Running Blind (52 page)

You don't see her at the door. The angle is wrong. But he nods and smiles at something and steps inside. You keep the field glasses focused and three or four minutes later he's back on the porch, moving away, looking over his shoulder, talking. Then he turns ahead and walks back down the path. Down the driveway. Around the hood of his car. He gets back in. The suspension eases downward on his side and his door closes. He sinks down in his seat. His head turns. He watches.

He flicked the tiny car right and put it on the shoulder. Eased the speed up to thirty, thirty-five, and hauled past the stalled traffic on the inside. The shoulder was rough and littered with gravel and debris. On their left, the tires on the stationary eighteen-wheelers were taller than the car.

"What mistakes?" she said. "What wrong assumptions?"

"Very, very ironic ones, in the circumstances," he said. "But it's not entirely our fault. I think we swallowed a few big lies, too."

"What lies?"

"Big, beautiful, breathtaking lies," he said. "So big and so obvious, nobody even saw them for what they were."

She breathed hard and tried to relax again after the cop went back out. He was in and out, in and out, all day long. It ruined her concentration. To play this thing properly, you needed to be in some kind of trance. And the damn silly cop kept on interrupting it.

She sat down and played it through again, a dozen times, fifteen, twenty, all the way from the first measure to the last. She was note-perfect, but that was nothing. Was the meaning there? Was there emotion in the sound? Thought? On the whole, she reckoned there was. She played it again, once, then twice. She smiled to herself. Saw her face reflected back from the glossy black of the keyboard lid and smiled again. She was making progress. Now all she had to do was bring the speed up. But not too much. She preferred Bach played slowly. Too much speed trivialized it. Although it was fundamentally trivial music. But that was all part of Bach's mind game, she thought. He deliberately wrote trivial music that just begged to be played with great ceremony.

She stood up and stretched. Closed the keyboard lid and walked out to the hallway. Lunch was the next problem. She had to force herself to eat. Maybe everybody who lived alone had the same problem. Solo mealtimes weren't much fun.

There were footprints on the hallway parquet. Big muddy feet. The damn cop, ruining everything. Spoiling her musical concentration, spoiling the shine of her floors. She stared at the mess, and while she was staring, the doorbell rang. The idiot was here again. What the hell was the matter with him? Where was his bladder control? She stepped around the footprints and opened the door.

"No," she said.

"What?"

"No, you can't use the bathroom. I'm sick of it."

"Lady, I need to," he said. "That was the arrangement."

"Well, the arrangement has changed," she said. "I don't want you coming in here anymore. It's ridiculous. You're driving me crazy."

"I have to be here."

"It's ridiculous," she said again. "I don't need your protection. Just go away, will you?"

She closed the door, firmly. Locked it tight and walked away to the kitchen, breathing hard.

He doesn't go in. You watch very carefully. He just stands there on the porch, at first surprised. Then a little disgruntled. You can see it right there in his body language. He says three things, leaning fractionally backward in self-defense, and then the door must be closing in his face, because he steps back suddenly. He looks wounded. He stands still and stares and then turns around and walks back down the path, twenty seconds after walking up it. So what's that about?

He walks around the hood of his car and opens the door. Doesn't get all the way in. He sits sideways with his feet still out on the road. He leans over and picks up his radio mike. Holds it in his hand for thirty seconds, looking at it, thinking. Then he puts it back. Obviously he's not going to call it in. He's not going to tell his sergeant, Sir, she won't let me pee anymore. So what's he going to do? Is this going to change anything?

They got to Andrews by driving most of the way on the shoulder and pushing in and out of the inside lane when necessary. The base itself was an oasis of calm. Nothing much was happening. There was a helicopter in the air, but it was far enough away to be noiseless. Trent had left Reacher's name at the gate. That was clear, because the guard was expecting them. He raised the barrier and told them to park at the Marine transport office and inquire within.

Harper put the yellow car in line with four dull olive Chevrolets and killed the motor. Joined Reacher on the blacktop and followed him to the office door. A corporal stared at her and passed them to a sergeant who stared at her and passed them to a captain. The captain stared at her and told them a new transport Boeing's flight test was being rerouted to Portland instead of San Diego. He said they could hitch a ride on it. He said they would be the only passengers. Then he said takeoff was scheduled in three hours.

"Three hours?" Reacher repeated.

"Portland's a civilian airport," the captain said. "It's a flight plan problem."

Reacher was silent. The guy just shrugged.

"Best the colonel could do," he said.

The captain showed them to a preflight waiting room on the second floor. It was a utilitarian space, lit by fluorescent tubes, linoleum on the floor, plastic stacking chairs in untidy formation around low tables. Old coffee rings on the tables, a trash can in the corner full of discarded cups.

"It's not much," the captain said. "But then it's all we got. All kinds of top brass wait in here."

Reacher thought do they wait three hours? But he said nothing. Just thanked the guy and stood at the window and stared out at the runways. Nothing much was happening down there. Harper joined him for a second and then turned back and sat down in a chair.

"Talk to me," she said. "What is it?"

"Start with the motive," he said. "Who's got a motive?"

"I don't know."

