to the business with Petrosian,” he said.
Reacher swiveled his gaze the other way. “There is no business with Petrosian. I never heard of anybody called Petrosian.”
Deerfield yawned and looked at his watch. He pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.
“It’s past midnight, you know that?” he said.
“Did you treat Callan and Cooke with courtesy?” Blake asked.
Reacher squinted through the glare at Cozo and then turned back to Blake. The hot yellow light from the ceiling was bouncing off the red tint of the mahogany and making his bloated face crimson.
“Yes, I treated them with courtesy.”
“Did you see them again after you turned their cases over to the prosecutor?”
“Once or twice, I guess, in passing.”
“Did they trust you?”
Reacher shrugged. “I guess so. It was my job to make them trust me. I had to get all kinds of intimate details from them.”
“You had to do that kind of thing with many women?”
“There were hundreds of cases. I handled a couple dozen, I guess, before they set up special units to deal with them all.”
“So give me a name of another woman whose case you handled.”
Reacher shrugged again and scanned back through a succession of offices in hot climates, cold climates, big desks, small desks, sun outside the window, cloud outside, hurt and outraged women stammering out the details of their betrayal.
“Rita Scimeca,” he said. “She would be a random example.”
Blake paused and Lamarr reached down to the floor and came up with a thick file from her briefcase. She slid it sideways. Blake opened it and turned pages. Traced down a long list with a thick finger and nodded.
“OK,” he said. “What happened with Ms. Scimeca?”
“She was Lieutenant Scimeca,” Reacher said. “Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The guys called it hazing, she called it gang rape.”
“And what was the outcome?”
“She won her case. Three men spent time in military prison and were dishonorably discharged.”
“And what happened to Lieutenant Scimeca?”
Reacher shrugged again. “At first she was happy enough. She felt vindicated. Then she felt the Army had been ruined for her. So she mustered out.”
“Where is she now?”
“I have no idea.”
“Suppose you saw her again someplace? Suppose you were in some town somewhere and you saw her in a store or a restaurant? What would she do?”
“I have no idea. She’d probably say hello, I guess. Maybe we’d talk awhile, have a drink or something.”
“She’d be pleased to see you?”
“Pleased enough, I guess.”
“Because she would remember you as a nice guy?”
Reacher nodded. “It’s a hell of an ordeal. Not just the event itself, but the process afterward, too. So the investigator has to build up a bond. The investigator has to be a friend and a supporter.”
“So the victim becomes your friend?”
“If you do it right, yes.”
“What would happen if you knocked on Lieutenant Scimeca’s door?”
“I don’t know where she lives.”
“Suppose you did. Would she let you in?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would she recognize you?”
“Probably.”
“And she’d remember you as a friend?”
“I guess.”
“So you knock on her door, she’d let you in, right? She’d open up the door and see this old friend of hers, so she’d let you right in, offer you coffee or something. Talk a while, catch up on old times.”
“Maybe,” Reacher said. “Probably.”
Blake nodded and stopped talking. Lamarr put her hand on his arm and he bent to listen as she whispered in his ear. He nodded again and turned to Deerfield and whispered in turn. Deerfield glanced at Cozo. The three agents from Quantico sat back as he did so, just an imperceptible movement, but with enough body language in it to say OK, we’re interested. Cozo stared back at Deerfield in alarm. Deerfield leaned forward, staring straight through his glasses at Reacher.
“This is a very confusing situation,” he said.
Reacher said nothing back. Just sat and waited.
“Exactly what happened at the restaurant?” Deerfield asked.
“Nothing happened,” Reacher said.
Deerfield shook his head. “You were under surveillance. My people have been following you for a week. Special Agents Poulton and Lamarr joined them tonight. They saw the whole thing.”
Reacher stared at him. “You’ve been following me for a week?”
Deerfield nodded. “Eight days, actually.”
“Why?”
“We’ll get to that later.”
Lamarr stirred and reached down again to her briefcase. She pulled out another file. Opened it and took out a sheaf of papers. There were four or five sheets clipped together. They were covered in dense type. She smiled icily at Reacher and reversed the sheets and slid them across the table to him. The air caught them and riffed them apart. The clip dragged on the wood and stopped them exactly in front of him. In them Reacher was referred to as the subject. They were a list of everything he had done and everywhere he had been in the previous eight days. They were complete to the last second. And they were accurate to the last detail. Reacher glanced from them to Lamarr’s smiling face and nodded.
“Well, FBI tails are obviously pretty good,” he said. “I never noticed.”
There was silence.
“So what happened in the restaurant?” Deerfield asked again.
