by Lee Child
The sealing tape was brown, too. It had been slit along the top to allow the box to open. Inside the box was nothing at all except ten three-gallon paint cans. They were stacked in two layers of five. The lids were resting on the tops of the cans like they had been laid back into position after use. They were distorted here and there around the circumference where an implement had been used to lever them off. The rims of the cans each had a neat tongue-shaped run of dried color where the paint had been poured out.
The cans themselves were plain metal cylinders. No manufacturer’s name. No trademark. No boasts about quality or durability or coverage. Just a small printed label stenciled with a long number and the small words Camo/Green.
“These normal?” Blake asked.
Reacher nodded. “Standard-issue field supply.”
“Who uses them?”
“Any unit with vehicles. They carry them around for small repairs and touch-ups. Vehicle workshops would use bigger drums and spray guns.”
“So they’re not rare?”
Reacher shook his head. “The exact opposite of rare.”
There was silence in the garage.
“OK, take them out,” Blake said.
A crime scene technician wearing latex gloves leaned over and lifted the cans out of the carton, one by one. He lined them up on Alison Lamarr’s workbench. Then he folded the flaps of the carton back. Angled a lamp to throw light inside. The bottom of the box had five circular imprints pressed deep into the cardboard.
“The cans were full when they went in there,” the tech said.
Blake stepped back, out of the pool of blazing light, into the shadow. He turned his back on the box and stared at the wall.
“So how did it get here?” he asked.
Reacher shrugged. “Like you said, it was delivered, ahead of time.”
“Not by the guy.”
“No. He wouldn’t come twice.”
“So by who?”
“By a shipping company. The guy sent it on ahead. FedEx or UPS or somebody.”
“But appliances get delivered by the store where you buy them. On a local truck.”
“Not this one,” Reacher said. “This didn’t come from any appliance store.”
Blake sighed, like the world had gone mad. Then he turned back and stepped into the light again. Stared at the box. Walked all around it. One side showed damage. There was a shape, roughly square, where the surface of the cardboard had been torn away. The layer underneath showed through, raw and exposed. The angle of the arc lights emphasized its corrugated structure.
“Shipping label,” Blake said.
“Maybe one of those little plastic envelopes,” Reacher said. “You know, ‘Documents enclosed.’ ”
“So where is it? Who tore it off? Not the shipping company. They don’t tear them off.”
“The guy tore it off,” Reacher said. “Afterward. So we can’t trace it back.”
He paused. He’d said we. Not you. So we can’t trace it back. Not so you can’t trace it back. Blake noticed it too, and glanced up.
“But how can the delivery happen?” he asked. “In the first place? Say you’re Alison Lamarr, just sitting there at home, and UPS or FedEx or somebody shows up with a washing machine you never ordered? You wouldn’t accept the delivery, right?”
“Maybe it came when she was out,” Reacher said. “Maybe when she was up at the hospital with her dad. Maybe the driver just wheeled it into the garage and left it.”
“Wouldn’t he need a signature?”
Reacher shrugged again. “I don’t know. I’ve never had a washing machine delivered. I guess sometimes they don’t need a signature. The guy who sent it probably specified no signature required.”
“But she’d have seen it right there, next time she went in the garage. Soon as she stashed her car, when she got back.”
Reacher nodded. “Yes, she must have. It’s big enough.”
“So what then?”
"She calls UPS or FedEx or whoever. Maybe she tore off the envelope herself. Carried it into the house, to the phone, to give them the details.”
“Why didn’t she unpack it?”
Reacher made a face. “She figures it’s not really hers, why would she unpack it? She’d only have to box it up again.”
“She mention anything to you or Harper? Anything about unexplained deliveries?”
“No. But then she might not have connected it. Foul-ups happen, right? Normal part of life.”
Blake nodded. “Well, if the details are in the house, we’ll find them. Crime scene people are going to spend some time in there, soon as the coroner is through.”
“Coroner won’t find anything,” Reacher said.