"Go back to Amy Callan. Suppose she'd been the only victim? Who would you be looking at for a motive?"

"Her husband."

"Why her husband?"

"Dead wife, you always look at the husband," she said. "Because motives are often personal. And the closest connection to a wife is a husband."

"And how would you be looking at him?"

"How? Same as always. We'd sweat him, sweat his alibi, keep on going until something busted open."

"And he wouldn't hold up, right?"

"Sooner or later, he'd crack."

Reacher nodded. "OK, so suppose it is Amy Callan's husband. How does he avoid getting sweated like that?"

"He can't avoid it."

"Yes, he can. He can avoid it by going out and finding a bunch of women with some kind of a similarity with his wife and killing them too. Doing it in some bizarre fashion that he knows is going to get everybody rushing off on some flight of fancy. In other words he can camouflage his chosen target behind a farrago of bullshit. He can take the spotlight off of himself by burying the personal connection in a crowd. Like where's the best place to hide a grain of sand?"

She nodded. "On the beach."

"Right," he said.

"So is it Callan's husband?"

"No, it isn't," he said. "But?"

"But we only need a motive against one of the women," she said. "Not all of them together. All but one are just decoys. Sand on the beach."

"Camouflage," he said. "Background noise."

"So which one? Which one is the real target?"

Reacher said nothing. Moved away from the window and sat down to wait.

You wait. It's cold up there in the hills. Cold, and uncomfortable, crouched next to the rocks. The wind is blowing in from the west, and it's damp. But you just wait. Surveillance is important. Certainty is everything. You know that if you stay focused, you can do anything. Anything at all. So you wait.

You watch the cop in his car and amuse yourself thinking about his plight. He's a few hundred feet away, but he's in a different world. You can step away from your rock and you've got a million acres of mountainside to use as a bathroom. He's down there in civilization. Streets, sidewalks, people's yards. He can't use them. He'd be arrested. He'd have to arrest himself. And he's not running the motor. So the car must be cold. Does that make it better or worse?

You watch him, and you wait.

***

The captain came back a little before the three hours were up. He led them downstairs and out through the same door they had used on the way in. A staff car was waiting there.

"Have a pleasant flight," he said.

The car drove them a mile around the perimeter track and then cut across toward a Boeing airliner standing alone on the apron. Fuel bowsers were disconnecting and ground crew were swarming. The plane was brand-new and stark white.

"We don't paint them until we know they work right," the driver said.

There was a wheeled ladder at the forward cabin door. Flight crew in uniform clustered at the top, with fat briefcases and clipboards thick with paper.

"Welcome aboard," the copilot said. "You should be able to find an empty seat."

There were two hundred and sixty of them. It was a regular passenger plane with the fripperies stripped out. No televisions, no in-flight magazines, no stewardess call buttons. No blankets, no pillows, no headsets. The seats were all the same color, khaki. The fabric was crisp and it smelled new. Reacher took three seats for himself and sat sideways, propped up against the window.

"We've done a lot of flying, the last few days," he said.

Harper sat down behind him. Buckled her belt.

"That's for sure," she said.

"Listen up, guys," the copilot called to them down the aisle. "This is a military flight, not FAA, so you get the military preflight announcement, OK? Which is, don't worry, because we ain't going to crash. And if we do, you're mashed into ground beef and burned to a cinder anyway, so what's to worry about?"

Reacher smiled. Harper ignored the guy.

"So which one is the real target?" she asked again.

"You can figure it out," Reacher said.

The plane moved back and turned. Headed out for the runway. A minute later it was in the air, smooth, quiet, and powerful. Then it was over the sprawl of D.C., climbing hard. Then it was high in the clouds, settling to a westward cruise.

***

The guy's still holding it in. He hasn't moved out of his car, and his car has stayed right there in front of her house. You watched his partner bring his lunch bag. There was a twenty-ounce cup of coffee with it. Poor bastard is going to be real miserable real soon. But it doesn't affect your plan. How could it? It's two o'clock, and time for the call.

You open the stolen mobile. Dial her number. Press on the little green telephone pictogram. You hear the connection go through. You hear ring tone. You crouch low in the lee of your rock, ready to speak. It's warmer down there. You're out of the wind. The ring tone continues. Is she going to answer? Maybe she won't. The type of contrary bitch who won't let her bodyguard use her bathroom might not be above ignoring her phone. You feel a momentary thrill of panic. What are you going to do? What if she doesn't pick up?

She picks up.

"Hello?" she says.

She's wary, annoyed, defensive. She thinks it's the police sergeant, about to complain. Or the Bureau coordinator, about to persuade her back into line.

"Hello, Rita, "you say.

She hears your voice. You feel her relax.

"Yes?"she says.

You tell her what you want her to do.

"That was the first one," Harper said. "The first one would be random. Leading us away from the scent. Probably not the second either. The second establishes the pattern."

"I agree," Reacher said. "Callan and Cooke were background noise. They started the smoke screen."

Harper nodded. Went quiet. She had moved out from behind him. Now she was sprawled across the opposite row in the empty plane. It was a weird feeling. Familiar, but strange. Nothing around them but neat uniform rows of vacant seats.