Running Blind

“Somebody’s got to do it, right?”

“I guess,” Reacher said again.

“You don’t like injustice, right?”

“I guess not.”

“And you can tell the difference between right and wrong.”

“I hope so.”

“You don’t need the intervention of the proper authorities, because you can make your own decisions.”

“Usually.”

“Confident with your own moral code.”

“I guess.”

There was silence. Deerfield looked through the glare.

“So why did you steal their money?” he asked.

Reacher shrugged. “Spoils of battle, I guess. Like a trophy.”

Deerfield nodded. “Part of the code, right?”

“I guess.”

“You play to your own rules, right?”

“Usually.”

“You wouldn’t mug an old lady, but it was OK to take money off of a couple of hard men.”

“I guess.”

“When they step outside what’s acceptable to you, they get what they get, right?”

“Right.”

“A personal code.”

Reacher said nothing. The silence built.

“You know anything about criminal profiling?” Deerfield asked suddenly.

Reacher paused. “Only what I read in the newspaper. ”

“It’s a science,” Blake said. “We developed it at Quantico, over many years. Special Agent Lamarr here is currently our leading exponent. Special Agent Poulton is her assistant.”

“We look at crime scenes,” Lamarr said. “We look at the underlying psychological indicators, and we work out the type of personality which could have committed the crime.”

“We study the victims,” Poulton said. “We figure out to whom they could have been especially vulnerable.”

“What crimes?” Reacher asked. “What scenes?”

“You son of a bitch,” Lamarr said.

“Amy Callan and Caroline Cooke,” Blake said. “Both homicide victims.”

Reacher stared at him.

“Callan was first,” Blake said. “Very distinctive MO, but one homicide is just one homicide, right? Then Cooke was hit. With the exact same MO. That made it a serial situation.”

“We looked for a link,” Poulton said. “Between the victims. Not hard to find. Army harassment complainants who subsequently quit.”

“Extreme organization at the crime scene,” Lamarr said. “Indicative of military precision, maybe. A bizarre, coded MO. Nothing left behind. No clues of any kind. The perpetrator was clearly a precise person, and clearly a person familiar with investigative procedures. Possibly a good investigator himself.”

“No forced entry at either abode,” Poulton said. “The killer was admitted to the house in both cases, by the victims, no questions asked.”

“So the killer was somebody they both knew,” Blake said.

“Somebody they both trusted,” Poulton said.

“Like a friendly visitor,” Lamarr said.

There was silence in the room.

“That’s what he was,” Blake said. “A visitor. Somebody they regarded as a friend. Somebody they felt a bond with.”

“A friend, visiting,” Poulton said. “He knocks on the door, they open it up, they say hi, so nice to see you again.”

“He walks in,” Lamarr said. “Just like that.”

There was silence in the room.

“We explored the crime, psychologically,” Lamarr said. “Why were those women making somebody mad enough to kill them? So we looked for an Army guy with a score to settle. Maybe somebody outraged by the idea of pesky women ruining good soldiers’ careers, and then quitting anyway. Frivolous women, driving good men to suicide?”

“Somebody with a clear sense of right and wrong,” Poulton said. “Somebody confident enough in his own code to set these injustices right by his own hand. Somebody happy to act without the proper authorities getting in the way, you know?”

“Somebody both women knew,” Blake said. “Somebody they knew well enough to let right in the house, no questions asked, like an old friend or something.”

“Somebody decisive,” Lamarr said. “Maybe like somebody organized enough to think for a second and then go buy a label machine and a tube of glue, just to take care of a little ad hoc problem.”

More silence.

“The Army ran them through their computers,” Lamarr said. “You’re right, they never knew each other. They had very few mutual acquaintances. Very few. But you were one of them.”

“You want to know an interesting fact?” Blake said. “Perpetrators of serial homicide used to drive Volkswagen Bugs. Almost all of them. It was uncanny. Then they switched to minivans. Then they switched to sport-utilities. Big four-wheel-drives, exactly like yours. It’s a hell of an indicator.”

Lamarr leaned across and pulled the sheaf of papers back from Deerfield ’s place at the table. She tapped them with a finger.

“They live solitary lives,” she said. “They interact with one other person at most. They live off other people, often relatives or friends, often women. They don’t do much normal stuff. Don’t talk much on the phone, they’re quiet and furtive.”

“They’re law enforcement buffs,” Poulton said. “They know all kinds of stuff. Like all kinds of obscure legal cases defining their rights.”

More silence.

“Profiling,” Blake said. “It’s an exact science. It’s regarded as good enough evidence to get an arrest warrant in most states of the Union.”

“It never fails,” Lamarr said. She stared at Reacher and then she sat back with her crooked teeth showing in a satisfied smile. Silence settled over the room.

“So?” Reacher said.

“So somebody killed two women,” Deerfield said.

“And?”

Deerfield nodded to his right, toward Blake and Lamarr and Poulton. “And these agents think it was somebody exactly like you.”

“So?”

“So we asked you all those questions.”

“And?”

“And I think they’re absolutely right. It was somebody exactly like you. Maybe it even was you.”

4

'NO, IT WASN’T me,” Reacher said.

Blake smiled. “That’s what they all say.”