Running Blind

by Child, Lee

  “Right.”

  “So what do you call that type of a guy?”

  “What?”

  “A very, very clever guy, is what.”

  She made a face. “Among other things.”

  “Sure, a lot of other things, but whatever else, a very clever guy. Then he did it again, with Cooke. Now what do we call him?”

  “What?”

  “A very, very clever guy. Once might have been luck. Twice, he’s damn good.”

  “So?”

  “Then he did it again, with Stanley. Now what do we call him?”

  “A very, very, very clever guy?”

  Reacher nodded. “Exactly.”

  “So?”

  “So that’s the clue. We’re looking for a very, very, very clever guy.”

  “I think we know that already.”

  Reacher shook his head. “I don’t think you do. You’re not factoring it in.”

  “In what sense?”

  “You think about it. I’m only an errand boy. You Bureau people can do all the hard work.”

  The stewardess came out of the galley with the breakfast trolley. It was first class, so the food was reasonable. Reacher smelled bacon and egg and sausage. Strong coffee. He flipped his tray open. The cabin was half-empty, so he got the girl to give him two breakfasts. Two airline meals made for a pleasant snack. She caught on quick and kept his coffee cup full.

  “How aren’t we factoring it in?” Harper asked.

  “Figure it out for yourself,” Reacher said. “I’m not in a helpful mood.”

  “Is it that he’s not a soldier?”

  He turned to stare at her. “That’s great. We agree he’s a really smart guy, and so you say well, then he’s obviously not a soldier. Thanks a bunch, Harper.”

  She looked away, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I just can’t see how we’re not factoring it in.”

  He said nothing in reply. Just drained his coffee and climbed over her legs to get to the bathroom. When he got back, she was still looking contrite.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “No.”

  “You should, Reacher. Blake’s going to ask me about your attitude.”

  “My attitude? Tell him my attitude is if a hair on Jodie’s head gets hurt, I’ll tear his legs off and beat him to death with them.”

  She nodded. “You really mean that, right?”

  He nodded back. “You bet your ass I do.”

  “That’s what I don’t understand. Why aren’t you feeling a little bit of the same way about these women? You liked Amy Callan, right? Not the same way as Jodie, but you liked her.”

  “I don’t understand you, either. Blake wanted to use you like a hooker, and you’re acting like he’s still your best buddy.”

  She shrugged. “He was desperate. He gets like that. He’s under a lot of stress. He gets a case like this, he’s just desperate to crack it.”

  “And you admire that?”

  She nodded. “Sure I do. I admire dedication.”

  “But you don’t share it. Or you wouldn’t have said no to him. You’d have seduced me on camera, for the good of the cause. So maybe it’s you who doesn’t care enough about these women.”

  She was quiet for a spell. “It was immoral. It annoyed me.”

  He nodded. “And threatening Jodie was immoral, too. It annoyed me.”

  “But I’m not letting my annoyance get in the way of justice.”

  “Well, I am. And if you don’t like that, tough shit.”

  THEY DIDN’T SPEAK again, all the way to Seattle. Five hours, without a word. Reacher was comfortable enough with that. He was not a compulsively sociable guy. He was happier not talking. He didn’t see anything odd about it. There was no strain involved. He just sat there, not talking, like he was making the journey on his own.

  Harper was having more trouble with it. He could see she was worried about it. She was like most people. Put her alongside somebody she was acquainted with, she felt she had to be conversing. For her, it was unnatural not to be. But he didn’t relent. Five hours, without a single word.

  Those five hours were reduced to two by the West Coast clocks. It was still about breakfast time when they landed. The Sea-Tac terminals were filled with people starting out on their day. The arrivals hall had the usual echelon of drivers holding placards up. There was one guy in a dark suit, striped tie, short hair. He had no placard, but he was their guy. He might as well have had FBI tattooed across his forehead.

  “Lisa Harper?” he said. “I’m from the Seattle Field Office.”

  They shook hands.

  “This is Reacher,” she said.

