by Child, Lee
The other guy dropped the book and went for his pocket, but Reacher had Trent’s Beretta out first. He stood close and held it angled low, down in the tails of his coat, down toward the guy’s kneecap.
“Be smart, OK?” he said.
He reached down with his left and racked the slide. The sound was muffled by the cloth of his coat, but to his practiced ear it sounded horribly empty. No final click of the shell case smacking home. But the Chinese guy didn’t notice. Too dizzy. Too shocked. He just pressed himself to the wall like he was trying to back right through it. Put all his weight on one foot, unconsciously preparing for the bullet that would blow his leg away.
“You’re making a mistake, pal,” he whispered.
Reacher shook his head. “No, we’re making a move, asshole.”
“Who’s we?”
“Petrosian,” Reacher said.
“Petrosian? You’re kidding me.”
“No way,” Reacher said. “I’m serious. Real serious. This street is Petrosian’s now. As of today. As of right now. All of it. The whole street. You clear on that?”
“This street is ours.”
“Not anymore. It’s Petrosian’s. He’s taking it over. You want to lose a leg arguing about it?”
“Petrosian?” the guy repeated.
“Believe it,” Reacher said, and slammed him left-handed in the stomach. The guy folded forward and Reacher tapped him above the ear with the butt of the gun and dropped him neatly on top of his partner. He clicked the trigger to free the slide and put the gun back in his pocket. Picked up the satchel and tucked it under his arm. Walked out of the alley and turned north.
He was already late. If his watch was a minute slow and the Navy guy’s was a minute fast, then the rendezvous was already gone. But he didn’t run. Running in the city was too conspicuous. He walked away as fast as he could, stepping one pace to the side for every three paces forward, threading his way along the sidewalks. He turned a corner and saw the blue car, USNR painted discreetly on its flank. He saw it moving away from the curb. Saw it lurching out into the traffic stream. Now he ran.
He got to where it had been parked four seconds after it left. Now it was three cars ahead, accelerating to catch the light. He stared after it. The light changed to red. The car accelerated faster. Then the guy chickened out and hit the brakes. The car slammed to a neat stop a foot into the crosswalk. Pedestrians swarmed out in front of it. Reacher breathed again and ran to the intersection and pulled open the passenger door. Dumped himself into the seat, panting. The driver nodded to him. Didn’t say a word. Didn’t offer any kind of an apology for not waiting. Reacher didn’t expect one. When the Navy says three hours, it means three hours. One hundred and eighty minutes, not a second more, not a second less. Time and tide wait for no man. The Navy was built on all kinds of bullshit like that.
THE JOURNEY BACK to Trent’s office at Dix was the exact reverse of the journey out. Thirty minutes in the car through Brooklyn, the waiting helicopter, the raucous flight back to McGuire, the lieutenant in the staff Chevy waiting on the tarmac. Reacher spent the flight time counting the money in the satchel. There was a total of twelve hundred dollars in there, six folded wads of two hundred each. He gave the money to the load-masters for their next unit party. He tore the satchel along its seams and dropped the pieces through the flare hatch, two thousand feet above Lakewood, New Jersey.
It was still raining at Dix. The lieutenant drove him back to the alley and he walked to Trent’s window and rapped softly on the glass. Trent opened it up and he climbed back inside the office.
“We OK?” he asked.
Trent nodded. “She’s just been sitting out there, quiet as a mouse, all day. Must be real impressed with our dedication. We worked right through lunch.”
Reacher nodded and handed back the empty gun. Took off his jacket. Sat down in his chair. Slipped his ID around his neck again and picked up a file. Trent had moved the stack right to left across the desk, like it had been minutely examined.
“Success?” Trent asked.
“I think so. Time will tell, right?”
Trent nodded and looked out at the weather. He was restless. He had been trapped in his office all day.
“Let her in, if you want,” Reacher said. “Show’s over now.”
“You’re all wet,” Trent said. “Show’s not over until you’re dried out.”
It took twenty minutes to dry out. He used Trent’s phone and called Jodie’s numbers. The private office line, the apartment, the mobile. No reply, no reply, out of service. He stared at the wall. Then he read an unclassified file about proposed methods of getting mail to the Marines if they had to go serve in the Indian Ocean. The time he spent on it put him lower in his chair and put a glazed look on his face. When Trent finally opened the door and Harper got her second peek of the day, he was slumped and inert. Exactly like a man looks after an arduous day with paperwork.
“Progress?” she called.
He looked up and sighed at the ceiling. “Maybe.”
“Six solid hours, you must have gotten somewhere.”
“Maybe,” he said again.
There was silence for a moment.
“OK, so let’s go,” she said.
She stood up behind her desk and stretched. She put her arms way above her head, palms flat, reaching for the ceiling. Some kind of a yoga thing. She arched her face upward and tilted her head and her hair cascaded down her back. Three sergeants and one colonel stared at her.
“So let’s go,” Reacher said.
“Don’t forget your notes,” Trent said.