Blake looked grim. “This time, he’ll have to.”
“So you’re going to have to do it differently,” Reacher said. He concentrated on the you. “You should take the whole tub out. Take it over to some big lab in Seattle. Maybe fly it all the way back to Quantico.”
“How the hell can we take the whole tub out?”
“Tear the wall out. Tear the roof off, use a crane.”
Blake paused and thought about it. “I guess we could. We’d need permission, of course. But this must be Julia’s house now, in the circumstances, right? She’s next of kin, I guess.”
Reacher nodded. “So call her. Ask her. Get permission. And get her to check the field reports from the other three places. This delivery thing might be a one-shot deal, but if it isn’t, it changes everything.”
“Changes everything how?”
“Because it means it isn’t a guy with time to drive a truck all over the place. It means it could be anybody, using the airlines, in and out quick as you like.”
BLAKE WENT BACK to the Suburban to make his calls, and Harper found Reacher and walked him fifty yards up the road to where agents from the Spokane office had spotted tire marks in the mud on the shoulders. It had gone dark and they were using flashlights. There were four separate marks in the mud. It was clear what had happened. Somebody had swung nose-in to the left shoulder, wound the power steering around, backed across the road and put the rear tires on the right shoulder, and then swooped away back the way he had come. The front-tire marks were scrubbed into fan shapes by the operation of the steering, but the rear-tire marks opposite were clear enough. They were not wide, not narrow.
“Probably a midsize sedan,” the Spokane guy said. “Fairly new radial tires, maybe a 195/70, maybe a fourteen-inch wheel. We’ll get the exact tire from the tread pattern. And we’ll measure the width between the marks, maybe get the exact model of the car.”
“You think it’s the guy?” Harper asked.
Reacher nodded. “Got to be, right? Think about it. Anybody else hunting the address sees the house a hundred yards ahead and slows enough to check the mailbox and stop. Even if they don’t, they overshoot a couple of yards and just back right up. They don’t overshoot fifty yards and wait until they’re around the corner to turn. This was a guy cruising the place, watching out, staying cautious. It was him, no doubt about it.”
They felt the Spokane guys setting up miniature waterproof tents over the marks and walked back toward the house. Blake was standing by the Suburban, waiting, lit from behind by the dome light inside.
“We’ve got appliance cartons listed at all three scenes,” he said. “No information about contents. Nobody thought to look. We’re sending local agents back to check. Could be an hour. And Julia says we should go ahead and rip the tub out. I’m going to need some engineers, I guess.”
Reacher nodded vaguely and paused, immobilized by a new line of thought.
“You should check on something else,” he said. “You should get the list of the eleven women, call the seven he hasn’t gotten to yet. You should ask them.”
Blake looked at him. “Ask them what? Hi, you still alive?”
“No, ask them if they’ve had any deliveries they weren’t expecting. Any appliances they never ordered. Because if this guy
is speeding up, maybe the next one is all ready and set to go.”
Blake looked at him some more, and then he nodded and ducked back inside the Suburban and took the car phone out of its cradle.
“Get Poulton to do it,” Reacher called. “Too emotional for Lamarr.”
Blake just stared at him, but he asked for Poulton anyway. Told him what he wanted and hung up within a minute.
“Now we wait,” he said.
"SIR!” THE CORPORAL said.
The list was in the drawer, and the drawer was locked. The colonel was motionless at his desk, staring into the electric gloom of his windowless office, focusing on nothing, thinking hard, trying to recover. The best way to recover would be to talk to somebody. He knew that. A problem shared is a problem halved. That’s how it works inside a giant institution like the Army. But he couldn’t talk to anybody about this, of course. He smiled a bitter smile. Stared at the wall, and kept on thinking. Faith in yourself, that’s what would do it. He was concentrating so hard on recapturing it he must have missed the knock at the door. Afterward he figured it must have been repeated several times, and he was glad he had the list in the drawer, because when the corporal eventually came in he couldn’t have hidden it. He couldn’t have done anything. He was just motionless, and evidently he was looking blank, because right away the corporal started acting worried.
