Running Blind

Chapter 15

HARPER WAS STILL in her second suit and her hair was still loose on her shoulders, but those were the only similarities with the last time he had seen her. Her long-limbed slowness was all wiped away by some kind of feverish tension, and her eyes were red and strained. He guessed she was as near to distraught as she was ever going to get.

"What?" he asked.

"Everything," she said. "It's all gone crazy. "

"Where?"

"Spokane," she said.

"No," he said.

"Yes," she said. "Alison Lamarr. "

There was silence.

"Shit," he whispered.

Harper nodded. "Yeah, shit. "

"When?"

"Sometime yesterday. He's speeding up. He didn't stick to the interval. The next one should have been two weeks away. "

"How?"

"Same as all the others. The hospital was calling her because her father died, and there was no reply, so eventually they called the cops, and the cops went out there and found her. Dead in the tub, in the paint, like all the others. "

More silence.

"But how the hell did he get in?"

Harper shook her head. "Just walked right in the door. "

"Shit, I don't believe it. "

"They've sealed the place off. They're sending a crime scene unit direct from Quantico. "

"They won't find anything. "

Silence again. Harper glanced around Jodie's kitchen, nervously.

"Blake wants you back on board," she said. "He's signed up for your theory in a big way. He believes you now. Eleven women, not ninety-one. "

Reacher stared at her. "So what am I supposed to say to that? Better late than never?"

"He wants you back," Harper said again. "This is getting way out of control. We need to start cutting some corners with the Army. And he figures you've demonstrated a talent for cutting corners. "

It was the wrong thing to say. It fell across the kitchen like a weight. Jodie switched her gaze from Harper to the refrigerator door.

"You should go, Reacher," she said.

He made no reply.

"Go cut some corners," she said. "Go do what you're good at. "

HE WENT. HARPER had a car waiting at the curb on Broadway. It was a Bureau car, borrowed from the New York office, and the driver was the same guy who had driven him down from Garrison with a gun at his head. But if the guy was confused about Reacher's recent change of status, he didn't show it. Just lit up his red light and took off west toward Newark.

The airport was a mess. They fought through crowds to the Continental counter. The reservation was coming in direct from Quantico as they waited at the desk. Two coach seats. They ran to the gate and were the last passengers to board. The purser was waiting for them at the end of the jetway. She put them in first class. Then she stood near them and used a microphone and welcomed everybody joining her for the trip to Seattle-Tacoma.

"Seattle?" Reacher said. "I thought we were going to Quantico. "

Harper felt behind her for the seat-belt buckle and shook her head. "First we're going to the scene. Blake thought it could be useful. We saw the place two days ago. We can give him some direct before-and-after comparisons. He thinks it's worth a try. He's pretty desperate. "

Reacher nodded. "How's Lamarr taking it?"

Harper shrugged. "She's not falling apart. But she's real tense. She wants to take complete control of everything. But she won't join us out there. Still won't fly. "

The plane was taxiing, swinging wide circles across the tarmac on its way to the takeoff line. The engines were whining up to pitch. There was vibration in the cabin.

"Flying's OK," Reacher said.

Harper nodded. "I know, crashing is the problem. "

"Hardly ever happens, statistically. "

"Like a Powerball win. But somebody always gets lucky. "

"Hell of a thing, not flying. A country this size, it's kind of limiting, isn't it? Especially for a federal agent. I'm surprised they let her get away with it. "

She shrugged again. "It's a known quantity. They work around it. "

The plane swung onto the runway and stopped hard against the brakes. The engine noise built louder and the plane rolled forward, gently at first, then harder, accelerating all the way. It came up off the ground with no sensation at all and the wheels whined up into their bays and the ground tilted sharply below them.

"Five hours to Seattle," Harper said. "All over again. "

"Did you think about the geography?" Reacher asked. "Spokane is the fourth corner, right?"

She nodded. "Eleven potential locations now, all random, and he takes the four farthest away for his first four hits. The extremities of the cluster. "

"But why?"

She made a face. "Demonstrating his reach?"

He nodded. "And his speed, I guess. Maybe that's why he abandoned the interval. To demonstrate his efficiency. He was in San Diego, then he's in Spokane a couple of days later, checking out a new target. "

"He's a cool customer. "

Reacher nodded vaguely. "That's for damn sure. He leaves an immaculate scene in San Diego, then he drives north like a madman and leaves what I bet is another immaculate scene in Spokane. A cool, cool customer. I wonder who the hell he is?"

