Running Blind (9 page)

The only thing he had bought for the house was a gold-colored filter cone for Leon's old coffee machine. He figured it was easier than always running to the store to buy the paper kind. Ten past four that morning, he filled it with coffee from a can and added water and set the machine going. Rinsed out a mug at the sink and set it on the counter, ready. Sat on a stool and leaned on his elbows and watched the dark liquid sputtering into the flask. It was an old machine, inefficient, maybe a little furred up inside. It generally took five minutes to finish. Somewhere during the fourth of those five minutes, he heard a car slowing on the road outside. The hiss of damp pavement. The crunch of tires on his asphalt drive. Jodie couldn't stand to stay at work, he thought. That hope endured about a second and a half, until the car came around the curve and the flashing red beam started sweeping over his kitchen window. It washed left to right, left to right, cutting through the river mist, and then it died into darkness and the motor noise died into silence. Doors opened and feet touched the ground. Two people. Doors slammed shut. He stood up and killed the kitchen light. Looked out of the window and saw the vague shapes of two people peering into the fog, looking for the path that led up to his front door. He ducked back to the stool and listened to their steps on the gravel. They paused. The doorbell rang.

There were two light switches in the hallway. One of them operated a porch light. He wasn't sure which one. He gambled and got it right and saw a glow through the fanlight. He opened the door. The bulb out there was a spotlight made of thick glass tinted yellow. It threw a narrow beam downward from high on the right. The beam caught Nelson Blake first, and then the parts of Julia Lamarr that weren't in his shadow. Blake's face was showing nothing except strain. Lamarr's face was still full of hostility and contempt.

"You're still up," Blake said. A statement, not a question.

Reacher nodded.

"Come on in, I guess," he said.

Lamarr shook her head. The yellow light caught her hair.

"We'd rather not," she said.

Blake moved his feet. "There someplace we can go? Get some breakfast?"

"Four thirty in the morning?" Reacher said. "Not around here."

"Can we talk in the car?" Lamarr asked.

"No," Reacher said.

Impasse. Lamarr looked away and Blake shuffled his feet.

"Come on in," Reacher said again. "I just made coffee."

He walked away, back to the kitchen. Pulled a cupboard door and found two more mugs. Rinsed the dust out of them at the sink and listened to the creak of the hallway floor as Blake stepped inside. Then he heard Lamarr's lighter tread, and the sound of the door closing behind her.

"Black is all I got," he called. "No milk or sugar in the house, I'm afraid."

"Black is fine," Blake said.

He was in the kitchen doorway, moving sideways, staying close to the hallway, unwilling to trespass. Lamarr was moving alongside him, looking around the kitchen with undisguised curiosity.

"Nothing for me," she said.

"Drink some coffee, Julia," Blake said. "It's been a long night."

The way he said it was halfway between an order and paternalistic concern. Reacher glanced at him, surprised, and filled three mugs. He took his own and leaned back on the counter, waiting.

"We need to talk," Blake said.

"Who was the third woman?" Reacher asked.

"Lorraine Stanley, She was a quartermaster sergeant."

"Where?"

"She served in Utah someplace. They found her dead in California, this morning."

"Same MO?"

Blake nodded. "Identical in every respect."

"Same history?"

Blake nodded again. "Harassment complainant, won her case, but quit anyway."

"When?"

"The harassment thing was two years ago, she quit a year ago. So that's three out of three. So the Army thing is not a coincidence, believe me."

Reacher sipped his coffee. It tasted weak and stale. The machine was obviously all furred up with mineral deposits. There was probably a procedure for cleaning it out.

"I never heard of her," he said. "I never served in Utah."

Blake nodded. "Somewhere we can talk?"

"We're talking here, right?"

"Somewhere we can sit?"

Reacher nodded and pushed off the counter and led the way into the living room. He set his mug on the side table and pulled up the blinds to reveal pitch dark outside. The windows faced west over the river. It would be hours until the sun got high enough to lighten the sky out there.

