by Child, Lee
“Marines,” she said. “They gave us sixty acres of land for our place.”
He smiled. “That’s not how they see it. They figure you stole it.”
More curves, another half-mile, and there was another clearing. Same vehicles, same huts, same green paint.
“Camouflage basecoat,” Reacher said.
She nodded. “Creepy.”
More curves, two more clearings, altogether two miles deep into the woods. Reacher sat forward and paid attention. He had never been to Quantico before. He was curious. The car rounded a tight bend and came clear of the trees and stopped short at a checkpoint barrier. There was a red-and-white striped pole across the roadway and a sentry’s hutch made from bullet-proof glass. An armed guard stepped forward. Over his shoulder in the distance was a long, low huddle of honey stone buildings. A couple of squat high-rises standing among them. The buildings crouched alone on undulating lawns. The lawns were immaculate and the way the low buildings spread into them meant their architect hadn’t been worried about consuming space. The place looked very peaceful, like a minor college campus or a corporate headquarters, except for the razor-wire perimeter and the armed guard.
Lamarr had the window down and was rooting in her purse for ID. The guy clearly knew who she was, but rules are rules and he needed to see her plastic. He nodded as soon as her hand came clear of the bag. Then he switched his gaze across to Reacher.
“You should have paperwork on him,” Lamarr said.
The guy nodded again. “Yeah, Mr. Blake took care of it.”
He ducked back to his hutch and came out with a laminated plastic tag on a chain. He handed it through the window and Lamarr passed it on. It had Reacher’s name and his old service photograph on it. The whole thing was overprinted with a pale red V.
"V for visitor,” Lamarr said. “You wear it at all times.”
“Or?” Reacher asked.
“Or you get shot. And I’m not kidding.”
The guard was back in his hutch, raising the barrier. Lamarr buzzed her window up and accelerated through. The road climbed the undulations and revealed parking lots in the dips. Reacher could hear gunfire. The flat bark of heavy handguns, maybe two hundred yards away in the trees.
“Target practice,” Lamarr said. “Goes on all the time.”
She was bright and alert. Like proximity to the mother ship was reviving her. Reacher could see how that could happen. The whole place was impressive. It nestled in a natural bowl, deep in the forest, miles away from anywhere. It felt isolated and secret. Easy to see how it could breed a fierce, loyal spirit in the people fortunate enough to be admitted to it.
Lamarr drove slowly over speed bumps to a parking lot in front of the largest building. She eased nose-first into a slot and shut it down. Checked her watch.
“Six hours ten minutes,” she said. “That’s real slow. The weather, I guess, plus we stopped too long for lunch.”
Silence in the car.
“So now what?” Reacher asked.
“Now we go to work.”
The plate-glass doors at the front of the building opened up and Poulton walked out. The sandy-haired little guy with the mustache. He was wearing a fresh suit. Dark blue, with a white button-down and a gray tie. The new color made him less insignificant. More formal. He stood for a second and scanned the lot and then set his course for the car. Lamarr got out to meet him. Reacher sat still and waited. Poulton let Lamarr take her own bag from the trunk. It was a suit carrier in the same black imitation leather as her briefcase.
“Let’s go, Reacher,” she called.
He ducked his head and slipped the ID chain around his neck. Opened his door and slid out. It was cold and windy. The breeze was carrying the sound of dry leaves tossing, and gunfire.
“Bring your bag,” Poulton called.
“I don’t have a bag,” Reacher said.
Poulton glanced at Lamarr, and she gave him an I’ve had this all day look. Then they turned together and walked toward the building. Reacher glanced at the sky and followed them. The undulating ground gave him a new view with each new step. The land fell away to the left of the buildings, and he saw squads of trainees walking purposefully, or running in groups, or marching away into the woods with shotguns. Standard apparel seemed to be dark blue sweats with FBI embroidered in yellow on the front and back, like it was a fashion label or a major-league franchise. To his military eye, it all looked irredeemably civilian. Then he realized with a little chill of shame that that was partly because a healthy percentage of the people doing the walking and running and carrying were women.
