by Child, Lee
“So what’s wrong about the motive?”
“Smart guy is about to tell us. You’re just in time for the expert seminar.”
“What about the screwdriver?” Reacher asked. “Any conclusions?”
Poulton’s smile came back. “Either that screwdriver or an identical one was used to lever the lids off. The marks match perfectly. But what’s all this about the motive?”
Reacher took a breath and looked around the faces opposite him. Blake, hostile. Lamarr, white and tense. Harper, curious. Poulton, blank.
“OK, smart guy, we’re listening,” Blake said.
“It’ll be something simple,” Reacher said again. “Something simple and obvious. And common. And lucrative enough to be worth protecting.”
“He’s protecting something?”
Reacher nodded. “That’s my guess. I think maybe he’s eliminating witnesses to something.”
“Witnesses to what?”
“Some kind of a racket, I suppose.”
“What kind of a racket?”
Reacher shrugged. “Something big, something systematic, I guess.”
There was silence.
“Inside the Army?” Lamarr asked.
“Obviously,” Reacher said.
Blake nodded.
“OK,” he said. “A big systematic racket, inside the Army. What is it?”
“I don’t know.” Reacher said.
There was silence again. Then Lamarr buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders started moving. She started rocking back and forward in her chair. Reacher stared at her. She was sobbing, like her heart was breaking. He realized it a moment later than he should have, because she was doing it absolutely silently.
“Julia?” Blake called. “You OK?”
She took her hands away from her face. Gestured helplessly with her hands, yes, no, wait. Her face was white and contorted and anguished. Her eyes were closed. The room was silent. Just the rasp of her breathing.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped.
“Don’t be sorry,” Blake said. “It’s the stress.”
She shook her head, wildly. “No, I made a terrible mistake. Because I think Reacher’s right. He’s got to be. So I was wrong, all along. I screwed up. I missed it. I should have seen it before.”
“Don’t worry about it now,” Blake said.
She lifted her head and stared at him. “Don’t worry about it? Don’t you see? All the time we wasted?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Blake said, limply.
She stared on at him. “Of course it matters. Don’t you see? My sister died because I wasted all this time. It’s my fault. I killed her. Because I was wrong.”
Silence again. Blake stared at her, helplessly.
"You need to take time out,” he said.
She shook her head. Wiped her eyes. "No, no, I need to work. I already wasted too much time. So now I need to think. I need to play catch-up.”
“You should go home. Take a couple of days.”
Reacher watched her. She was collapsed in her chair like she had taken a savage beating. Her face was blotched red and white. Her breathing was shallow, and her eyes were blank and vacant.
“You need rest,” Blake said.
She stirred and shook her head.
“Maybe later,” she said.
There was silence again. Then she hauled herself upright in her chair and fought to breathe.
“Maybe later I’ll rest,” she said. “But first I work. First, we all work. We’ve got to think. We’ve got to think about the Army. What’s the racket?”
“I don’t know,” Reacher said again.
“Well think, for God’s sake,” she snapped. “What racket is he protecting?”
“Give us what you’ve got, Reacher,” Blake said. “You didn’t go this far without something on your mind.”
Reacher shrugged.
“Well, I had half an idea,” he said.
“Give us what you’ve got,” Blake said again.
“OK, what was Amy Callan’s job?”
Blake looked blank and glanced at Poulton.
“Ordnance clerk,” Poulton said.
“Lorraine Stanley’s?” Reacher asked.
“Quartermaster sergeant.”
Reacher paused.
“Alison’s?” he asked.
“Infantry close-support,” Lamarr said, neutrally.
“No, before that.”
“Transport battalion,” she said.
Reacher nodded. “Rita Scimeca’s job?”
Harper nodded. “Weapons proving. Now I see why you made her tell me.”
“Why?” Blake asked.
“Because what’s the potential link?” Reacher asked. “Between an ordnance clerk, a quartermaster sergeant, a transport driver, a weapons prover?”
“You tell me.”
“What did I take from those guys at the restaurant?”
Blake shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s James Cozo’s business, in New York. I know you stole their money.”
“They had handguns,” Reacher said. “M9 Berettas, with the serial numbers filed off. What does that mean?”
“They were illegally obtained.”
Reacher nodded. "From the Army. M9 Berettas are military-issue.”
Blake looked blank. “So what?”
“So if this is some Army guy protecting a racket, the racket most likely involves theft, and if the stakes are high enough for killing people, the theft most likely involves weapons, because that’s where the money is. And these women were all in a position where they could have witnessed weapons theft. They were right there in the chain, transporting and testing and warehousing weapons, all day long.”
There was silence. Then Blake shook his head.
“You’re crazy,” he said. “It’s too coincidental. The overlap is ridiculous. What are the chances all these witnesses would also be harassment victims?”
“It’s only an idea,” Reacher said. “But the chances are actually pretty good, the way I see it. The only real harassment victim was Julia’s sister. Caroline Cooke doesn’t count, because that was a technicality.”
“What about Callan and Stanley?” Poulton asked. “You don’t call that harassment?”