There were three sofas in a rectangle around a cold fireplace full of last winter's ash. The last cheery blazes Jodie's father had ever enjoyed. Blake sat facing the window and Reacher sat opposite and watched Lamarr as she fought her short skirt and sat down facing the hearth. Her skin was the same color as the ash.

"We stand by our profile," she said.

"Well, good for you."

"It was somebody exactly like you."

"You think that's plausible?" Blake asked.

"Is what plausible?" Reacher asked back.

"That this could be a soldier?"

"You're asking me if a soldier could be a killer?"

Blake nodded. "You got an opinion on that?"

"My opinion is it's a really stupid question. Like asking me if I thought a jockey could ride a horse."

There was silence. Just a muffled whump from the basement as the furnace caught, and then rapid creaking as the steam pipes heated through and expanded and rubbed against the floor joists under their feet.

"So you were a plausible suspect," Blake said. "As far as the first two went."

Reacher said nothing.

"Hence the surveillance," Blake said.

"Is that an apology?" Reacher asked.

Blake nodded. "I guess so."

"So why did you haul me in? When you already proved it wasn't me?"

Blake looked embarrassed. "We wanted to show some progress, I guess."

"You show progress by hauling the wrong guy in? I don't buy that."

"I already apologized," Blake said.

More silence.

"You got anybody who knew all three?" Reacher asked.

"Not yet," Lamarr said.

"We're thinking maybe previous personal contact isn't too significant," Blake said.

"You were thinking it was, couple of hours ago. You were telling me how I was this big friend of theirs, I knock on the door, they let me right in."

"Not you," Blake said. "Somebody like you, is all. And now we're thinking maybe we were wrong. This guy is killing by category, right? Female harassment complainants who quit afterward? So maybe he's not personally known to them, maybe he's just in a category known to them. Like the military police."

Reacher smiled. "So now you think it was me again?"

Blake shook his head. "No, you weren't in California."

"Wrong answer, Blake. It wasn't me because I'm not a killer."

"You never killed anybody?" Lamarr said, like she knew the answer.

"Only those who needed it."

She smiled in turn. "Like I said, we stand by our profile. Some self-righteous son of a bitch just like you."

Reacher saw Blake glance at her, half supportive, half disapproving. The light from the kitchen was coming through the hallway behind her, turning her thin hair to a wispy halo, making her look like a death's head. Blake sat forward, trying to force Reacher's attention his way. "What we're saying is, it's possible this guy is or was a military policeman."

Reacher looked away from Lamarr and shrugged.

"Anything's possible," he said.

Blake nodded. "And, you know, we kind of understand that maybe your loyalty to the service makes that hard to accept."

"Actually, common sense makes that hard to accept."

"In what way?"

"Because you seem to think trust and friendship is important to the MO in some way. And nobody in the service trusts an MO or likes them much, in my experience."

"You told us Rita Scimeca would remember you as a friend."

"I was different. I put the effort in. Not many of the guys did."

Silence again. The fog outside was dulling sound, like a blanket over the house. The water forcing through the radiators was loud.

"There's an agenda here," Blake said. "Like Julia says, we stand behind our techniques, and the way we read it, there's an Army involvement. The victim category is way too narrow for this to be random."

"So?"

"As a rule, the Bureau and the military don't get along too well."

"Well, there's a big surprise. Who the hell do you guys get along with?"

Blake nodded. He was in an expensive suit. It made him look uncomfortable, like a college football coach on alumni day.

"Nobody gets on with anybody," he said. "You know how it is, with all the rivalries. When you were serving, did you ever cooperate with civilian agencies?"

Reacher said nothing.

"So you know how it is," Blake said again. "Military hates the Bureau, the Bureau hates CIA, everybody hates everybody else."

There was silence.

"So we need a go-between," Blake said.

"A what?"

"An adviser. Somebody to help us."

Reacher shrugged. "I don't know anybody like that. I've been out too long."

Silence. Reacher drained his coffee and set the empty mug back on the table.

"You could do it," Blake said.

"Me?"

"Yes, you. You still know your way around, right?"

"No way."

"Why not?"