Lamarr opened the plate-glass door and walked inside. Poulton waited for Reacher on the threshold.
“I’ll show you to your room,” he said. “You can stow your stuff.”
Up close in daylight, he looked older. There were faint lines in his face, barely visible, like a forty-year-old was wearing a twenty-year-old’s skin.
“I don’t have any stuff,” Reacher said to him. “I just told you that.”
Poulton hesitated. There was clearly an itinerary. A timetable to be followed.
“I’ll show you anyway,” he said.
Lamarr walked away with her bag and Poulton led Reacher to an elevator. They rode together to the third floor and came out on a quiet corridor with thin carpet on the floor and worn fabric on the walls. Poulton walked to a plain door and took a key from his pocket and opened it up. Inside was a standard-issue motel room. Narrow entryway, bathroom on the right, closet on the left, queen bed, table and two chairs, bland decor.
Poulton stayed out in the corridor. “Be ready in ten.”
The door sucked shut. There was no handle on the inside. Not quite a standard-issue motel room. There was a view of the woods from the window, but the window didn’t open. The frame was welded shut and the handle had been removed. There was a telephone on the nightstand. He picked it up and heard a dial tone. Hit 9 and heard more. He dialed Jodie’s private office line. Let it ring eighteen times before trying her apartment. Her machine cut in. He tried her mobile. It was switched off.
He put his coat in the closet and unclipped his toothbrush from his pocket and propped it in a glass on the bathroom vanity. Rinsed his face at the sink and pushed his hair into some kind of shape. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and waited.
9
EIGHT MINUTES LATER he heard a key in the lock and looked up and expected to see Poulton at the door. But it wasn’t Poulton. It was a woman. She looked about sixteen. She had long fair hair in a loose ponytail. White teeth in an open, tanned face. Bright blue eyes. She was wearing a man’s suit, extensively tailored to fit. A white shirt and a tie. Small black shoes with low heels. She was over six feet tall, long-limbed, and very slim. And completely spectacular. And she was smiling at him.
“Hi,” she said.
Reacher made no reply. Just stared at her. Her face clouded and her smile turned a little embarrassed.
"So you want to do the FAQs right away?”
“The what?” "The FAQs. Frequently asked questions.”
“I’m not sure I have any questions.”
“Oh, OK.”
She smiled again, relieved. It gave her a frank, guileless look.
“What are the frequently asked questions?” he asked.
“Oh, you know, the stuff most new guys around here ask me. It’s really, really tedious.”
She meant it. He could see that. But he asked anyway.
“What kind of stuff?” he said.
She made a face, resigned.
“I’m Lisa Harper,” she said. “I’m twenty-nine, yes really, I’m from Aspen, Colorado, I’m six feet one, yes really, I’ve been at Quantico two years, yes I date guys, no I dress like this just because I like it, no I’m not married, no I don’t currently have a boyfriend, and no I don’t want to have dinner with you tonight.”
She finished with another smile and he smiled back.
“Well, how about tomorrow night?” he
said.
She shook her head. “All you need to know is I’m an FBI agent, on duty.”
“Doing what?”
“Watching you,” she said. “Where you go, I go. You’re classified SU, status unknown, maybe friendly, maybe hostile. Usually that means an organized-crime plea bargain, you know, some guy ratting out his bosses. Useful to us, but not reliable.”
“I’m not organized crime.”
“Our file says you might be.”
“Then the file is bullshit.”
She nodded, and smiled again. “I looked Petrosian up separately. He’s a Syrian. Therefore his rivals are Chinese. And they never employ anybody except other Chinese. Implausible they’d use an American WASP like you.”
“You point that out to anybody?”
“I’m sure they already know. They’re just trying to get you to take the threat seriously.”