He handed over a sheet of paper. There was a list of maybe thirty names printed on it. Probably Trent’s high school football team. Reacher put the list in his pocket and put his coat on and shook Trent’s hand. Walked through the anteroom and outside into the rain and stood there breathing for a second like a man who has been sitting down all day. Then Harper nudged him toward the lieutenant’s car for the drive back to the Lear.
BLAKE AND POULTON and Lamarr were waiting for them at the same table in the Quantico cafeteria. It was just as dark outside, but now the table was set for dinner, not breakfast. There was a jug of water and five glasses, salt and pepper, bottles of steak sauce. Blake ignored Reacher and glanced at Harper, who nodded back to him, like a reassurance. Blake looked satisfied.
“So, you found our guy yet?” he asked.
“Maybe,” Reacher said. “I’ve got thirty names. He could be one of them.”
“So let’s see them.”
“Not yet. I need more.”
Blake stared at him. “Bullshit, you need more. We need to get tails on these guys.”
Reacher shook his head. “Can’t be done. These guys are in places where you can’t go. You even want a warrant on these guys, you’re going to have to go to the Secretary of Defense, right after you’ve been to the judge. And Defense is going to go straight to the Commander-in-Chief, who was the President last time I looked, so you’re going to need a damn sight more than I can give you right now.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying let me boil it down some.”
“How?”
Reacher shrugged. “I want to go see Lamarr’s sister. ”
“My stepsister,” Lamarr said.
“Why?” Blake asked.
Reacher wanted to say because I’m just killing time, asshole, and I’d rather do it on the road than stuck in here, but he composed his face into a serious look and shrugged again.
“Because we need to think laterally,” he said. “If this guy is killing by category, we need to know why. He can’t be mad at a whole category, just like that. One of these women must have sparked him off, first time around. Then he must have transferred his rage from the personal to the general, right? So who was it? Lamarr’s sister could be a good place to start asking. She got a transfer between units. Two very different units. That doubles her potential contacts, profile-wise.”
It sounded professional enough. Blake nodded.
“OK,” he said. “We’ll set it up. You’ll go tomorrow. ”
“Where does she live?”
“Washington State,” Lamarr said. “Someplace outside of Spokane, I think.”
“You think? You don’t know?”
“I’ve never been there,” she said. “I sure as hell don’t get enough vacation time to drive all the way out and drive all the way back.”
Reacher nodded. Turned to Blake.
“You should be guarding these women,” he said.
Blake sighed heavily. “Do the arithmetic, for God’s sake. Eighty-eight women, and we don’t know which one is next, seventeen days to go, if he sticks to his cycle, three agents every twenty-four hours, that’s more than a hundred thousand man-hours, random locations all around the country. We just can’t do it. We don’t have the agents. We warned the local police departments, of course, but what can they do? Like outside of Spokane, Washington, for instance, the local police department is probably one man and a German shepherd. They drive by, time to time, I guess, but that’s all we got.”
“Have you warned the women, too?”
Blake looked embarrassed and shook his head. “We can’t. If we can’t guard them, we can’t warn them. Because what would we be saying? You’re in danger, but sorry girls, you’re entirely on your own? Can’t be done.”
“We need to catch this guy,” Poulton said. “That’s the only sure way to help these women.”
Lamarr nodded. “He’s out there, somewhere. We need to bring him in.”
Reacher looked at them. Three psychologists. They were trying to push all the right buttons. Trying to make it a challenge. He smiled. “I get the message.”
“OK, you go to Spokane tomorrow,” Lamarr said. “Meanwhile I’ll work the files some more. You’ll review them the day after tomorrow. That gives you the stuff you got from Trent, plus the stuff you get in Spokane, plus what we’ve already gotten. At which point we’ll expect some real progress from you.”
Reacher smiled again. “Whatever, Lamarr.”
“So eat and get to bed,” Blake said. “It’s a long way to Spokane. Early start tomorrow. Harper will go with you, of course.”
“To bed?”
Blake was embarrassed again. “To Spokane, asshole. ”
Reacher nodded. “Whatever, Blake.”
THE PROBLEM WAS, it was a challenge. He was sealed in his room, lying alone on the bed, staring up at the blind eye of the hidden camera. But he wasn’t seeing it. His gaze had dissolved just like it used to, into a blur. A green blur, like the whole of America had disappeared and returned to grassland and forest, the buildings gone, the roads gone, the noise gone, the population all gone, except for one man, somewhere. Reacher stared into the silent blur, a hundred miles, a thousand miles, three thousand miles, his gaze roving north and south, east and west, looking for the faint shadow, waiting for the sudden movement. He’s out there, somewhere. We need to catch this guy. He was walking around right now, or sleeping, or planning, or preparing, and he was thinking he was just about the smartest guy on the whole continent.
Well, we’ll see about that, Reacher thought. He stirred. He ought to get seriously involved. Or on the other hand, maybe not. It was a big decision, waiting to be made, but it wasn’t made yet. He rolled over and closed his eyes. He could think about it later. He could make the decision tomorrow. Or the next day. Whenever.
THE DECISION WAS made. About the interval. The interval was history. Time to speed things up a little. Three weeks was way too long to wait now. This sort of thing, you let the idea creep up on you, you look at it, you consider it, you see its value, you see its appeal, and the decision is really made for you, isn’t it? You can’t get the genie back in the bottle, not once it’s out. And this genie is out. All the way out. Up and running. So you run with it.