“Sir?” he said again.
He didn’t reply. Didn’t move his gaze from the wall.
“Colonel?” the corporal said.
He moved his head like it weighed a ton. Said nothing.
“Your car is here, sir,” the corporal said.
THEY WAITED AN hour and a half, crowded inside the Suburban. The evening crept toward night, and it grew very cold. Dense night dew misted the outside of the windshield and the windows. Breathing fogged the inside. Nobody talked. The world around them grew quieter. There was an occasional animal noise in the far distance, howling down at them through the thin mountain air, but there was nothing else at all.
“Hell of a place to live,” Blake muttered.
“Or to die,” Harper said.
EVENTUALLY YOU RECOVER, and then you relax. You’ve got a lot of talent. Everything was backed up, double-safe, triple-safe. You put in layer upon layer upon layer of concealment. You know how investigators work. You know they won’t find anything beyond the obvious. They won’t find where the paint came from. Or who obtained it. Or who delivered it. You know they won’t. You know how these people work. And you’re too smart for them. Way, way too smart. So you relax.
But you’re disappointed. You made a mistake. And the paint was a lot of fun. And now you probably can’t use it anymore. But maybe you can think of something even better. Because one thing is for damn sure. You can’t stop now.
THE PHONE RANG inside the Suburban. It was a loud electronic blast in the silence. Blake fumbled it out of the cradle. Reacher heard the indistinct sound of a voice talking fast. A man’s voice, not a woman’s. Poulton, not Lamarr. Blake listened hard with his eyes focused nowhere. Then he hung up and stared at the windshield.
“What?” Harper asked.
“Local guys went back and checked the appliance cartons,” Blake said. “They were all sealed up tight, like new. But they opened them anyway. Ten paint cans in each of them. Ten empty cans. Used cans, exactly like we found.”
“But the boxes were sealed?” Reacher said.
“Resealed,” Blake said. “They could tell, when they looked closely. The guy resealed the boxes, afterward.”
“Smart guy,” Harper said. “He knew a sealed carton wouldn’t attract much attention.”
Blake nodded to her. “A very smart guy. He knows how we think.”
“But not totally smart anymore,” Reacher said. “Or he wouldn’t have forgotten to reseal this one, right? His first mistake.”
“He’s batting about nine hundred,” Blake said. “That makes him smart enough for me.”
“No shipping labels anywhere?” Harper asked.
Blake shook his head. “All torn off.”
“Figures,” she said.
“Does it?” Reacher asked her. “So here, why should he remember to tear off the label but forget to reseal the box?”
“Maybe he got interrupted here,” she said.
“How? This isn’t exactly Times Square.”
“So what are you saying? You’re downgrading how smart he is? How smart he is seemed awful important to you before. You were going to use how damn smart he is to prove us all wrong.”
Reacher looked at her and nodded. “Yes, you are all wrong.” Then he turned to Blake. “We really need to talk about this guy’s motive.”
“Later,” Blake said.
“No, now. It’s important.”
“Later,” Blake said again. “You haven’t heard the really good news yet.”
“Which is what?”
“The other little matter you came up with.”
Silence inside the vehicle.
“Shit,” Reacher said. “One of the other women got a delivery, right?”
Blake shook his head.
“Wrong,” he said. “All seven of them got a delivery.”
16
"SO YOU’RE GOING to Portland, Oregon,” Blake said. “You and Harper.”
“Why?” Reacher asked.
“So you can visit with your old friend Rita Scimeca. The lady lieutenant you told us about? Got raped down in Georgia? She lives near Portland. Small village, east of the city. She’s one of the eleven on your list. You can get down there and check out her basement. She says there’s a brand-new washing machine in there. In a box.”
“Did she open it?” Reacher asked.
Blake shook his head. “No, Portland agents checked with her on the telephone. They told her not to touch it. Somebody’s on the way over right now.”