Harper smiled, briefly and grimly. "We all wonder who the hell he is, Reacher. The trick is to find out. "

YOU'RE A GENIUS, is who you are. An absolute genius, a prodigy, a superhuman talent. Four down! One, two, three, four down. And the fourth was the best of all. Alison Lamarr herself! You go over and over it, replaying it like a video in your head, checking it, testing it, examining it. But also savoring it. Because it was the best yet. The most fun, the most satisfaction. The most impact. The look on her face as she opened the door! The dawning recognition, the surprise, the welcome!

There were no mistakes. Not a single one. It was an immaculate performance, from the beginning to the end. You replay your actions in minute detail. You touched nothing, left nothing behind. You brought nothing to her house except your still presence and your quiet voice. The terrain helped, of course, isolated in the countryside, nobody for miles around. It made it a real safe operation. Maybe you should have had more fun with her. You could have made her sing. Or dance! You could have spent longer with her. Nobody could have heard anything.

But you didn't, because patterns are important. Patterns protect you. You practice, you rehearse in your mind, you rely on the familiar. You designed the pattern for the worst case, which was probably the Stanley bitch in her awful little subdivision down in San Diego. Neighbors all over the place! Little cardboard houses all crowded on top of each other! Stick to the pattern, that's the key. And keep on thinking. Think, think, think. Plan ahead. Keep on planning. You've done number four, and sure, you're entitled to replay it over and over, to enjoy it for a spell, to savor it, but then you have to just put it away and close the door on it and prepare for number five.

THE FOOD ON the plane was appropriate for a flight that left halfway between lunch and dinner and was crossing all the time zones the continent had to offer. The only sure thing was it wasn't breakfast. Most of it was a sweet pastry envelope with ham and cheese inside. Harper wasn't hungry, so Reacher ate hers along with his own. Then he fueled up on coffee and fell back to thinking. Mostly he thought about Jodie. But do we want each other's lives? First, define your life. Hers was easy enough to pin down, he guessed. Lawyer, owner, resident, lover, lover of fifties jazz, lover of modern art. A person who wanted to be settled, precisely because she knew what it was like to be rootless. If anybody in the whole world should live on the fourth floor of an old Broadway building with museums and galleries and cellar clubs all around her, it was Jodie.

But what about him? What made him happy? Being with her, obviously. There was no doubt about that. No doubt at all. He recalled the day in June he had walked back into her life. Just recalling it re-created the exact second he laid eyes on her and understood who she was. He had felt a flood of feeling as powerful as an electric shock. It buzzed through him. He was feeling it again, just because he was thinking about it. It was something he had rarely felt before.

Rarely, but not never. He had felt the same thing on random days since he left the Army. He remembered stepping off buses in towns he had never heard of in states he had never visited. He remembered the feel of sun on his back and dust at his feet, long roads stretching out straight and endless in front of him. He remembered peeling crumpled dollar bills off his roll at lonely motel desks, the feel of old brass keys, the musty smell of cheap rooms, the creak of springs as he dropped down on anonymous beds. Cheerful curious waitresses in old diners. Ten-minute conversations with drivers who stopped to pick him up, tiny random slices of contact between two of the planet's teeming billions. The drifter's life. Its charm was a big part of him, and he missed it when he was stuck in Garrison or holed up in the city with Jodie. He missed it bad. Real bad. About as bad as he was missing her right now.

"Making progress?" Harper asked him.

"What?" he said.

"You were thinking hard. Going all misty on me. "

"Was I?"

"So what were you thinking about?"

He shrugged. "Rocks and hard places. "

She stared at him. "Well, that's not going to get us anywhere. So think about something else, OK?"

"OK," he said.

He looked away and tried to put Jodie out of his mind. Tried to think about something else.

"Surveillance," he said suddenly.

"What about surveillance?"

"We're assuming the guy watches the houses first, aren't we? At least a full day? He might have already been hiding out somewhere, right when we were there. "

She shivered. "Creepy. But so what?"

"So you should check motel registers, canvass the neighborhood. Follow up. That's how you're going to do this, by working. Not by trying to do magic five floors underground in Virginia. "

"There was no neighborhood. You saw the place. We've got nothing to work on. I keep on telling you that. "

"And I keep on telling you there's always something to work on. "

"Yeah, yeah, he's very smart, the paint, the geography, the quiet scenes. "

"Exactly. I'm not kidding. Those four things will lead you to him, sure as anything. Did Blake go to Spokane?"