Reacher shook his head. But Lamarr beat him to the punch. She was leaning forward, fingers drumming on the table, life back in her eyes, completely on the ball.
“No, think about it, people,” she said. “Think about it laterally. They weren’t harassment victims and witnesses. They were harassment victims because they were witnesses. If you’re some Army racketeer and you’ve got a woman in your unit who’s not turning a blind eye to what you need her to be turning a blind eye to, what do you do about it? You get rid of her, is what. And what’s the quickest way to do that? You make her uncomfortable, sexually.”
There was silence. Then Blake shook his head again.
“No, Julia,” he said. “Reacher’s seeing ghosts, is all. It’s still way too coincidental. Because what are the chances he’d just happen to be in a restaurant alley one night and stumble across the back end of the same racket that’s killing our women? A million to one, minimum. ”
“A billion to one,” Poulton said.
Lamarr stared at them.
“Think, for God’s sake,” she said. “Surely he’s not saying he saw the same racket that’s killing our women. Probably he saw a completely different racket. Because there must be hundreds of rackets in the Army. Right, Reacher?”
Reacher nodded.
“Right,” he said. “The restaurant thing set me thinking along those lines, is all, in general terms.”
There was silence again. Blake colored red.
“There are hundreds of rackets?” he said. “So how does that help us? Hundreds of rackets, hundreds of Army people involved, how are we going to find the right one? Needle in a damn haystack. It’ll take three years. We’ve got three weeks.”
“And what about the paint?” Poulton asked. “If he’s el
iminating witnesses, he’d walk up and shoot them in the head, silenced .22. He wouldn’t mess with all this other stuff. All this ritual is classic serial homicide.”
Reacher looked at him.
“Exactly,” he said. “Your perception of the motive is defined by the manner of the killings. Think about it. If they had all got a silenced .22 in the head, what would you have thought?”
Poulton said nothing. But there was doubt in his eyes. Blake sat forward and put his hands on the table.
“We’d have called them executions,” he said. “Wouldn’t have altered our assessment of the motive.”
“No, be honest with me,” Reacher said. “I think you’d have been a little more open-minded. You’d have cast your net a little wider. Sure, you’d have considered the harassment angle, but you’d have considered other things too. More ordinary things. Bullets to the head, I think you’d have considered more routine reasons.”
Blake sat there, hesitant and silent. Which was the same thing as a confession.
“Bullets to the head are kind of normal, right?” Reacher said. “In your line of work? So you’d have looked at normal reasons too. Like eliminating witnesses to a crime. Bullets to the head, I think right now you’d be all over the Army scams, looking for some efficient enforcer. But the guy deflected you by dressing it up with all this bizarre bullshit. He hid his true motive. He smoke-screened it. He camouflaged it. He pushed you into this weird psychological arena. He manipulated you, because he’s very smart.”
Blake was still silent.
“Not that you needed much manipulation,” Reacher said.
“This is just speculation,” Blake said.
Reacher nodded. “Of course it is. I told you, it’s only half an idea. But that’s what you do down here, right? You sit here all day long wearing the seat out of your pants, speculating about half-ideas.”
Silence in the room.
“It’s bullshit,” Blake said.
Reacher nodded again. “Yes, maybe it is. But maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s some Army guy making big bucks out of some scam these women knew about. And he’s hiding behind this harassment issue, by dressing it up like a psychodrama. He knew you’d jump right on it. He knew he could make you look in the wrong place. Because he’s very smart.”
Silence.
“Your call,” Reacher said.
There was silence.
“Julia?” Blake said.
The silence continued. Then Lamarr nodded, slowly. “It’s a viable scenario. Maybe more than viable. It’s possible he could be exactly right. Possible enough that I think we should check it out, maximum effort, immediately. ”
The silence came back.
“I think we shouldn’t waste any more time,” Lamarr whispered.
“But he’s wrong,” Poulton said.
He was riffing through paper, and his voice was loud and joyful.
“Caroline Cooke makes him wrong,” he said. “She was in War Plans at NATO. High-level office work. She was never anywhere near weapons or warehouses or quartermasters.”
Reacher said nothing. Then the silence was broken by the door. It opened up and Stavely hurried into the room, big and busy and intrusive. He was dressed in a white lab coat, and his wrists were smeared green where the paint had lapped up above his gloves. Lamarr stared at the marks and went whiter than his coat. She stared for a long moment and then closed her eyes and swayed like she was about to faint. She gripped the tabletop in front of her, thumbs underneath, pale fingers above, spread outward with the thin tendons standing out like quivering wires.
“I want to go home now,” she said, quietly.
She reached down and gathered up her bag. Threaded the strap onto her shoulder and pushed back her chair and stood up. Walked slowly and unsteadily to the door, her eyes fixed on the remnants of her sister’s last moments of life daubed across Stavely’s stained wrists. Her head turned as she walked to keep them in view. Then she wrenched her gaze away and opened the door. Passed through it and let it close silently behind her.
“What?” Blake said.
“I know how he kills them,” Stavely said. “Except there’s a problem.”
“What problem?” Blake asked.
“It’s impossible.”
