Running Blind

Chapter 17

A WALKWAY CAME off the driveway on the left and looped through the dark around some rockery plantings to a set of wide wooden steps in the center of the front porch. Harper skipped up them but Reacher's weight made them creak in the night silence and before the echo of the sound came back from the hills the front door was open and Rita Scimeca was standing there watching them. She had one hand on the inside doorknob and a blank look on her face.
"Hello, Reacher," she said.
"Scimeca," he said back. "How are you?"
She used her free hand to push her hair off her brow.
"Reasonable," she said. "Considering it's three o'clock in the morning and the FBI has only just gotten around to telling me I'm on some kind of hit list with ten of my sisters, four of whom are already dead."
"Your tax dollars at work," Reacher said.
"So why the hell are you hanging with them?"
He shrugged. "Circumstances didn't leave me a whole lot of choice."
She gazed at him, deciding. It was cold on the porch. The night dew was beading on the painted boards. There was a thin low fog in the air. Behind Scimeca's shoulder the lights inside her house burned warm and yellow. She looked at him a moment longer.
"Circumstances?" she repeated.
He nodded. "Didn't leave me a whole lot of choice."
She nodded back. "Well, whatever, it's kind of good to see you, I guess."
"Good to see you, too."
She was a tall woman. Shorter than Harper, but then most women were. She was muscular, not the compact way Alison Lamarr had been, but the lean, marathon-runner kind of way. She was dressed in clean jeans and a shapeless sweater. Substantial shoes on her feet. She had medium-length brown hair, worn in long bangs above bright brown eyes. She had heavy frown lines all around her mouth. It was nearly four years since he had last seen her, and she looked the whole four years older.
"This is Special Agent Lisa Harper," he said.
Scimeca nodded once, warily. Reacher watched her eyes. A male agent, she'd have thrown him off the porch.
"Hi," Harper said.
"Well, come on in, I guess," Scimeca said.
She still had hold of the doorknob. She was standing on the threshold, leaning forward, unwilling to step out. Harper stepped in and Reacher filed after her. The door closed behind them. They were in the hallway of a decent little house, newly painted, nicely furnished. Very clean, obsessively tidy. It looked like a home. Warm and cozy. A personal space. There were wool rugs on the floor. Polished antique furniture in gleaming mahogany. Paintings on the walls. Vases of flowers everywhere.
"Chrysanthemums," Scimeca said. "I grow them myself. You like them?"
Reacher nodded.
"I like them," he said. "Although I couldn't spell them."
"Gardening's my new hobby," Scimeca said. "I've gotten into it in a big way."
Then she pointed toward a front parlor.
"And music," she said. "Come see."
The room had quiet wallpaper and a polished wood floor. There was a grand piano in the back corner. Shiny black lacquer. A German name inlaid in brass. A big stool was placed in front of it, handsome buttoned leather in black. The lid of the piano was up, and there was music on the stand above the keyboard, a dense mass of black notes on heavy cream paper.
"Want to hear something?" she asked.
"Sure," Reacher said.
She slid between the keyboard and the stool and sat down. Laid her hands on the keys and paused for a second and then a mournful minor-key chord filled the room. It was a warm sound, and low, and she modulated it into the start of a funeral march.
"Got anything more cheerful?" Reacher asked.
"I don't feel cheerful," she said.
But she changed it anyway, into the start of the Moonlight Sonata.
"Beethoven," she said.
The silvery arpeggios filled the air. She had her foot on the damper and the sound was dulled and quiet. Reacher gazed out of the window at the plantings, gray in the moonlight. There was an ocean ninety miles to the west, vast and silent.
"That's better," he said.
She played it through to the end of the first movement, apparently from memory, because the music open on the stand was labeled Chopin. She kept her hands on the keys until the last chord died away to silence.
"Nice," Reacher said. "So, you're doing OK?"
She turned away from the keyboard and looked him in the eye. "You mean have I recovered from being gang-raped by three guys I was supposed to trust with my life?"
