by Child, Lee
He pulled the top sheet of paper out from under her head and glanced at it. It was the inventory from Caroline Cooke’s bathroom. He crumpled it into a ball.
“This is a sponge,” he said. Then he glanced at Blake. “Not that there was one in the room.”
“He brought it with him,” Blake said.
“Waste of time if he did,” Reacher said. “Because watch.”
He put the crumpled paper to Harper’s lips. She clamped them tight.
“How do I get her to open her mouth?” he asked. “In the full and certain knowledge that what I’m doing is going to kill her?”
He leaned close and used his left hand under her chin, his fingers and thumb up on her cheeks. “I could squeeze, I guess. Or I could clamp her nose until she had to breathe. But what would she do?”
“This,” Harper said, and threw a playful roundhouse right which caught Reacher high on the temple.
“Exactly,” he said. “Two seconds from now, we’re fighting, and there’s a gallon of paint on the floor. Another gallon all over me. To get anywhere with this, I’d have to get right in the tub with her, behind her or on top of her.”
“He’s right,” Stavely said. “It’s just impossible. They’d be fighting for their lives. No way to force something into somebody’s mouth against their will, without leaving bruises on their cheeks, their jaws, all over them. Flesh would tear against their teeth, their lips would be bruised and cut, maybe the teeth themselves would loosen. And they’d be biting and scratching and kicking. Traces under their nails. Bruised knuckles. Defensive injuries. It would be a fight to the death, right? And there’s no evidence of fighting. None at all.”
“Maybe he drugged them,” Blake said. “Made them passive, you know, like that date-rape thing.”
Stavely shook his head.
“Nobody was drugged,” he said. “Toxicology is absolutely clear, all four cases.”
The room went silent again and Reacher pulled Harper upright by the hands. She slid off the table and dusted herself down. Walked back to her seat.
“So you’ve got no conclusions?” Blake asked.
Stavely shrugged. “Like I said, I’ve got a great conclusion. But it’s an impossible conclusion.”
Silence.
“I told you, this is a very smart guy,” Reacher said. “Too smart for you. Way too smart. Four homicides, and you still don’t know how he’s doing it.”
“So what’s the answer, smart guy?” Blake said. “You going to tell us something four of the nation’s best pathologists can’t tell us?”
Reacher said nothing.
“What’s the answer?” Blake asked again.
“I don’t know,” Reacher said.
“Great. You don’t know.”
“But I’ll find out.”
“Yeah, like how?”
“Easy. I’ll go find the guy, and I’ll ask him.”
FORTY-ONE MILES AWAY, slightly east of north, the colonel was two miles from his office, after a ten-mile journey. He had taken the shuttle bus from the Pentagon’s parking lot and gotten off near the Capitol. Then he had hailed a cab and headed back over the river to the National Airport’s main terminal. His uniform was in a leather one-suiter slung on his shoulder, and he was cruising the ticket counters at the busiest time of day, completely anonymous in a teeming crush of people.
“I want Portland, Oregon,” he said. “Open roundtrip, coach.”
A clerk entered the code for Portland and his computer told him he had plenty of availability on the next nonstop.
“Leaves in two hours,” he said.
“OK,” the colonel said.
"YOU THINK YOU’LL find the guy?” Blake repeated.
Reacher nodded. “I’ll have to, won’t I? It’s the only way.”
There was silence in the conference room for a moment. Then Stavely stood up.
“Well, good luck to you, sir,” he said.
He walked out of the room and closed the door softly behind him.
“You won’t find the guy,” Poulton said. “Because you’re wrong about Caroline Cooke. She never served in ordnance warehousing or weapons testing. She proves your theory is shit.”
Reacher smiled. “Do I know all about FBI procedures? ”
“No, you don’t.”
“So don’t talk to me about the Army. Cooke was an officer candidate. Fast-track type. Had to be, to finish up in War Plans. People like that, they send them all over the place first, getting an overview. That summary you’ve got in your file is incomplete.”
"It is?”
Reacher nodded. “Has to be. If they listed everywhere she was posted, you’d have ten pages before she made first lieutenant. You check back with Defense, get the details, you’ll find she was someplace that could tie her in.”
The silence came back. There was a faint rush from the forced-air heating and a buzz from a failing fluorescent tube. A high-pitched whistle from the silent television. That was all. Nothing else. Poulton stared at Blake. Harper stared at Reacher. Blake looked down at his fingers, which were tapping on the table with silent fleshy impacts.
“Can you find him?” he asked.
“Somebody’s got to,” Reacher said. “You guys aren’t getting anywhere.”
“You’ll need resources.”
Reacher nodded. “A little help would be nice.”
“So I’m gambling here.”
“Better than putting all your chips behind a loser.”
“I’m gambling big-time. With a lot at stake.”
“Like your career?”
“Seven women, not my career.”
“Seven women and your career.”
Blake nodded, vaguely. “What are the odds?”
Reacher shrugged. “With three weeks to do it in? It’s a certainty.”
