by Lee Child
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 different 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?”
“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 house 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.