Reacher paused. Honesty is the best policy, he thought. He scoped it out. Swallowed. Then he nodded toward Blake and Lamarr and Poulton. “These law school buffs would call it imperfect necessity, I guess. I committed a small crime to stop a bigger one happening. ”
“You were acting alone?” Cozo asked.
Reacher nodded. “Yes, I was.”
“So what was don’t start a turf war with us all about?”
“I wanted it to look convincing. I wanted Petrosian to take it seriously, whoever the hell he is. Like he was dea
ling with another organization.”
Deerfield leaned all the way over the table and retrieved Lamarr’s surveillance log. He reversed it and riffed through it.
“This shows no contact with anybody at all except Ms. Jodie Jacob. She’s not running protection rackets. What about the phone log?”
“You’re tapping my phone?” Reacher asked.
Deerfield nodded. “We’ve been through your garbage, too.”
“Phone log is clear,” Poulton said. “He spoke to nobody except Ms. Jacob. He lives a quiet life.”
“That right, Reacher?” Deerfield asked. “You live a quiet life?”
“Usually,” Reacher said.
“So you were acting alone,” Deerfield said. “Just a concerned citizen. No contact with gangsters, no instructions by phone.”
He turned to Cozo, a question in his eyes. “You comfortable with that, James?”
Cozo shrugged and nodded. “I’ll have to be, I guess.”
“Concerned citizen, right, Reacher?” Deerfield said.
Reacher nodded. Said nothing.
“Can you prove that to us?” Deerfield asked.
Reacher shrugged. “I could have taken their guns. If I was connected, I would have. But I didn’t.”
“No, you left them in the Dumpster.”
“I disabled them first.”
“With grit in the mechanisms. Why did you do that?”
“So nobody could find them and use them.”
Deerfield nodded. “A concerned citizen. You saw an injustice, you wanted to set it straight.”
Reacher nodded back. “I guess.”
“Somebody’s got to do it, right?”
“I guess,” Reacher said again.
“You don’t like injustice, right?”
“I guess not.”
“And you can tell the difference between right and wrong.”
“I hope so.”
“You don’t need the intervention of the proper authorities, because you can make your own decisions.”
“Usually.”
“Confident with your own moral code.”
“I guess.”
There was silence. Deerfield looked through the glare.
“So why did you steal their money?” he asked.
Reacher shrugged. “Spoils of battle, I guess. Like a trophy.”
Deerfield nodded. “Part of the code, right?”
“I guess.”
“You play to your own rules, right?”
“Usually.”
“You wouldn’t mug an old lady, but it was OK to take money off of a couple of hard men.”
“I guess.”
“When they step outside what’s acceptable to you, they get what they get, right?”
“Right.”
“A personal code.”
Reacher said nothing. The silence built.
“You know anything about criminal profiling?” Deerfield asked suddenly.
Reacher paused. “Only what I read in the newspaper. ”
“It’s a science,” Blake said. “We developed it at Quantico, over many years. Special Agent Lamarr here is currently our leading exponent. Special Agent Poulton is her assistant.”
“We look at crime scenes,” Lamarr said. “We look at the underlying psychological indicators, and we work out the type of personality which could have committed the crime.”
“We study the victims,” Poulton said. “We figure out to whom they could have been especially vulnerable.”
“What crimes?” Reacher asked. “What scenes?”
“You son of a bitch,” Lamarr said.
“Amy Callan and Caroline Cooke,” Blake said. “Both homicide victims.”
Reacher stared at him.
“Callan was first,” Blake said. “Very distinctive MO, but one homicide is just one homicide, right? Then Cooke was hit. With the exact same MO. That made it a serial situation.”
“We looked for a link,” Poulton said. “Between the victims. Not hard to find. Army harassment complainants who subsequently quit.”
“Extreme organization at the crime scene,” Lamarr said. “Indicative of military precision, maybe. A bizarre, coded MO. Nothing left behind. No clues of any kind. The perpetrator was clearly a precise person, and clearly a person familiar with investigative procedures. Possibly a good investigator himself.”
“No forced entry at either abode,” Poulton said. “The killer was admitted to the house in both cases, by the victims, no questions asked.”
“So the killer was somebody they both knew,” Blake said.
“Somebody they both trusted,” Poulton said.
“Like a friendly visitor,” Lamarr said.
There was silence in the room.
“That’s what he was,” Blake said. “A visitor. Somebody they regarded as a friend. Somebody they felt a bond with.”
“A friend, visiting,” Poulton said. “He knocks on the door, they open it up, they say hi, so nice to see you again.”
“He walks in,” Lamarr said. “Just like that.”
There was silence in the room.