  The Seattle agent ignored him completely. Reacher smiled inside. Touché, he thought. But then the guy might have ignored him anyway even if they were best buddies, because he was pretty much preoccupied with paying a whole lot of attention to what was under Harper’s shirt.

  “We’re flying to Spokane,” he said. “Air taxi company owes us a few favors.”

  He had a Bureau car parked in the tow lane. He used it to drive a mile around the perimeter road to General Aviation, which was five acres of fenced tarmac filled with parked planes, all of them tiny, one and two engines. There was a cluster of huts with low-budget signs advertising transportation and flying lessons. A guy met them outside one of the huts. He wore a generic pilot’s uniform and led them toward a clean white six-seat Cessna. It was a medium-sized walk across the apron. Fall in the Northwest had brighter light than in D.C., but it was just as cold.

  The interior of the plane was about the same size Lamarr’s Buick had been, and a whole lot more spartan. But it looked clean and well maintained, and the engines started first touch on the button. It taxied out to the runway with the same sensation of tiny size Reacher had felt in the Lear at McGuire. It lined up behind a 747 bound for Tokyo the way a mouse lines up behind an elephant. Then it wound itself up and was off the ground in seconds, wheeling due east, settling to a noisy cruise a thousand feet above the ground.

  The airspeed indicator showed more than a hundred and twenty knots, and the plane flew on for two whole hours. The seat was cramped and uncomfortable, and Reacher started wishing he’d thought of a better way to waste his time. He was going to spend fourteen hours in the air, all in one day. Maybe he should have stayed and worked on the files with Lamarr. He imagined a quiet room somewhere, like a library, a stack of papers, a leather chair. Then he pictured Lamarr herself and glanced across at Harper and figured he’d maybe taken the right option after all.

  The airfield at Spokane was a modest, modern place, larger than he had expected. There was a Bureau car waiting on the tarmac, identifiable even from a thousand feet up, a clean dark sedan with a man in a suit leaning on the fender.

  “From the Spokane satellite office,” the Seattle guy said.

  The car rolled over to where the plane parked and they were on the road within twenty seconds of the pilot shutting down. The local guy had the destination address written on a pad fixed to his windshield with a rubber suction cup. He seemed to know where the place was. He drove ten miles east toward the Idaho panhandle and turned north on a narrow road into the hills. The terrain was moderate, but there were giant mountains in the middle distance. Snow gleamed on the peaks. The road had a building every mile or so, separated by thick forest and broad meadow. The population density was not encouraging.

  The address itself might have been the main house of an old cattle ranch, sold off long ago and refurbished by somebody looking for the rural dream but unwilling to forget the aesthetics of the city. It was boxed into a small lot by new ranch fencing. Beyond the fencing was grazing land, and inside the fencing the same grass had been fed and mowed into a fine lawn. There were trees on the perimeter, contorted by the wind. There was a small barn with garage doors punched into the side and a path veering off from the driveway to the front door. The whole structure stood close to the road and close to its own fencing, like a suburban ho
use standing close to its neighbors, but this one stood close to nothing. The nearest man-made object was at least a mile away north or south, maybe twenty miles away east or west.

  The local guys stayed in the car, and Harper and Reacher got out and stood stretching on the shoulder. Then the engine shut down behind them and the stunning silence of the empty country fell on them like a weight. It hummed and hissed and echoed in their ears.

  “I’d feel better if she lived in a city apartment,” Reacher said.

  Harper nodded. “With a doorman.”

  There was no gate. The ranch fencing just stopped either side of the mouth of the driveway. They walked together toward the house. The driveway was shale. Reassuringly noisy, at least. There was a slight breeze. Reacher could hear it in the power lines. Harper stopped at the front door. There was no bell push. Just a big iron knocker in the shape of a lion’s head with a heavy ring held in its teeth. There was a fisheye spyhole above it. The spyhole was new. There were burrs of clean wood where the drill had chipped the paint. Harper grasped the iron ring and knocked twice. The ring thumped on the wood. The sound was loud and dull, and it rolled out over the grassland. Came back seconds later from the hills.