“Should I take it seriously?”
She nodded. Stopped smiling.
“Yes, you should,” she said. “You should think very carefully about Jodie.”
“Jodie’s in the file?”
She nodded again. “Everything’s in the file.”
“So why don’t I have a handle on my door? My file shows I’m not the guy.”
“Because we’re very cautious and your profile is very bad. The guy will turn out to be very similar to you.”
“You a profiler too?”
She shook her head. The ponytail moved with it. “No, I’m operational. Assigned for the duration. But I listen carefully. Listen and learn, right? So let’s go.”
She held the door. It closed softly behind him as they walked to a different elevator. This one had buttons for five basement floors in a line beneath 3, 2, and 1. Lisa Harper pressed the bottom button. Reacher stood beside her and tried not to breathe in her scent. The elevator settled with a bump and the door slid back on a gray corridor bright with fluorescent light.
“We call this the Bunker,” Harper said. “It used to be our nuclear shelter. Now it’s BS.”
“That’s for damn sure,” Reacher said.
“Behavioral Science. And that’s a very old joke.”
She led him to the right. The corridor was narrow, and clean, but not public-area clean. It was a working place. It smelled faintly of sweat and old coffee and office chemicals. There were notice boards on the walls and random stacks of stationery cartons in the corners. There was a line of doors in the left-hand wall.
“Here,” Harper said.
She stopped him in front of a door with a number on it and reached across him and knocked. Then she used the handle and opened it up for him.
“I’ll be right outside,” she said.
He went in and saw Nelson Blake behind a crowded desk in a small untidy office. There were maps and photographs taped carefully to the walls. Piles of paper everywhere. No visitor chair. Blake was glowering. His face was red with blood pressure and pale with strain, all at the same time. He was watching a muted television set. It was tuned to a political cable channel. A guy in shirtsleeves was reading something to a committee. The caption read Director of the FBI.
“Budget hearings,” Blake muttered. “Singing for our damn supper.”
Reacher said nothing. Blake kept his eyes on the television.
“Case conference in two minutes,” he said. “So listen up for the rules. Consider yourself somewhere between a guest and a prisoner here, OK?”
Reacher nodded. “Harper already explained that.”
“Right. She stays with you, all the time. Everything you do, everywhere you go, you’re supervised by her. But don’t get the wrong idea. You’re still Lamarr’s boy, only she stays here, because she won’t fly. And you’ll need to get around some. Whereupon we need to keep an eye on you, so Harper goes too. The only time you’re alone is when you’re locked in your room. Your duties are what Lamarr tells you they are. You wear your ID at all times.”
“OK.”
“And don’t get ideas about Harper. Thing with her is, she looks nice, but you start messing with her, then she’s the bitch from hell, OK?”
“OK.”
“Anything else?”
“Is my phone tapped?”
“Of course it is.” Blake riffed through papers. Slid a thick finger down a printout. “You just called your girlfriend, private office line, apartment, mobile. No answer. ”
“Where is she?”
Blake shrugged. “Hell should I know?”
Then he scrabbled in the pile of paper on his desk and came up with a large brown envelope. Held it out.
“With Cozo’s compliments,” he said.
Reacher took the envelope. It was stiff and heavy. It contained photographs. Eight of them. They were color glossies, eight by ten. Crime scene photographs. They looked like stuff from a cheap skin magazine, except the women were all dead. The corpses were displayed in limp imitations of centerfolds. They were mutilated. Pieces were missing. Things had been inserted into them, here and there.
“Petrosian’s handiwork,” Blake said. “Wives and sisters and daughters of people who pissed him off.”
“So how come he’s still running around?”
There was silence for a second.
“There’s proof, and then there’s proof, right?” Blake said.
Reacher nodded. “So where’s Jodie?”
“Hell should I know?” Blake said again. “We’ve got no interest in her as long as you play ball. We’re not tailing her. Petrosian can find her himself, if it comes to that. We’re not going to deliver her to him. That would be illegal, right?”