Reacher nodded. "Something like that, I guess."
"I thought I'd recovered," she said. "As well as I ever expected to. But now I hear some maniac is fixing to kill me for complaining about it. That's taken the edge off it a little bit, you know?"
"We'll get him," Harper said, in the silence.
Scimeca just looked at her.
"So can we see the new washing machine in the basement?" Reacher asked.
"It's not a washing machine, though, is it?" Scimeca asked. "Not that anybody tells me anything."
"It's probably paint," Reacher said. "In cans. Camouflage green, Army issue."
"What for?"
"The guy kills you, dumps you in your bathtub and pours it over you."
"Why?"
Reacher shrugged. "Good question. There's a whole bunch of pointy heads working on that right now."
Scimeca nodded and turned to Harper. "You a pointy head?"
"No, ma'am, I'm just an agent," Harper said.
"You ever been raped?"
Harper shook her head. "No, ma'am, I haven't."
Scimeca nodded again.
"Well, don't be," she said. "That's my advice."
There was silence.
"It changes your life," Scimeca said. "It changed mine, that's for damn sure. Gardening and music, that's all I've got now."
"Good hobbies," Harper said.
"Stay-at-home hobbies," Scimeca said back. "I'm either in this room or within sight of my front door. I don't get out much and I don't like meeting people. So take my advice, don't let it happen to you."
Harper nodded. "I'll try not to."
"Basement," Scimeca said.
She led the way out of the parlor to a door tucked under the stairs. It was an old door, made up of pine planks painted many times. There was a narrow staircase behind it, leading down toward cold air smelling faintly of gasoline and tire rubber.
"We have to go through the garage," Scimeca said.
There was a new car filling the space, a long low Chrysler sedan, painted gold. They walked single file along its flank and Scimeca opened a door in the garage wall. The musty smell of a basement bloomed out at them. Scimeca pulled a cord and a hot yellow light came on.
"There you are," she said.
The basement was warm from a furnace. It was a large square space with wide storage racks built on every wall. Fiberglass insulation showed between the ceiling joists. There were heating pipes snaking up through the floorboards. There was a carton standing alone in the middle of the floor. It was at an angle to the walls, untidy against the neat shelving surrounding it. It was the same carton. Same size, same brown board, same black printing, same picture, same manufacturer's name. It was taped shut with shiny brown tape and it looked brand-new.
"Got a knife?" Reacher asked.
Scimeca nodded toward a work area. There was pegboard screwed to the wall, and it was filled with tools hanging in neat rows. Reacher took a linoleum knife off a peg, carefully, because in his experience the peg usually came out with the tool. But not this one. He saw that each peg was secured to the board with a neat little plastic device.
He came back to the box and slit the tape. Reversed the knife and used the handle to ease the flaps upward. He saw five metal circles, glowing yellow. Five paint can lids, reflecting the overhead light. He poked the knife handle under one of the wire hoops and lifted one of the cans up to eye level. Rotated it in the light. It was a plain metal can, unadorned except for a small white label printed with a long number and the words Camo/Green.
"We've seen a few of those in our time," Scimeca said. "Right, Reacher?"
He nodded. "A few."
He lowered the can back into the box. Pushed the flaps down and walked over and hung the knife back where it had been. Glanced across at Scimeca.
"When did this come?" he asked.
"I don't remember," she said.
"Roughly?"
"I don't know," she said. "Maybe a couple months ago."
"A couple of months?" Harper said.
Scimeca nodded. "I guess. I don't really remember."
"You didn't order it, right?" Reacher said.
Scimeca shook her head. "I already have one. It's over there."
She pointed. There was a laundry area in the corner. Washer, dryer, sink. A vacuumed rug in the angle of the corner. White plastic baskets and detergent bottles lined up precisely on a countertop.
"Thing like this, you'd remember," Reacher said. "Wouldn't you?"
"I assumed it's for my roommate, I guess," she said.
"You have a roommate?"
"Had. She moved out, couple of weeks ago."
"And you figured this is hers?"