She nodded. "We're meeting him at the scene. "

"So he's going to have to do what I tell him, or I'm not sticking around. "

"Don't push it, Reacher. You're Army liaison, not an investigator. And he's pretty desperate. He can make you stick around. "

"He's fresh out of threats. "

She made a face. "Don't count on it. Deerfield and Cozo are working on getting those Chinese boys to implicate you. They'll ask INS to check for illegals, whereupon they'll find about a thousand in the restaurant kitchens alone. Whereupon they'll start talking about deportations, but they'll also mention that a little cooperation could make the problem go away, whereupon the big guys in the tongs will tell those kids to spill whatever beans we want them to spill. Greatest good for the greatest number, right?"

Reacher made no reply.

"Bureau always gets what it wants," Harper said.

BUT THE PROBLEM with sitting there rerunning it like a video over and over again is that little doubts start to creep in. You go over it and over it and you can't remember if you really did all the things you should have done. You sit there all alone, thinking, thinking, thinking, and it all goes a little blurry and the more you question it, the less sure you get. One tiny little detail. Did you do it? Did you say it? You know you did at the Callan house. You know that for sure. And at Caroline Cooke's place. Yes, definitely. You know that for sure, too. And at Lorraine Stanley's place in San Diego. But what about Alison Lamarr's place? Did you do it? Or did you make her do it? Did you say it? Did you?

You're completely sure you did, but maybe that's just in the rerun. Maybe that's the pattern kicking in and making you assume something happened because it always happened before. Maybe this time you forgot. You become terribly afraid about it. You become sure you forgot. You think hard. And the more you think about it, the more you're sure you didn't do it yourself. Not this time. That's OK, as long as you told her to do it for you. But did you? Did you tell her? Did you say the words? Maybe you didn't. What then?

You shake yourself and tell yourself to calm down. A person of your superhuman talent, unsure and confused? Ridiculous. Absurd! So you put it out of your mind. But it won't go away. It nags at you. It gets bigger and bigger, louder and louder. You end up sitting all alone, cold and sweating, absolutely sure you've made your first small mistake.

THE BUREAU'S OWN Learjet had ferried Blake and his team from Andrews direct to Spokane and he had sent it over to Sea-Tac to collect Harper and Reacher. It was waiting on the apron right next to the Continental gates, and the same guy as before had been hauled out of the Seattle Field Office to meet them at the head of the jetway and point them down the external stairs and outside. It was raining lightly, and cold, so they ran for the Lear's steps and hustled straight inside. Four minutes later, they were back in the air.

Sea-Tac to Spokane was a lot faster in the Lear than it had been in the Cessna. The same local guy in the same car was waiting for them. He still had Alison Lamarr's address written on the pad attached to his windshield. He drove them the ten miles east toward Idaho and then turned north onto the narrow road into the hills. Fifty yards in, there was a roadblock with two parked cars and yellow tape stretched between trees. Above the trees in the far distance were the mountains. It was raining and gray on the western peaks, and in the east the sun was slanting down through the edge of the clouds and gleaming off the tiny threads of snow in the high gullies.

The guy at the roadblock looped the tape off the trees and the car crawled through. It climbed onward, past the isolated houses every mile or so, all the way to the bend before the Lamarr place, where it stopped.

"You need to walk from here," the driver said.

He stayed in the car, and Harper and Reacher stepped out and started walking. The air was damp, full of a kind of suspended drizzle that wasn't really rain but wasn't dry weather either. They rounded the curve and saw the house on the left, crouching low behind its fence and its wind-battered trees, with the road snaking by on the right. The road was blocked by a gaggle of cars. There was a local police black-and-white with its roof lights flashing aimlessly. A pair of plain dark sedans and a black Suburban with black glass. A coroner's wagon, standing with all its doors open. The vehicles were all beaded with raindrops.

They walked closer and the front passenger door on the Suburban opened up and Nelson Blake slid out to meet them. He was in a dark suit with the coat collar turned up against the damp. His face was nearer gray than red, like shock had knocked his blood pressure down. He was all business. No greeting. No apologies, no pleasantries. No I-was-wrong-and-you-were-right.