20
"I CUTA few corners,” Stavely said. “You need to understand that, OK? You guys are in a big hurry, and we think we’re dealing with a consistent MO, so all I did was look at the questions that the first three left behind. I mean, we all know what it isn’t, right?”
“It isn’t everything, far as we know,” Blake said.
“Right. No blunt trauma, no gunshots, no stab wounds, no poison, no strangulation.”
“So what is it?”
Stavely moved a complete circle around the table and sat down at an empty chair, on his own, three seats from Poulton and two from Reacher.
“Did she drown?” Poulton asked.
Stavely shook his head. “No, just like the first three didn’t. I took a look at her lungs, and they were completely clear.”
“So what is it?” Blake asked again.
“Like I told you,” Stavely said. “You stop the heart, or you deny oxygen to the brain. So first, I looked at her heart. And her heart was perfect. Completely undamaged. Same as the other three. And these were fit women. Great hearts. It’s easier to spot the damage on a good heart. An older person might have a bad heart, with preexisting damage, you know, furring or scarring from previous cardiac trouble, and that can hide new damage. But these were perfect hearts, like athletes. Any trauma, it would have stuck out a mile. But there wasn’t any. So he didn’t stop their hearts.”
“So?” Blake asked.
“So he denied them oxygen,” Stavely said. “It’s the only remaining possibility.”
“How?”
“Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it? Theoretically he could have sealed off the bathroom and pumped the oxygen out and replaced it with some inert gas.”
Blake shook his head. “That’s absurd.”
“Of course it is,” Stavely said. “He’d have needed equipment, pumps, tanks of gas. And we’d have found residue in the tissues. Certainly in the lungs. There aren’t any gases we wouldn’t have detected.”
“So?”
“So he choked off their airways. It’s the only possibility. ”
“You said there are no signs of strangulation.”
Stavely nodded. “There aren’t. That’s what got me interested. Strangulation normally leaves massive trauma to the neck. All kinds of bruising, internal bleeding. It sticks out a mile. Same for garroting.”
“But?”
“There’s something called gentle strangulation.”
“Gentle?” Harper said. “Awful phrase.”
“What is it?” Poulton asked.
“A guy with a big arm,” Stavely said. “Or a padded coat sleeve. Gentle consistent pressure, that will do it.”
“So is that it?” Blake asked.
Stavely shook his head. “No, it isn’t. No external marks, but to get far enough to kill them, you leave internal damage. The hyoid bone would be broken, for instance. Certainly cracked, at least. Other ligament damage too. It’s a very fragile area. The voice box is there.”
“And you’re going to tell me there was no damage, I guess,” Blake said.
“Nothing gross,” Stavely said. “Did she have a cold, when you met with her?”
He looked at Harper, but Reacher answered.
“No,” he said.
“Sore throat?”
“No.”
“Husky voice?”
“She seemed pretty healthy to me.”
Stavely nodded. Looked pleased. “There was some very, very slight swelling inside the throat. It’s what you’d get recovering from a head cold. Mucus drip might do it, or a very mild strep virus. Ninety-nine times in a hundred, I’d ignore it completely. But the other three had it too. That’s a little coincidental for me.”
“
So what does it mean?” Blake asked.
“It means he pushed something down their throats,” Stavely said.
Silence in the room.
“Down their throats?” Blake repeated.
Stavely nodded. “That was my guess. Something soft, something which would slip down and then expand a little. Maybe a sponge. Were there sponges in the bathrooms?”
“I didn’t see one in Spokane,” Reacher said.
Poulton was back in the piles of paper. “Nothing on the inventories.”
“Maybe he removed them,” Harper said. “He took their clothes.”
“Bathrooms without sponges,” Blake said slowly. “Like the dog that didn’t bark.”
“No,” Reacher said. “There wasn’t a sponge before, is what I meant.”
“You sure?” Blake asked.
Reacher nodded. “Totally.”
“Maybe he brings one with him,” Harper said. “The type he prefers.”
Blake looked away, back to Stavely. “So that’s how he’s doing it? Sponges down their throats?”
Stavely stared at his big red hands, resting on the tabletop.
“It has to be,” he said. “Sponges, or something similar. Like Sherlock Holmes, right? First you eliminate the impossible, and whatever you’re left with, however improbable, has got to be the answer. So the guy is choking them to death by pushing something soft down their throats. Something soft enough not to cause blunt trauma internally, but something dense enough to block the air.”
Blake nodded, slowly. “OK, so now we know.”
Stavely shook his head. “Well, no, we don’t. Because it’s impossible.”
“Why?”
Stavely just shrugged miserably.
“Come here, Harper,” Reacher said.
She looked at him, surprised. Then she smiled briefly and stood up and scraped her chair back and walked toward him.
“Show, don’t tell, right?” she said.
“Lie on the table, OK?” he asked.
She smiled again and sat on the edge of the table and swiveled into position. Reacher pulled Poulton’s pile of paper over and pushed it under her head.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
She nodded and fanned her hair and lay back like she was at the dentist. Pulled her jacket closed over her shirt.
“OK,” Reacher said. “She’s Alison Lamarr in the tub.”
