Running Blind

Harper said nothing.

“And that’s how I knew she’d be here,” Reacher said. “Because she was trying to imitate a guy like me, all along. And I said I would go for Scimeca next. So I knew she’d be here, sooner or later. But she was a little quicker than I thought. And we were a little slower. She didn’t waste any time, did she?”

Harper glanced at the bathroom door. Shuddered. Glanced away.

“How did you figure the hypnotism thing?” she asked.

“Like everything else,” Reacher said. “I thought I knew who, and why, but the how part looked absolutely impossible, so I just went around and around. That’s why I wanted to get out of Quantico. I wanted space to think. It took me a real long time. But eventually, it was the only possibility. It explained everything. The passivity, the obedience, the acquiescence. And why the scenes looked the way they did. Looked like the guy never laid a finger on them, because she never did lay a finger on them. She just reestablished the spell and told them what to do, step by step. They did everything themselves. Right down to filling their own tubs, swallowing their own tongues. The only thing she did herself was what I did, pull their tongues back up afterward, so the pathologists wouldn’t catch on.”

“But how did you know about the tongues?”

He was quiet for a beat.

“From kissing you,” he said.

“Kissing me?”

He smiled. “You’ve got a great tongue, Harper. It set me thinking. Tongues were the only things which fitted Stavely’s autopsy findings. But I figured there was no way to make somebody swallow their own tongue, until I realized it was Lamarr, and she was a hypnotist, and then the whole thing fell together.”

Harper was silent.

“And you know what?” Reacher said.

“What?”

“The very first night I met her, she wanted to hypnotize me. For deep background, she said, but obviously she was going to tell me to look convincing and get absolutely nowhere. Blake pestered me to do it, and I said no, because she’ll make me run naked down Fifth Avenue. Like a joke. But it was awful near the truth.”

Harper shivered. “Where would she have stopped?”

“Maybe one more,” Reacher said. “Six would be enough. Six would have done it. Sand on the beach.”

She stepped over and sat down next to him on the bed. Stared down at Scimeca, inert beneath the bathrobe.

“Will she be OK?” she asked.

“Probably,” Reacher said. “She’s tough as hell.”

Harper glanced at him. His shirt and pants were wet and smeared. His arms were green, right up to the shoulders.

“You’re all wet,” she said, absently.

“So are you,” he said. “Wetter than me.”

She nodded. Went quiet.

“We’re both wet,” she said. “But at least now it’s over.”

He said nothing.

“Here’s to success,” she said.

She leaned over and threaded her damp arms around his neck. Pulled him close and kissed him, hard on the mouth. He felt her tongue on his lips. Then it stopped moving. She pulled away.

“Feels weird,” she said. “I won’t be able to do this ever again without thinking bad things about tongues.”

He said nothing.

“Horrible way to die,” she said.

He looked at her and smiled.

“You fall off a horse, you’ve got to get right back on,” he said.

He leaned toward her and cupped a hand behind her head and pulled her close. Kissed her on the mouth. She was completely still for a beat. Then she got back into it. She held the kiss for a long moment. Then she pulled away, smiling shyly.

“Go wake her up,” Reacher said. “Make the arrest, start the questioning. You’ve got a big case ahead of you.”

“She won’t talk to me.”

He looked down at Scimeca’s sleeping face.

“She will,” he said. “Tell her the first time she clams up, I’ll break her arm. The second time, I’ll grind the bones together.”

Harper shivered again and turned away. Stood up and stepped out to the bathroom. The bedroom went quiet. No sound anywhere, just Scimeca’s breathing, steady but noisy, like a machine. Then Harper came back in, a long moment later, white in the face.

“She won’t talk to me,” she said.

“How do you know? You didn’t ask her anything.”

“Because she’s dead.”

Silence.

“You killed her.”

Silence.

“When you hit her.”

Silence.

“You broke her neck.”

Then there were loud footsteps in the hallway below them. Then they were on the stairs. Then they were in the corridor outside the bedroom. The cop stepped into the room. He was holding his mug. He had retrieved it from the porch railing. He stared.

“Hell’s going on?” he said.

31

SEVEN HOURS LATER it was well past midnight. Reacher was locked up alone in a holding pen inside the FBI’s Portland Field Office. He knew the cop had called his sergeant and the sergeant had called his Bureau contact. He knew Portland called Quantico and Quantico called the Hoover Building and the Hoover Building called New York. The cop relayed all that information, breathless with excitement. Then his sergeant arrived in person and he clammed up. Harper disappeared somewhere and an ambulance arrived to take Scimeca to the hospital. He heard the police department cede jurisdiction to the FBI without any kind of a struggle. Then two Portland agents arrived to make the arrest. They cuffed him and drove him to the city and dumped him in the holding pen and left him there.

It was hot in the cell. His clothes dried within an hour, stiff as boards and stained olive with paint. Apart from that, nothing happened. He guessed it was taking time for people to assemble. He wondered if they would come to Portland, or if they’d fly him back to Quantico. Nobody told him anything. Nobody came near him. He was left alone. He spent the time worrying about Scimeca. He imagined harassed strangers in the emergency room, probing and fussing over her.

It stayed quiet until after midnight. Then things started happening. He heard sounds in the building. Arrivals, urgent conversations. First person he saw was Nelson Blake. They’re coming here, he thought. They must have discussed a position and fired up the Lear. Timing was about right. The inner door opened and Blake walked past the bars and glanced into the cell, something in his face. You really screwed up now, he was saying. He looked tired and strained. Red and pale, all at the same time.

It went quiet again for an hour. Past one o’clock in the morning, Alan Deerfield arrived, all the way from New