12
THERE WAS NO breakfast meeting the next morning. The day started too early. Harper opened the door before Reacher was even dressed. He had his pants on and was smoothing the wrinkles out of his shirt with his palm against the mattress.
“Love those scars,” she said.
She took a step closer, looking at his stomach with undisguised curiosity.
“What’s that one from?” she asked, pointing to his right side.
He glanced down. The right side of his stomach had a violent tracery of stitches in the shape of a twisted star. They bulged out above the muscle wall, white and angry.
“My mother did it,” he said.
“Your
“I was raised by grizzly bears. In Alaska.”
She rolled her eyes and moved them up to the left side of his chest. There was a.38 caliber bullet hole there, punched right into the pectoral muscle. The hair was missing from around it. It was a big hole. She could have lost her little finger in it, right up to the first knuckle.
“Exploratory surgery,” he said. “Checking if I had a heart.”
“You’re happy this morning,” she said.
He nodded. “I’m always happy.”
“Did you get Jodie yet?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t tried since yesterday.”
“Why not?”
“Waste of time. She’s not there.”
“Are you worried?”
He shrugged. “She’s a big girl.”
“I’ll tell you if I hear anything.”
He nodded. “You better.”
“Where are they really from?” she asked. “The scars?”
He buttoned his shirt.
“The gut is from bomb shrapnel,” he said. “The chest, somebody shot me.”
“Dramatic life.”
He took his coat from the closet.
“No, not really. Pretty normal, wouldn’t you say? For a soldier? A soldier figuring to avoid physical violence is like a CPA figuring to avoid adding numbers. ”
“Is that why you don’t care about these women?”
He looked at her. “Who says I don’t care?”
“I thought you’d be more agitated about it.”
“Getting agitated won’t achieve anything.”
She paused. “So what will?”
“Working the clues, same as always.”
“There aren’t any clues. He doesn’t leave any.”
He smiled. “That’s a clue in itself, wouldn’t you say?”
She used her key from the inside and opened the door.
“That’s just talking in riddles,” she said.
He shrugged. “Better than talking in
THE SAME MOTOR pool guy brought the same car to the doors. This time he stayed in the driver’s seat, sitting square-on like a dutiful chauffeur. He drove them north on I-95 to the National Airport. It was before dawn. There was a halfhearted glow in the sky somewhere three hundred miles to the east, all the way out over the Atlantic Ocean. The only other illumination was from a thousand headlights streaming north toward work. The headlights were mostly on old-model cars. Old, therefore cheap, therefore owned by low-grade people aiming to be at their desks an hour before their bosses, so they would look good and get promotion, whereupon they could drive newer cars to work an hour later in the day. Reacher sat still and watched their shadowed faces as the Bureau driver sped past them, one by one.
Inside the airport terminal, it was reasonably busy. Men and women in dark raincoats walked quickly from one place to another. Harper collected two coach tickets from the United desk and carried them over to the check-in counter.
“We could use some legroom,” she said to the guy behind the counter.
She used her FBI pass for photo ID. She snapped it down like a poker player completing a flush. The guy hit a few keys and came up with an upgrade. Harper smiled, like she was genuinely surprised.
First class was half-empty. Harper took an aisle seat, trapping Reacher against the window like a prisoner. She stretched out. She was in a third different suit, this one a fine check in a muted gray. The jacket fell open and showed a hint of nipple through the shirt, and no shoulder holster.
“Left your gun at home?” Reacher asked.
She nodded. “Not worth the hassle. Airlines want too much paperwork. A Seattle guy is meeting us. Standard practice is he’d bring a spare, should we need one. But we won’t, not today.”
“You hope.”
She nodded. “I hope.”
They taxied on time and took off a minute early. Reacher pulled the magazine out and started leafing through. Harper had her tray unfolded, ready for breakfast.
“What did you mean?” she asked. “When you said it’s a clue in itself?”
He forced his mind back an hour and tried to remember.
“Just thinking aloud, I guess,” he said.
“Thinking about what?”
He shrugged. He had time to kill. “The history of science. Stuff like that.”
“Is that relevant?”
“I was thinking about fingerprinting. How old is that?”
She made a face. “Pretty old, I think.”
“Turn of the century?”
She nodded. “Probably.”
“OK, a hundred years old,” he said. “That was the first big forensic test, right? Probably started using microscopes around the same time. And since then, they’ve invented all kinds of other stuff. DNA, mass spectrometry, fluorescence. Lamarr said you’ve got tests I wouldn’t believe. I bet they can find a rug fiber, tell you where and when somebody bought it, what kind of flea sat on it, what kind of dog the flea came off. Probably tell you what the dog’s name is and what brand of dog food it ate for breakfast.”
“So?”
“Amazing tests, right?”
She nodded.
“Real science-fiction stuff, right?”
She nodded again.
“OK,” he said. “Amazing, science-fiction tests. But this guy killed Amy Callan and beat
“Right.”
“So what do you call that type of a guy?”
“What?”
“A very, very clever guy, is what.”
She made a face. “Among other things.”
“Sure, a lot of other things, but whatever else, a very clever guy. Then he did it again, with Cooke. Now what