“You’re an arrogant bastard, you know that?”
“No, I’m realistic, is all.”
“So what do you need?”
“Remuneration,” Reacher said.
“You want to get paid?”
“Sure I do. You’re getting paid, right? I do all the work, only fair I get something out of it too.”
Blake nodded. “You find the guy, I’ll speak to Deerfield up in New York, get the Petrosian thing forgotten about.”
“Plus a fee.”
“How much?”
“Whatever you think is appropriate.”
Blake nodded again. “I’ll think about it. And Harper goes with you, because right now the Petrosian thing ain’t forgotten about.”
“OK. I can live with that. If she can.”
“She doesn’t get a choice,” Blake said. “What else?”
“Set me up with Cozo. I’ll start in New York. I’ll need information from him.”
Blake nodded. “I’ll call him. You can see him tonight. ”
Reacher shook his head. “Tomorrow morning. Tonight, I’m going to see Jodie.”
21
THE MEETING BROKE up in a sudden burst of energy. Blake took the elevator one floor down, back to his office to place the call to James Cozo in New York. Poulton had calls of his own to make to the Bureau office in Spokane, where the local guys were checking with parcel carriers and car rental operations. Harper went up to the travel desk to organize airline tickets. Reacher was left alone in the seminar room, sitting at the big table, ignoring the television, staring at a fake window like he was looking out at a view.
He sat like that for nearly twenty minutes, just waiting. Then Harper came back in. She was carrying a thick sheaf of new paperwork.
“More bureaucracy,” she said. “If we pay you, we’ve got to insure you. Travel desk regulations.”
She sat down opposite him and took a pen from her inside pocket.
“Ready for this?” she said.
He nodded.
“Full name?” she asked.
“Jack Reacher,” he said.
“That the whole thing?”
He nodded. “That’s it.”
“Not a very long name, is it?”
He shrugged. Said nothing. She wrote it down. Two words, eleven letters, in a space which ran the whole width of the form.
“Date of birth?”
He told her. Saw her calculating his age. Saw surprise in her face.
“Older or younger?” he asked.
“Than what?”
“Than you thought.”
She smiled. “Oh, older. You don’t look it.”
“Bullshit,” he said. “I look about a hundred. Certainly I feel about a hundred.”
She smiled again. “You probably clean up pretty good. Social Security number?”
His generation of servicemen, it was the same as his military ID. He rattled through it in the military manner, random monotone sounds representing whole numbers between zero and nine.
“Full address?”
“No fixed abode,” he said.
“You sure?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“What about Garrison?”
“What about it?”
“Your house,” she said. “That would be your address, right?”
He stared at her. “I guess so. Sort of. I never really thought about it.”
She stared back. “You own a house, you’ve got an address, wouldn’t you say?”
“OK, put Garrison.”
“Street name and number?”
He dredged it up from his memory and told her.
“Zip?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know your own zip code?”
He was quiet for a second. She looked at him.
“You’ve got it real bad, haven’t you?” she said.
“Got what?”
“Whatever. Call it denial, I guess.”
He nodded, slowly. “Yes, I guess I’ve got it real bad.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll get used to it.”
“Maybe you won’t.”
“What would you do?”
“People should do what they really want,” she said. “I think that’s important.”
“Is that what you do?”
She nodded. “My folks wanted me to stay in Aspen. They wanted me to be a teacher or something. I wanted to be in law enforcement. It was a big battle.”
“It’s not my parents doing this to me. They’re dead.”
“I know. It’s Jodie.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not Jodie. It’s me. I’m doing this to myself.”
She nodded again. “OK.”
The room went quiet.
“So what should I do?” he asked.
She shrugged, warily. “I’m not the person to ask.”
“Why not?”
“I might not give the answer you want.”
“Which is?”
“You want me to say you should stay with Jodie. Settle down and be happy.”
“I do?”
“I think so.”
“But you can’t say that?”
She shook her head.
“No, I can’t,” she said. “I had a boyfriend. It was pretty serious. He was a cop in Aspen. There’s always tension, you know, between cops and the Bureau. Rivalry. Silly, really, no reason for it, but it’s there. It spread into personal things. He wanted me to quit. Begged me. I was torn, but I said no.”
“Was that the right choice?”
She nodded. “For me, yes, it was. You have to do what you really want.”
“Would it be the right choice for me?”
She shrugged. “I can’t say. But probably.”
“First I need to figure out what I really want.”
“You know what you really want,” she said. “Everybody always does, instinctively. Any doubt you’re feeling is just noise, trying to bury the truth, because you don’t want to face it.”
He looked away, back to the fake window.
“Occupation?” she asked.
“Silly question,” he said.
“I’ll put consultant.”
He nodded. “That dignifies it, somewhat.”
Then there were footsteps in the corridor and the door opened again and Blake and Poulton hurried inside. More paper in their hands, and the glow of progress in their faces.
“We’re maybe halfway to starting to get somewhere, ” Blake said. “News in from Spokane.”