“So would breaking your neck.”
Blake nodded. “Stop with the threats, OK? You’re in no position.”
“I know this whole thing was your idea.”
Blake shook his head. “I’m not worried about you, Reacher. Deep down, you think you’re a good person. You’ll help me, and then you’ll forget all about me.”
Reacher smiled. “I thought you profilers were supposed to be real insightful.”
THREE WEEKS IS a nice complicated interval, which is exactly why you chose it. It has no obvious significance. They’ll drive themselves mad, trying to understand a three-week interval. They’ll have to dig real, real deep before they see what you’re doing. Too deep to be feasible. The closer they get to it, the less it will mean. The interval leads nowhere. So the interval makes you safe.
But does it have to be maintained? Maybe. A pattern is a pattern. It ought to be a very strict thing. Very precise. Because that’s what they’re expecting. Strict adherence to a pattern. It’s typical in this sort of case. The pattern protects you. It’s important. So it should be maintained. But then again, maybe it shouldn’t. Three weeks is a pretty long interval. And pretty boring. So maybe you should speed it up. But anything less would be very tight, given the work required. Soon as one was done, the next would have to be prepared. A treadmill. Difficult work, on a tight schedule. Not everybody could do it. But you could.
THE CASE CONFERENCE was held in a long low room a floor above Blake’s office. There was light brown fabric on the walls, worn shiny where people had leaned on it or brushed against it. One long wall had four recesses let into it, with blinds and concealed lighting simulating windows, even though the room was four stories underground. There was a silent television mounted high on the wall, with the budget hearings playing to nobody. There was a long table made of expensive wood, surrounded by cheap chairs set at forty-five degree angles so they faced the head of the table, where there was a large empty blackboard set against the end wall. The blackboard was modern, like it came from a well-endowed college. The whole place was airless and quiet and isolated, like a place where serious work was done, like a postgraduate seminar room.
Harper led Reacher to a seat at the far end from the blackboard. The back of the class. She sat one place nearer the action, so he had to look past her shoulder. Blake took the chair nearest the board. Poulton and Lamarr came in together, ca
rrying files, absorbed in low conversation. Neither of them glanced anywhere except at Blake. He waited until the door closed behind them and then stood up and flipped the blackboard over.
The top right quarter was occupied by a large map of the United States, dotted with a forest of flags. Ninety-one of them, Reacher guessed, without trying to count them all. Most of them were red, but three of them were black. Opposite the map on the left was an eight-by-ten color photograph, cropped and blown up from a casual snapshot taken through a cheap lens onto grainy film. It showed a woman, squinting against the sun and smiling. She was in her twenties, and pretty, a plump happy face framed by curly brown hair.
“Lorraine Stanley, ladies and gentlemen,” Blake said. “Recently deceased in San Diego, California.”
Underneath the smiling face were more eight-by-tens pinned up in a careful sequence. The crime scene. They were crisper photographs. Professional. There was a long shot of a small Spanish-style bungalow, taken from the street. A close-up of the front door. Wide shots of a hallway, a living room, the master bedroom. The master bathroom. The back wall was all mirror above twin sinks. The photographer was reflected in the mirror, a large person bundled into a white nylon coverall, a shower cap on his head, latex gloves on his hands, a camera at his eye, the bright halo of the strobe caught by the mirror. There was a shower stall on the right, and a tub on the left. The tub was low, with a wide lip. It was full of green paint.
“She was alive three days ago,” Blake said. “Neighbor saw her wheeling her garbage to the curb, eight forty-five in the morning, local time. She was discovered yesterday, by her cleaner.”
“We got a time of death?” Lamarr asked.
“Approximate,” Blake said. “Sometime during the second day.”
“Neighbors see anything?”
Blake shook his head. “She took her garbage can back inside, the same day. Nobody saw anything after that.”