Running Blind

There was worry in his face. He had a new problem.

“Lamarr’s father died,” he said.

“Stepfather,” Reacher said.

“Whatever. He died, early this morning. The hospital in Spokane called for her. Now I’ve got to call her at home.”

“Give her our condolences,” Harper said.

Blake nodded vaguely and walked away.

“He should take her off the case,” Reacher said.

Harper nodded. “Maybe he should, but he won’t. And she wouldn’t agree, anyway. Her job is all she’s got.”

Reacher said nothing. Harper pulled the door and ushered him back into the room with the oak tables and the leather chairs and the files. Reacher sat down and checked his watch. Three twenty. Maybe two more hours of daydreaming and then he could eat and escape to the solitude of his room.

IT WAS THREE hours, in the end. And it wasn’t daydreaming. He sat and stared into space and thought hard. Harper watched him, anxious. He took the file folders and arranged them on the table, Callan’s at the bottom right, Stanley’s at the bottom left, Cooke’s at the top right, and stared at them, musing about the geography again. He leaned back and closed his eyes.

“Making any progress?” Harper asked.

“I need a list of the ninety-one women,” he said.

“OK,” she said.

He waited with his eyes closed and heard her leave the room. Enjoyed the warmth and the silence for a long moment, and then she was back. He opened his eyes and saw her leaning over near him and handing him another thick blue file.

“Pencil,” he said.

She backed away to a drawer and found a pencil. Rolled it across the table to him. He opened the new file and started reading. First item was a Defense Department printout, four pages stapled together, ninety-one names in alphabetical order. He recognized some of them. Rita Scimeca was there, the woman he’d mentioned to Blake. She was next to Lorraine Stanley. Then there was a matching list with addresses, most of them obtained through the VA’s medical insurance operation or mail-forwarding instructions. Scimeca lived in Oregon. Then there was a thick sheaf of background information, Army postdischarge intelligence reports, extensive for some of the women, sketchy for others, but altogether enough for a basic conclusion. Reacher flipped back and forth between pages and went to work with the pencil and twenty minutes later counted up the marks he’d made.

“It was eleven women,” he said. “Not ninety-one.”

“It was?” Harper said.

He nodded.

“Eleven,” he said again. “Eight left, not eighty-eight. ”

“Why?”

“Lots of reasons. Ninety-one was always absurd. Who would seriously target ninety-one women? Five and a quarter years? It’s not credible. A guy this smart would break it down into something manageable, like eleven.”

“But how?”

“By limiting himself to what’s feasible. A subcategory. What else did Callan and Cooke and Stanley have in common?”

“What?”

“They were alone. Positively and unequivocally alone. Unmarried or separated, single-family houses in the suburbs or the countryside.”

“And that’s crucial?”

“Of course it is. Think about the MO. He needs somewhere quiet and lonely and isolated. No interruptions. And no witnesses nearby. He has to get all that paint into the house. So look at this list. There are married women, women with new babies, women living with family, parents, women in apartment houses and condos, farms, communes even, women gone back to college. But he wants women who live alone, in houses.”

Harper shook her head. “There are more than eleven of those. We did the research. I think it’s more than thirty. About a third.”

“But you had to check. I’m talking about women who are obviously living alone and isolated. At first glance. Because we have to assume the guy hasn’t got anybody doing research for him. He’s working alone, in secret. All he’s got is this list to study.”

“But that’s our list.”

“Not exclusively. It’s his, too. All this information came straight from the military, right? He had this list before you did.”

FORTY-THREE MILES AWAY, slightly east of north, the exact same list was lying open on a polished desk in a small windowless office in the darkness of the Pentagon’s interior. It was two Xerox generations newer than Reacher’s version, but it was otherwise identical. All the same pages were there. And they had eleven marks on them, against eleven names. Not hasty check marks in pencil, like Reacher had scrawled, but neat under-linings done with a fountain pen and a beveled ruler held away from the paper so the ink wouldn’t smudge.

Three of the eleven names had second lines struck through them.

The list was framed on the desk by the uniformed forearms of the office’s occupant. They were flat on the wood, and the wrists were cocked upward to keep the hands clear of the surface. The left hand held a ruler. The right hand held a pen. The left hand moved and placed the ruler exactly horizontal along the inked line under a fourth name. Then it slid upward a fraction and rested across the name itself. The right hand moved and the pen scored a thick line straight through it. Then the pen lifted off the page.

'SO WHAT DO we do about it?” Harper asked.

Reacher leaned back and closed his eyes again.

“I think you should gamble,” he said. “I think you should stake out the surviving eight around the clock and I think the guy will walk into your arms within sixteen days.”

She sounded uncertain.

“Hell of a gamble,” she said. “It’s very tenuous. You’re guessing about what he’s guessing about when he looks at the list.”

“I’m supposed to be representative of the guy. So what I guess should be what he guesses, right?”

“Suppose you’re wrong?”

“As opposed to what? The progress you’re making?”

She still sounded uncertain. “OK. I guess it’s a valid theory. Worth pursuing. But maybe they thought of it already.”

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?”

She was quiet for a second. “OK, talk to Lamarr, first thing tomorrow.”

He opened his eyes. “You think she’ll be here?”

Harper nodded. “She’ll be here.”

“Won’t there be a funeral for her father?”

Harper nodded again. “There’ll have to be a funeral, obviously. But she won’t go. She’d miss her own funeral, a case like this.”

“OK, but you do the talking, and talk to Blake instead. Keep it away from Lamarr.”

“Why?”

“Because her sister clearly lives alone, remember? So her odds just went all the way down to eight to one. Blake will have to pull her off now.”

“If he agrees with you.”

“He should.”

“Maybe he will. But he won’t pull her off.”

“He should.”

“Maybe, but he won’t.”

Reacher shrugged. “Then don’t bother telling him anything. I’m just wasting my time here. The guy’s an