"Made sense to me," Scimeca said. "She's setting up housekeeping on her own, she needs a washing machine, right?"
"But you didn't ask her?"
"Why should I? I figured it's not for me, who else could it be for?"
"So why did she leave it here?"
"Because it's heavy. Maybe she's getting help to move it. It's only been a couple of weeks."
"She leave anything else behind?"
Scimeca shook her head. "This is the last thing."
Reacher circled the carton. Saw the square shape where the packing documents had been torn away.
"She took the paperwork off," he said.
Scimeca nodded again. "She would, I guess. She'd need to keep her affairs straight."
They stood in silence, three people surrounding a tall cardboard carton, vivid yellow light, jagged dark shadows.
"I'm tired," Scimeca said. "Are we through? I want you guys out of here."
"One last thing," Reacher said.
"What?"
"Tell Agent Harper what you did in the service."
"Why? What's that got to do with anything?"
"I just want her to know."
Scimeca shrugged, puzzled. "I was in armaments proving."
"Tell her what that was."
"We tested new weapons incoming from the manufacturer. "
"And?"
"If they were up to spec, we passed them to the quartermasters."
Silence. Harper glanced at Reacher, equally puzzled.
"OK," he said. "Now we're out of here."
Scimeca led the way through the door to the garage. Pulled the cord and killed the light. Led them past her car and up the narrow staircase. Out into the foyer. She crossed the floor and checked the spyhole in the front door. Opened it up. The air outside was cold and damp.
"Good-bye, Reacher," she said. "It was nice to see you again."
Then she turned to Harper.
"You should trust him," she said. "I still do, you know. Which is one hell of a recommendation, believe me."
The front door closed behind them as they walked down the path. They heard the sound of the lock turning from twenty feet away. The local agent watched them get into their car. It was still warm inside. Harper started the motor and put the blower on high to keep it that way.
"She had a roommate," she said.
Reacher nodded.
"So your theory is wrong. Looked like she lived alone, but she didn't. We're back to square one."
"Square two, maybe. It's still a subcategory. Has to be. Nobody targets ninety-one women. It's insane."
"As opposed to what?" Harper said. "Putting dead women in a tub full of paint?"
Reacher nodded again.
"So now what?" he said.
"Back to Quantico," she said.
IT TOOK NEARLY nine hours. They drove to Portland, took a turboprop to Sea-Tac, Continental to Newark, United to D.C., and a Bureau driver met them and drove them south into Virginia. Reacher slept most of the way, and the parts when he was awake were just a blur of fatigue. He struggled into alertness as they wound through Marine territory. The FBI guard on the gate reissued his visitor's tag. The driver parked at the main doors. Harper led the way inside and they took the elevator four floors underground to the seminar room with the shiny walls and the fake windows and the photographs of Lorraine Stanley pinned to the blackboard. The television was playing silently, reruns of the day on the Hill. Blake and Poulton and Lamarr were at the table with drifts of paper in front of them. Blake and Poulton looked busy and harassed. Lamarr was as white as the paper in front of her, her eyes deep in her head and jumping with strain.
"Let me guess," Blake said. "Scimeca's box came a couple of months ago and she was kind of vague about why. And there was no paperwork on it."
"She figured it was for her roommate," Harper said. "She didn't live alone. So the list of eleven doesn't mean anything."
But Blake shook his head.
"No, it means what it always meant," he said. "Eleven women who look like they live alone to somebody studying the paperwork. We checked with all the others on the phone. Eighty calls. Told them we were customer services people with a parcel company. Took us hours. But none of them knew anything about unexpected cartons. So there are eighty women out of the loop, and eleven in it. So Reacher's theory still holds. The roommates surprised him, they'll surprise the guy."
Reacher glanced at him, gratified. And a little surprised.
"Hey, credit where it's due?" Blake said.
Lamarr nodded and moved and wrote a note on the end of a lengthy list.
"I'm sorry for your loss," Reacher said to her.