“We explored the crime, psychologically,” Lamarr said. “Why were those women making somebody mad enough to kill them? So we looked for an Army guy with a score to settle. Maybe somebody outraged by the idea of pesky women ruining good soldiers’ careers, and then quitting anyway. Frivolous women, driving good men to suicide?”
“Somebody with a clear sense of right and wrong,” Poulton said. “Somebody confident enough in his own code to set these injustices right by his own hand. Somebody happy to act without the proper authorities getting in the way, you know?”
“Somebody both women knew,” Blake said. “Somebody they knew well enough to let right in the house, no questions asked, like an old friend or something.”
“Somebody decisive,” Lamarr said. “Maybe like somebody organized enough to think for a second and then go buy a label machine and a tube of glue, just to take care of a little ad hoc problem.”
More silence.
“The Army ran them through their computers,” Lamarr said. “You’re right, they never knew each other. They had very few mutual acquaintances. Very few. But you were one of them.”
“You want to know an interesting fact?” Blake said. “Perpetrators of serial homicide used to drive Volkswagen Bugs. Almost all of them. It was uncanny. Then they switched to minivans. Then they switched to sport-utilities. Big four-wheel-drives, exactly like yours. It’s a hell of an indicator.”
Lamarr leaned across and pulled the sheaf of papers back from Deerfield’s place at the table. She tapped them with a finger.
“They live solitary lives,” she said. “They interact with one other person at most. They live off other people, often relatives or friends, often women. They don’t do much normal stuff. Don’t talk much on the phone, they’re quiet and furtive.”
“They’re law enforcement buffs,” Poulton said. “They know all kinds of stuff. Like all kinds of obscure legal cases defining their rights.”
More silence.
“Profiling,” Blake said. “It’s an exact science. It’s regarded as good enough evidence to get an arrest warrant in most states of the Union.”
“It never fails,” Lamarr said. She stared at Reacher and then she sat back with her crooked teeth showing in a satisfied smile. Silence settled over the room.
“So?” Reacher said.
“So somebody killed two women,” Deerfield said.
“And?”
Deerfield nodded to his right, toward Blake and Lamarr and Poulton. “And these agents think it was somebody exactly like you.”
“So?”
“So we asked you all those questions.”
“And?”
“And I think they’re absolutely right. It was somebody exactly like you. Maybe it even was you.”
4
"NO, IT WASN’T me,” Reacher said.
Blake smiled. “That’s what they all say.”
; Reacher stared at him. “You’re full of shit, Blake. You’ve got two women, is all. The Army thing is probably a coincidence. There are hundreds of women out there, harassed out of the Army, maybe thousands. Why jump on that connection?”
Blake said nothing.
“And why a guy like me?” Reacher asked. “That’s just a guess, too. And that’s what this profiling crap comes down to, right? You say a guy like me did it because you think a guy like me did it. No evidence or anything.”
“There is no evidence,” Blake said.
“The guy didn’t leave any behind,” Lamarr said. “And that’s how we work. The perpetrator was obviously a smart guy, so we looked for a smart guy. You saying you’re not a smart guy?”
Reacher stared at her. “There are thousands of guys as smart as me.”
“No, there are millions, you conceited son of a bitch,” she said. “But then we started narrowing it down some. A smart guy, a loner, Army, knew both victims, movements unaccounted for, a brutal vigilante personality. That narrowed it down from millions to thousands to hundreds to tens, maybe all the way on down to you.”
There was silence.
“Me?” Reacher said to her. “You’re crazy.”
He turned to Deerfield, who was sitting silent and impassive.
“You think I did it?”
Deerfield shrugged. “Well, if you didn’t, it was somebody exactly like you. And I know you put two guys in the hospital. You’re already in big trouble for that. This other matter, I’m not familiar with the case. But the Bureau trusts its experts. That’s why we hire them, after all.”
“They’re wrong,” Reacher said.
“But can you prove that?”
Reacher stared at him. “Do I have to? What about innocent until proven guilty?”
Deerfield just smiled. “Please, let’s stay in the real world, OK?”
There was silence.
“Dates,” Reacher said. “Give me dates, and places.”
More silence. Deerfield stared into space.
“Callan was seven weeks ago,” Blake said. “Cooke was four.”
Reacher scanned back in time. Four weeks was the start of fall, seven took him into late summer. Late summer, he had done nothing at all. He had been battling the yard. Three months of unchecked growth had seen him outdoors every day with scythes and hoes and other unaccustomed tools in his hands. He had gone days at a time without even seeing Jodie. She had been tied up with legal cases. She had spent a week overseas, in England. He couldn’t recall for sure which week it had been. It was a lonely spell, his time absorbed with beating back rampant nature, a foot at a time.