12
THERE WAS NO breakfast meeting the next morning. The day started too early. Harper opened the door before Reacher was even dressed. He had his pants on and was smoothing the wrinkles out of his shirt with his palm against the mattress.
“Love those scars,” she said.
She took a step closer, looking at his stomach with undisguised curiosity.
“What’s that one from?” she asked, pointing to his right side.
He glanced down. The right side of his stomach had a violent tracery of stitches in the shape of a twisted star. They bulged out above the muscle wall, white and angry.
“My mother did it,” he said.
“Your mother?”
“I was raised by grizzly bears. In Alaska.”
She rolled her eyes and moved them up to the left side of his chest. There was a .38 caliber bullet hole there, punched right into the pectoral muscle. The hair was missing from around it. It was a big hole. She could have lost her little finger in it, right up to the first knuckle.
“Exploratory surgery,” he said. “Checking if I had a heart.”
“You’re happy this morning,” she said.
He nodded. “I’m always happy.”
“Did you get Jodie yet?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t tried since yesterday.”
“Why not?”
“Waste of time. She’s not there.”
“Are you worried?”
He shrugged. “She’s a big girl.”
“I’ll tell you if I hear anything.”
He nodded. “You better.”
“Where are they really from?” she asked. “The scars?”
He buttoned his shirt.
“The gut is from bomb shrapnel,” he said. “The chest, somebody shot me.”
“Dramatic life.”
He took his coat from the closet.
“No, not really. Pretty normal, wouldn’t you say? For a soldier? A soldier figuring to avoid physical violence is like a CPA figuring to avoid adding numbers. ”
“Is that why you don’t care about these women?”
He looked at her. “Who says I don’t care?”
“I thought you’d be more agitated about it.”
“Getting agitated won’t achieve anything.”
She paused. “So what will?”
“Working the clues, same as always.”
“There aren’t any clues. He doesn’t leave any.”
He smiled. “That’s a clue in itself, wouldn’t you say?”
She used her key from the inside and opened the door.
“That’s just talking in riddles,” she said.
He shrugged. “Better than talking in bullshit, like they do downstairs.”
THE SAME MOTOR pool guy brought the same car to the doors. This time he stayed in the driver’s seat, sitting square-on like a dutiful chauffeur. He drove them north on I-95 to the National Airport. It was before dawn. There was a halfhearted glow in the sky somewhere three hundred miles to the east, all the way out over the Atlantic Ocean. The only other illumination was from a thousand headlights streaming north toward work. The headlights were mostly on old-model cars. Old, therefore cheap, therefore owned by low-grade people aiming to be at their desks an hour before their bosses, so they would look good and get promotion, whereupon they could drive newer cars to work an hour later in the day. Reacher sat still and watched their shadowed faces as the Bureau driver sped past them, one by one.
Inside the airport terminal, it was reasonably busy. Men and women in dark raincoats walked quickly from one place to another. Harper collected two coach tickets from the United desk and carried them over to the check-in counter.
“We could use some legroom,” she said to the guy behind the counter.
She used her FBI pass for photo ID. She snapped it down like a poker player completing a flush. The guy hit a few keys and came up with an upgrade. Harper smiled, like she was genuinely surprised.
First class was half-empty. Harper took an aisle seat, trapping Reacher against the window like a prisoner. She stretched out. She was in a third diff
erent suit, this one a fine check in a muted gray. The jacket fell open and showed a hint of nipple through the shirt, and no shoulder holster.
“Left your gun at home?” Reacher asked.
She nodded. “Not worth the hassle. Airlines want too much paperwork. A Seattle guy is meeting us. Standard practice is he’d bring a spare, should we need one. But we won’t, not today.”
“You hope.”
She nodded. “I hope.”
They taxied on time and took off a minute early. Reacher pulled the magazine out and started leafing through. Harper had her tray unfolded, ready for breakfast.
“What did you mean?” she asked. “When you said it’s a clue in itself?”
He forced his mind back an hour and tried to remember.
“Just thinking aloud, I guess,” he said.
“Thinking about what?”
He shrugged. He had time to kill. “The history of science. Stuff like that.”
“Is that relevant?”
“I was thinking about fingerprinting. How old is that?”
She made a face. “Pretty old, I think.”
“Turn of the century?”
She nodded. “Probably.”
“OK, a hundred years old,” he said. “That was the first big forensic test, right? Probably started using microscopes around the same time. And since then, they’ve invented all kinds of other stuff. DNA, mass spectrometry, fluorescence. Lamarr said you’ve got tests I wouldn’t believe. I bet they can find a rug fiber, tell you where and when somebody bought it, what kind of flea sat on it, what kind of dog the flea came off. Probably tell you what the dog’s name is and what brand of dog food it ate for breakfast.”
“So?”
“Amazing tests, right?”
She nodded.
“Real science-fiction stuff, right?”
She nodded again.
“OK,” he said. “Amazing, science-fiction tests. But this guy killed Amy Callan and beat all of those tests, right?”
