Running Blind

It took twenty minutes to dry out. He used Trent ’s phone and called Jodie’s numbers. The private office line, the apartment, the mobile. No reply, no reply, out of service. He stared at the wall. Then he read an unclassified file about proposed methods of getting mail to the Marines if they had to go serve in the Indian Ocean. The time he spent on it put him lower in his chair and put a glazed look on his face. When Trent finally opened the door and Harper got her second peek of the day, he was slumped and inert. Exactly like a man looks after an arduous day with paperwork.

“Progress?” she called.

He looked up and sighed at the ceiling. “Maybe.”

“Six solid hours, you must have gotten somewhere.”

“Maybe,” he said again.

There was silence for a moment.

“OK, so let’s go,” she said.

She stood up behind her desk and stretched. She put her arms way above her head, palms flat, reaching for the ceiling. Some kind of a yoga thing. She arched her face upward and tilted her head and her hair cascaded down her back. Three sergeants and one colonel stared at her.

“So let’s go,” Reacher said.

“Don’t forget your notes,” Trent said.

He handed over a sheet of paper. There was a list of maybe thirty names printed on it. Probably Trent ’s high school football team. Reacher put the list in his pocket and put his coat on and shook Trent ’s hand. Walked through the anteroom and outside into the rain and stood there breathing for a second like a man who has been sitting down all day. Then Harper nudged him toward the lieutenant’s car for the drive back to the Lear.

BLAKE AND POULTON and Lamarr were waiting for them at the same table in the Quantico cafeteria. It was just as dark outside, but now the table was set for dinner, not breakfast. There was a jug of water and five glasses, salt and pepper, bottles of steak sauce. Blake ignored Reacher and glanced at Harper, who nodded back to him, like a reassurance. Blake looked satisfied.

“So, you found our guy yet?” he asked.

“Maybe,” Reacher said. “I’ve got thirty names. He could be one of them.”

“So let’s see them.”

“Not yet. I need more.”

Blake stared at him. “Bullshit, you need more. We need to get tails on these guys.”

Reacher shook his head. “Can’t be done. These guys are in places where you can’t go. You even want a warrant on these guys, you’re going to have to go to the Secretary of Defense, right after you’ve been to the judge. And Defense is going to go straight to the Commander-in-Chief, who was the President last time I looked, so you’re going to need a damn sight more than I can give you right now.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying let me boil it down some.”

“How?”

Reacher shrugged. “I want to go see Lamarr’s sister. ”

“My stepsister,” Lamarr said.

“Why?” Blake asked.

Reacher wanted to say because I’m just killing time, asshole, and I’d rather do it on the road than stuck in here, but he composed his face into a serious look and shrugged again.

“Because we need to think laterally,” he said. “If this guy is killing by category, we need to know why. He can’t be mad at a whole category, just like that. One of these women must have sparked him off, first time around. Then he must have transferred his rage from the personal to the general, right? So who was it? Lamarr’s sister could be a good place to start asking. She got a transfer between units. Two very different units. That doubles her potential contacts, profile-wise.”

It sounded professional enough. Blake nodded.

“OK,” he said. “We’ll set it up. You’ll go tomorrow. ”

“Where does she live?”

“ Washington State,” Lamarr said. “Someplace outside of Spokane, I think.”

“You think? You don’t know?”

“I’ve never been there,” she said. “I sure as hell don’t get enough vacation time to drive all the way out and drive all the way back.”

Reacher nodded. Turned to Blake.

“You should be guarding these women,” he said.

Blake sighed heavily. “Do the arithmetic, for God’s sake. Eighty-eight women, and we don’t know which one is next, seventeen days to go, if he sticks to his cycle, three agents every twenty-four hours, that’s more than a hundred thousand man-hours, random locations all around the country. We just can’t do it. We don’t have the agents. We warned the local police departments, of course, but what can they do? Like outside of Spokane, Washington, for instance, the local police department is probably one man and a German shepherd. They drive by, time to time, I guess, but that’s all we got.”

“Have you warned the women, too?”

Blake looked embarrassed and shook his head. “We can’t. If we can’t guard them, we can’t warn them. Because what would we be saying? You’re in danger, but sorry girls, you’re entirely on your own? Can’t be done.”

“We need to catch this guy,” Poulton said. “That’s the only sure way to help these women.”

Lamarr nodded. “He’s out there, somewhere. We need to bring him in.”

Reacher looked at them. Three psychologists. They were trying to push all the right buttons. Trying to make it a challenge. He smiled. “I get the message.”

“OK, you go to Spokane tomorrow,” Lamarr said. “Meanwhile I’ll work the files some more. You’ll review them the day after tomorrow. That gives you the stuff you got from Trent, plus the stuff you get in Spokane, plus what we’ve already gotten. At which point we’ll expect some real progress from you.”

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.