“If the guy’s still in the area, Portland could be his next call. It’s close enough.”
“Correct,” Blake said. “That’s why there’s somebody on the way over.”
Reacher nodded. “So now you’re guarding them? What’s that thing about barn doors and horses bolting? ”
Blake shrugged. “Hey, only seven left alive, makes the manpower much more feasible.”
It was a cop’s sick humor in a car full of cops of one kind or another, but still it fell a little flat. Blake colored slightly and looked away.
“Losing Alison gets to me, much as anybody,” he said. “Like family, right?”
“Especially to her sister, I guess,” Reacher said.
“Tell me about it,” Blake said. “She was burned as hell when the news came in. Practically hyperventilating. Never seen her so agitated.”
“You should take her off the case.”
Blake shook his head. “I need her.”
“You need something, that’s for damn sure.”
“Tell me about it.”
SPOKANE TO THE small village east of Portland measured about three hundred and sixty miles on the map Blake showed them. They took the car the local agent had used to bring them in from the airport. It still had Alison Lamarr’s address handwritten on the top sheet of the pad attached to the windshield. Reacher stared at it for a second. Then he tore it off and balled it up and tossed it into the rear footwell. Found a pen in the glove box and wrote directions on the next sheet: 90W- 395S-84W-35S-26W. He wrote them big enough to see them in the dark when they were tired. Underneath the big figures, he could still see Alison Lamarr’s address, printed through by the pressure of the local guy’s ballpoint.
“Call it six hours,” Harper said. “You drive three and I’ll drive three.”
Reacher nodded. It was completely dark when he started the engine. He turned around in the road, shoulder to shoulder, spinning the wheel, exactly like he was sure the guy had done, but two days later and two hundred yards south. Rolled through the narrow downhill curves to Route 90 and turned right. Once the lights of the city were behind them the traffic de
nsity fell away and he settled to a fast cruise west. The car was a new Buick, smaller and plainer than Lamarr’s boat, but maybe a little faster because of it. That year must have been the Bureau’s GM year. The Army had done the same thing. Staff car purchasing rotated strictly between GM, Ford, and Chrysler, so none of the domestic manufacturers could get pissed at the government.
The road ran straight southwest through hilly terrain. He put the headlights on bright and eased the speed upward. Harper sprawled to his right, her seat reclined, her head tilted toward him. Her hair spilled down and glowed red and gold in the lights from the dash. He kept one hand on the wheel, the other resting down in his lap. He could see lights in his mirror. Halogen headlights, on bright, swinging and bouncing a mile behind him. They were closing, fast. He accelerated to more than seventy.
“The Army teach you to drive this fast?” Harper asked.
He made no reply. They passed a town called Sprague and the road straightened. Blake’s map had shown it dead straight all the way to a town called Ritzville, twenty-something miles ahead. Reacher eased up toward eighty miles an hour, but the headlights behind were still closing fast. A long moment later a car blasted past them, a long low sedan, a wide maneuver, turbulent slip-stream, a full quarter-mile in the opposite lane. Then it eased back right and pulled on ahead like the FBI’s Buick was crawling through a parking lot.
“That’s fast,” Reacher said.
“Maybe that’s the guy,” Harper said sleepily. “Maybe he’s heading down to Portland too. Maybe we’ll get him tonight.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Reacher said. “I don’t think he drives. I think he flies.”
But he eased the speed a little higher anyway, to keep the distant taillights in sight.
“And then what?” Harper said. “He rents a car at the local airport?”
Reacher nodded in the dark. “That’s my guess. Those tire prints they found? Very standard size. Probably some anonymous midsize midrange sedan the rental companies have millions of.”
“Risky,” Harper said. “Renting cars leaves a paper trail.”
Reacher nodded again. “So does buying airplane tickets. But this guy is real organized. I’m sure he’s got cast-iron false ID. Following the paper trail won’t get anybody anywhere.”