“OK, give it a go, right now.”
She concentrated hard, and tried. Gulped it back, suddenly. But nothing happened. Just a noise in her throat.
“Doesn’t work,” she said.
“Use your finger to help,” the visitor said. “The others all had to do that.”
“My finger?”
The visitor nodded. “Push it back in there with your finger. It worked for the others.”
“OK.”
She raised her hand. Thin paint ran off her arm, with thicker globules where the mixing wasn’t perfect.
“Which finger?” she asked.
“Try the middle,” the visitor said. “It’s the longest.”
She extended her middle finger and folded the others. Opened her mouth.
“Put it right under your tongue,” the visitor said. “And push back hard.”
She opened her mouth wider and pushed back hard.
“Now swallow.”
She swallowed. Then her eyes jammed open in panic.
30
THE CAB PULLED up nose to nose with the police cruiser. Reacher was the first one out, partly because he was tense, and partly because he needed Harper to pay the driver. He stood on the sidewalk and glanced around. Stepped back into the street and headed for the cop’s window.
“Everything OK?” he asked.
“Who are you?” the cop said.
“FBI,” Reacher said. “Is everything OK here?”
“Can I see a badge?”
“Harper, show this guy your badge,” Reacher called.
The taxi backed off and pulled a wide curb-to-curb turn in the road. Harper put her purse back in her pocketbook and came out with her badge, gold on gold, the eagle on top with its head cocked to the left. The cop glanced across at it and relaxed. Harper put it back in her bag and stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the house.
“It’s all quiet here,” the cop said, through his window.
“She in there?” Reacher asked him.
The cop pointed at the garage door.
“Just got back from the store,” he said.
“She went out?”
“I can’t stop her from going out,” the cop said.
“You check her car?”
“Just her and two shopping bags. There was a padre came calling for her. From the Army, some counseling thing. She sent him away.”
Reacher nodded. “She would. She’s not religious.”
“Tell me about it,” the cop said.
“OK,” Reacher said. “We’re going inside.”
“Just don’t ask for the powder room,” the cop said.
“Why not?”
“She’s kind of touchy about being disturbed.”
“I’ll take the risk,” Reacher said.
“Well, can you give her this for me?” the cop asked.
He ducked down in his car and came back with an empty mug from the passenger footwell. Handed it out through the window.
“She brought me coffee,” he said. “Nice lady when you get to know her.”
“Yes, she is,” Reacher said.
He took the mug and followed Harper into the driveway. Up the looping path, up the porch steps, to the door. Harper pressed the bell. He listened to the sound echoing to silence off the polished wood inside. Harper waited ten seconds and pressed again. A burst of purring metallic noise, then echoes, then silence.
“Where is she?” she said.
She hit the bell for the third time. Noise, echoes, silence. She looked at him, worried. He looked at the lock on the door. It was a big heavy item. Probably new. Probably carried all kinds of lifetime warranties and insurance discounts. Probably had a thick case-hardened latch fitted snugly into a steel receptacle chiseled neatly into the doorframe. The doorframe was probably Oregon pine felled a hundred years ago. The best construction timber in history, dried like iron over a century.
“Shit,” he said.
He stepped back to the edge of the porch and balanced the cop’s empty mug on the rail. Danced forward and smashed the sole of his foot against the lock.
“Hell are you doing?” Harper said.
He whirled back and hit the door again, once, twice, three times. Felt the timbers yield. He grasped the porch railings like a ski jumper and bounced twice and hurled himself forward. Straightened his leg and smashed his whole two hundred and thirty pounds into an area the size of his heel directly over the lock. The frame splintered and part of it followed the door into the hallway.
“Upstairs,” he gasped.
He raced up, with Harper crowding his back. He ducked into a bedroom. Wrong bedroom. Inferior linens, a cold musty smell. A guest room. He ducked into the next door. The right bedroom. A made bed, dimpled pillows, the smell of sleep, a telephone and a water glass on the nightstand. A connecting door, ajar. He stepped across the room and shoved it open. He saw a bathroom.
Mirrors, a sink, a shower stall.
A tub full of hideous green water.
Scimeca in the water.
Julia Lamarr, turning and rising and twisting off her perch on the rim of the tub, whirling around to face him. She was wearing a sweater and pants and black leather gloves. Her face was white with hate and fear. Her mouth was half-open. Her crossed teeth were bared in panic. He seized her by the front of the sweater and spun her around and hit her once in the head, a savage abrupt blow from a huge fist powered by blind anger and crushing physical momentum. It caught her solidly on the side of the jaw and her head snapped back and she bounced off the opposite wall and went down like she was hit by a truck. He didn’t see her make it to the floor because he was already turning back to the tub. Scimeca was arched up out of the slime, naked, rigid, eyes bulging, head back, mouth open in agony.
Not moving.
He put a hand under her neck and held her head up and straightened the fingers on his other hand and stabbed them into her mouth. Couldn’t reach her tongue. He balled his hand and punched and forced his knuckles all the way inside. Her mouth made a giant ghastly O around his wrist and the skin of his hand tore against her teeth and he scrabbled in her throat and hooked a finger around her tongue and hauled it back. It was slippery, like a live thing. It was long and heavy and muscular. It curled tight against itself and eased up out of her throat and flopped back into her mouth. He pulled his hand free and tore more skin. Bent down to blow air into her lungs but as his face got near hers he felt a convulsive exhalation from her and a desperate cough and then her chest started heaving. Giant ragged breaths sucked in and out. He cradled her head. She was wheezing. Tortured cracked sounds in her throat.