"Maybe it could have been avoided," she said. "You know, if you'd cooperated like this from the start."
There was silence.
"So we've got seven out of seven," Blake said. "No paperwork, vague women."
"We've got one other roommate situation," Poulton said. "Then three of them have been getting regular misdeliveries and they've gotten slow about sorting them out. The other two were just plain vague."
"Scimeca was pretty vague, for sure," Harper said.
"She was traumatized," Reacher said. "She's doing well to function at all."
Lamarr nodded. A small, sympathetic motion of her head.
"Whatever, she's not leading us anywhere, right?" she said.
"What about the delivery companies?" Reacher asked. "You chasing them?"
"We don't know who they were," Poulton said. "The paperwork is missing, seven cartons out of seven."
"There aren't too many possibilities," Reacher said.
"Aren't there?" Poulton said back. "UPS, FedEx, DHL, Airborne Express, the damn United States Postal Service, whoever, plus any number of local subcontractors. "
"Try them all," Reacher said.
Poulton shrugged. "And ask them what? Out of all the ten zillion packages you delivered in the last two months, can you remember the one we're interested in?"
"You have to try," Reacher said. "Start with Spokane. Remote address like that, middle of nowhere, the driver might recall it."
Blake leaned forward and nodded. "OK, we'll try it up there. But only there. Gets impossible, otherwise."
"Why are the women so vague?" Harper asked.
"Complex reasons," Lamarr answered. "Like Reacher said, they're traumatized, all of them, at least to some extent. A large package, coming into their private territory unasked, it's an invasion of sorts. The mind blocks it out. It's what I would expect to see in cases like these."
Her voice was low and strained. Her bony hands were laid on the table in front of her.
"I think it's weird," Harper said.
Lamarr shook her head, patiently, like a teacher.
"No, it's what I would expect," she said again. "Don't look at it from your own perspective. These women were assaulted, figuratively, literally, both. That does things to a person."
"And they're all worried now," Reacher said. "Guarding them meant telling them. Certainly Scimeca looked pretty shaken. And she should be. She's pretty isolated out there. If I was the guy, I'd be looking at her next. I'm sure she's capable of arriving at the same conclusion."
"We need to catch this guy," Lamarr said.
Blake nodded. "Not going to be easy, now. Obviously we'll keep round-the-clock security on the seven who got the packages, but he'll spot that from a mile away, so we won't catch him at a scene."
"He'll disappear for a while," Lamarr said. "Until we take the security off again."
"How long are we keeping the security on?" Harper asked.
There was silence.
"Three weeks," Blake said. "Any longer than that, it gets crazy."
Harper stared at him.
"Has to be a limit," he said. "What do you want here? Round-the-clock guards, the rest of their damn lives?"
Silence again. Poulton butted his papers into a pile.
"So we've got three weeks to find the guy," he said.
Blake nodded and laid his hands on the table. "Plan is we spell each other twenty-four hours a day, three weeks, starting now. One of us sleeps while the others work. Julia, you get the first rest period, twelve hours, starting now."
"I don't want it."
Blake looked awkward. "Well, want it or not, you got it."
She shook her head. "No, I need to stay on top of this. Let Poulton go first."
"No arguments, Julia. We need to get organized."
"But I'm fine. I need to work. And I couldn't sleep now, anyway."
"Twelve hours, Julia," Blake said. "You're entitled to time off anyway. Compassionate leave of absence, twice over."
"I won't go," she said back.
"You will."
"I can't," she said. "I need to be involved right now."
She sat there, implacable. Resolution in her face. Blake sighed and looked away.
"Right now, you can't be involved," he said.
"Why not?"
Blake looked straight at her. "Because they just flew your sister's body in for the autopsy. And you can't be involved in that. I can't let you."
She tried to answer. Her mouth opened and closed twice, but no sound came out. Then she blinked once and looked away.
"So, twelve hours," Blake said.
She stared down at the table.
"Will I get the data?" she asked quietly.
Blake nodded.
"Yes, I'm afraid you'll have to," he answered.