“The local UPS driver quit three weeks ago,” Poulton said. “Moved to Missoula, Montana, works in a warehouse. But they spoke to him by phone and he thinks maybe he remembers the delivery.”
“So doesn’t the UPS office have paperwork?” Harper asked.
Blake shook his head. “They archive it after eleven days. And we’re looking at two months ago. If the driver can pinpoint the day, we might get it.”
“Anybody know anything about baseball?” Poulton asked.
Reacher shrugged. “Couple of guys worked out an overall all-time top ten and only two players had the letter u in their names.”
“Why baseball?” Harper asked.
“Day in question, some Seattle guy hit a grand slam,” Blake said. “The driver heard it on his radio, remembers it.”
“Seattle, he would remember it,” Reacher said. “Rare occurrence.”
“Babe Ruth,” Poulton said. “Who’s the other one?”
“Honus Wagner,” Reacher said.
Poulton looked blank. “Never heard of him.”
“And Hertz came through,” Blake said. “They think they remember a real short rental, Spokane airport, the exact day Alison died, in and out inside about two hours.”
“They got a name?” Harper asked.
Blake shook his head. “Their computer’s down. They’re working on it.”
“Don’t the desk people remember?”
“Are you kidding? Lucky if those people remember their own names.”
“So when will we get it?”
“Tomorrow, I guess. Morning, with a bit of luck. Otherwise the afternoon.”
“Three-hour time difference. It’ll be the afternoon for us.”
“Probably.”
“So does Reacher still go?”
Blake paused and Reacher nodded.
“I still go,” he said “The name will be phony, for sure. And the UPS thing will lead nowhere. This guy’s way too smart for basic paper-trail errors.”
Everybody waited. Then Blake nodded.
“I guess I agree,” he said. “So Reacher still goes.”
THEY GOT A ride in a plain Bureau Chevrolet and were at the airport in D.C. before dark. They lined up for the United shuttle with the lawyers and the lobbyists. Reacher was the only person on the line not wearing a business suit, male or female. The cabin crew seemed to know most of the passengers and greeted them at the airplane door like regulars. Harper walked all the way down the aisle and chose seats right at the back.
“No rush to get off,” she said. “You’re not seeing Cozo until tomorrow.”
Reacher said nothing.
“And Jodie won’t be home yet,” she said. “Lawyers work hard, right? Especially the ones fixing to be partner. ”
He nodded. He’d just gotten around to figuring the same thing.
“So we’ll sit here,” she said. “It’s quieter.”
“The engines are right back here,” he said.
“But the guys in the suits aren’t.”
He smiled and took the window seat and buckled up.
“And we can talk back here,” she said. “I don’t like people listening.”
“We should sleep,” he said. “We’re going to be busy.”
“I know, but talk first. Five minutes, OK?”
“Talk about what?”
“The scratches on her face,” she said. “I need to understand what that’s about.”
He glanced across at her. “Why? You figuring to crack this all on your own?”
She nodded. “I wouldn’t turn down t
he opportunity to make the arrest.”
“Ambitious?”
She made a face. “Competitive, I guess.”
He smiled again. “Lisa Harper against the pointy-heads. ”
“Damn right,” she said. “Plain-vanilla agents, they treat us like shit.”
The engines wound up to a scream and the plane rolled backward from the gate. Swung its nose around and lumbered toward the runway.
“So what about the marks on her face?” Harper asked.
“I think it proves my point,” Reacher said. “I think it’s the single most valuable piece of evidence we’ve gotten so far.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “It was so halfhearted, wasn’t it? So tentative? I think it proves the guy is hiding behind appearances. It proves he’s pretending. Like there’s me, looking at the cases, and I’m thinking where’s the violence? Where’s the anger? And simultaneously somewhere the guy is reviewing his progress, and he’s thinking oh my God, I’m not showing any anger, and so on the next one he tries to show some, but he’s not really feeling any, so it comes across as really nothing much at all.”
Harper nodded. “Not even enough to make her flinch, according to Stavely.”
“Bloodless,” Reacher said. “Almost literally. Like a technical exercise, which it was, because this whole thing is a technical exercise, some cast-iron down-to-earth motive hiding behind a psycho masquerade.”
“He made her do it to herself.”
“I think so.”
“But why would he?”
“Worried about fingerprints? About revealing if he’s left-handed or right-handed? Demonstrating his control? ”
“It’s a lot of control, don’t you think? But it explains why it was so halfhearted. She wouldn’t really hurt herself.”
“I guess not,” he said, sleepily.
“Why Alison, though? Why did he wait until number four?”
“Ceaseless quest for perfection, I suppose. A guy like this, he’s thinking and refining all the time.”
“Does it make her special in some way? Significant? ”
Reacher shrugged. “That’s pointy-head stuff. If they thought so, I’m sure they’d have said.”
“Maybe he knew her better than the others. Worked with her more closely.”
“Maybe. But don’t stray into their territory. Keep your feet on the ground. You’re plain-vanilla, remember? ”
Harper nodded. “And the plain-vanilla motive is money.”