  There was no response. Harper knocked again. The sound boomed out. They waited. There was a creak of floorboards inside the house. Footsteps. The sound approached unseen and stopped behind the door.

  “Who is it?” a voice called. A woman’s voice, apprehensive.

  Harper went into her pocket and came out with her badge. It was backed with a slip of leather, the same type of gold-on-gold shield Lamarr had clicked against Reacher’s car window. The eagle at the top, head cocked to the left. She held it up, six inches in front of the spyhole.

  “FBI, ma’am,” she announced. “We called you yesterday, made an appointment.”

  The door opened with the creak of old hinges and revealed an entrance hall with a woman in it. She was holding the doorknob, smiling with relief.

  “Julia’s got me so damn nervous,” she said.

  Harper smiled back in a sympathetic way and introduced herself and Reacher. The woman shook hands with both of them.

  “Alison Lamarr,” she said. “Really pleased to meet you.”

  She led the way inside. The hall was square and as large as a room, walled and floored in old pine, which had been stripped and waxed to a fresh color a shade darker than the gold on Harper’s badge. There were curtains in yellow checked gingham. Sofas with feather-filled pillows. Old oil lamps converted to take electric bulbs.

  “Can I get you guys coffee?” Alison Lamarr asked.

  “I’m all set right now,” Harper said.

  “Yes, please,” Reacher said.

  She led them through to the kitchen, which was the whole rear quarter of the first floor. It was an attractive space, waxed floor polished to a shine, new cabinets in unostentatious timber, a big country range, a line of gleaming machines for washing clothes and dishes, electric gadgets on the countertops, more yellow gingham at the windows. An expensive renovation, he guessed, but designed to impress only herself.

  “Cream and sugar?” she asked.

  “Just black,” he said.

  She was medium height, dark, and she moved with the bounce of a fit, muscular woman. Her face was open and friendly, tanned like she lived outdoors, and her hands were worn, like she maybe installed her own ranch fencing for herself. She smelled of lemon scent and was dressed in clean denim which had been carefully pressed. She wore tooled cowboy boots with clean soles. It looked like she’d made an effort for her visitors.

  She poured coffee from a machine into a mug. Handed it to Reacher and smiled. The smile was a mixture of things. Maybe she was lonely. But it proved there was no blood relationship with her stepsister. It was a pleasant smile, interested, friendly, smiled in a way Julia Lamarr had no idea existed. It reached her eyes, which were dark and liquid. Reacher was a connoisseur of eyes, and he rated these two as more than acceptable.

  “Can I look around?” he asked.

  “Security check?” she said.

  He nodded. “I guess.”

  “Be my guest.”

  He took his coffee with him. The two women stayed in the kitchen. The house had four rooms on the first floor, entrance, kitchen, parlor, living room. The whole place was solidly built out of good timber. The renovations were excellent quality. All the windows were new storm units in stout wood frames. The weather was cold enough that the screens were out and stored. Each window had a key. The front door was original, old pine two inches thick and aged like steel. Big hinges and a city lock. There was a back hallway with a back door, similar vintage and thickness. Same lock.

  Outside there were thick thorny foundation plantings he guessed were chosen for wind resistance, but were as good as anything for stopping people spending time trying to get in the windows. There was a steel cellar door with a big padlock latched through the handles. The garage was a decent barn, less well maintained than the house, but not about to fall down anytime soon. There was a new Jeep Cherokee inside, and a stack of cartons proving the renovations had been recent. There was a new washing machine, still boxed up and sealed. A workbench with power saws and drills stored neatly on a shelf above it.

  He went back into the house and up the stairs. Same windows as elsewhere. Four bedrooms. Alison’s was clearly the back room on the left, facing west over empty country as far as the eye could see. It would be dark in the mornings, but the sunsets would be spectacular. There was a new master bathroom, stealing space from the next-door bedroom. It held a toilet, and a sink, and a shower. And a tub.

  He went back down to the kitchen. Harper was standing by the window, looking out at the view. Alison Lamarr was sitting at the table.

  “OK?” she said.

  Reacher nodded. “Looks good to me. You keep the doors locked?”

  “I do now. Julia made such a fuss about it. I lock the windows, I lock the doors, I use the spyhole, I put 911 on the speed dial.”

  “So you should be OK,” Reacher said. “This guy isn’t into breaking doors down, apparently. Don’t open up to anybody, nothing can go wrong.”

  She nodded. “That’s how I figure it. You need to ask me some questions now?”

  “That’s why they sent me, I guess.”

  He sat down opposite her. Focused on the gleaming machines on the other side of the room, desperately trying to think of something intelligent to say.

  “How’s your father doing?” he asked.

  “That’s what you want to know?”

  He shrugged. “Julia mentioned he was sick.”

  She nodded, surprised. “He’s been sick two years. Cancer. Now he’s dying. Almost gone, just hanging on day by day. He’s in the hospital in Spokane. I go there every afternoon.”

  “I’m very sorry.”

  “Julia should come out. But she’s awkward with him.”

  “She doesn’t fly.”

  Alison made a face. “She could get over that, just once in two years. But she’s all hung up on this step-family thing, as if it really matters. Far as I’m concerned, she’s my sister, pure and simple. And sisters take care of each other, right? She should know that. She’s going to be the only relative I’ve got. She’ll be my next of kin, for God’s sake.”

  “Well, I’m sorry about all that, too.”

  She made another face. “Right now, that’s not too important. What can I help you with?”

  “You got any feeling for who this guy could be?”

  She smiled. “That’s rather a basic question.”

  “It’s rather a basic issue. You got any instinct?”

  “It’s some guy who thinks it’s OK to harass women. Or maybe not OK, exactly. Could be some guy who just thinks the fallout should be kept behind closed doors.”

  “Is that an option?” Harper asked. She sat down, next to Reacher.

  Alison glanced at her. “I don’t really know. I’m not sure there is any middle ground. Either
you swallow it, or it goes public in a big way.”

  “Did you look for the middle ground?”

  She shook her head. “I’m the living proof. I just went ballistic. There was no middle ground there. At least, I couldn’t see any.”

  “Who was your guy?” Reacher asked.

  “A colonel called Gascoigne,” she said. “He was always full of shit about coming to him if anything was bothering you. I went to him about getting reassigned. I saw him five times. I wasn’t pleading the feminist case or anything. It wasn’t a political thing. I just wanted something more interesting to do. And frankly I thought the Army was wasting a good soldier. Because I was good.”

  Reacher nodded. “So what happened with Gascoigne? ”

  Alison made a face.

  “I didn’t see it coming,” she said. “At first I thought he was just kidding around.”

  She paused. Looked away.

  “He said I should try next time without my uniform on,” she said. “I thought he was asking for a date, you know, meet him in town, some bar, off duty, plain clothes. But then he made it clear, no, he meant right there in his office, stripped off.”

  Reacher nodded. “Not a very nice suggestion.”

  She made another face. “Well, he led up to it pretty slow, and he was pretty jokey about it, at first. It was like he was flirting. I almost didn’t notice, you know? Like he’s a man, I’m a woman, it’s not a huge surprise, right? But clearly he figured I wasn’t getting the message, so then all of a sudden he got obscene. He described what I’d have to do, you know? One foot on this corner of his desk, the other foot on the other corner, hands behind my head, motionless for thirty minutes. Then bending over, you know? Like a porno movie. Then it did hit me, the rage, all in a split second, and I just went nuclear.”

  Reacher nodded. “And you busted him?”

  “Sure I did.”

  “How did he react?”

  She smiled. “He was puzzled, more than anything. I’m sure he’d done it lots of times before, and gotten away with it. I think he was kind of surprised the rules had changed on him.”

  “Could he be the guy?”