"Not much more than an hour of daylight left, up here," he said. "I want you to walk me through what you did the day before yesterday, tell me what's different. "

Reacher nodded. He suddenly wanted to find something. Something important. Something crucial. Not for Blake. For Alison. He stood and gazed at the fence and the trees and the lawn. They were cared for. They were just trivial rearrangements of an insignificant portion of the planet's surface, but they were motivated by the honest tastes and enthusiasms of a woman now dead. Achieved by her own labors.

"Who's been in there already?" he asked.

"Just the local uniformed guy," Blake said. "The one that found her. "

"Nobody else?"

"Nobody. "

"Not even you guys or the coroner?"

Blake shook his head. "I wanted your input first. "

"So she's still in there?"

"Yes, I'm afraid she is. "

The road was quiet. Just a hiss of breeze in the power lines. The red and blue light from the police cruiser's light bar washed over the suit on Blake's back, rhythmically and uselessly.

"OK," Reacher said. "The uniformed guy mess with anything?"

Blake shook his head again. "Opened the door, walked around downstairs, went upstairs, found his way to the bathroom, came right out again and called it in. His dispatcher had the good sense to keep him from going back inside. "

"Front door was unlocked?"

"Closed, but unlocked. "

"Did he knock?"

"I guess. "

"So his prints will be on the knocker, too. And the inside door handles. "

Blake shrugged. "Won't matter. Won't have smudged our guy's prints, because our guy doesn't leave prints. "

Reacher nodded. "OK. "

He walked past the parked vehicles and on past the mouth of the driveway. He walked twenty yards up the road.

"Where does this go?" he called.

Blake was ten yards behind him. "Back of beyond, probably. "

"It's narrow, isn't it?"

"I've seen wider," Blake allowed.

Reacher strolled back to join him. "So you should check the mud on the shoulders, maybe up around the next bend. "

"What for?"

"Our guy came in from the Spokane road, most likely. Cruised the house, kept on going, turned around, came back. He'd want his car facing the right direction, before he went in and got to work. A guy like this, he'll have been thinking about the getaway. "

Blake nodded. "OK. I'll put somebody on it. Meantime, take me through the house. "

He called instructions to his team and Reacher joined Harper in the mouth of the driveway. They stood and waited for Blake to catch up with them.

"So walk me through it," he said.

"We paused here for a second," Harper said. "It was awful quiet. Then we walked up to the door, used the knocker. "

"Was the weather wet or dry?" Blake asked her.

She glanced at Reacher. "Dry, I guess. A little sunny. Not hot. But not raining. "

"The driveway was dry," Reacher said. "Not dusty dry, but the shale had drained. "

"So you wouldn't have picked up grit on your shoes?"

"I doubt it. "

"OK. "

They were at the door.

"Put these on your feet," Blake said. He pulled a roll of large-sized food bags from his coat pocket. They put a bag over each shoe and tucked the plastic edges down inside the leather.

"She opened up, second knock," Harper said. "I showed her my badge in the spyhole. "

"She was pretty uptight," Reacher said. "Told us Julia had been warning her. "

Blake nodded sourly and nudged the door with his bagged foot. The door swung back with the same creak of old hinges Reacher remembered from before.

"We all paused here in the hallway," Harper said. "Then she offered us coffee and we all went through to the kitchen to get it. "

"Anything different in here?" Blake asked.

Reacher looked around. The pine walls, the pine floors, the yellow gingham curtains, the old sofas, the converted oil lamps.

"Nothing different," he said.

"OK, kitchen," Blake said.

They filed into the kitchen. The floor was still waxed to a shine. The cabinets were the same, the range was cold and empty, the machines under the counter were the same, the gadgets sitting out were undisturbed. There were dishes in the sink and one of the silverware drawers was open an inch.

"The view is different," Harper said. She was standing at the window. "Much grayer today. "

"Dishes in the sink," Reacher said. "And that drawer was closed. "

They crowded the sink. There was a single plate, a water glass, a mug, a knife and a fork. Smears of egg and toast crumbs on the plate, coffee mud in the mug.

"Breakfast?" Blake said.

"Or dinner," Harper answered. "An egg on toast, that could be dinner for a single woman. "

Blake pulled the drawer with the tip of his finger. There was a bunch of cheap flatware in there, and a random assortment of household tools, small screwdrivers, wire strippers, electrical tape, fuse wire.

"OK, then what?" Blake asked.

"I stayed here with her," Harper said. "Reacher looked around. "

"Show me," Blake said.

He followed Reacher back to the hallway.

"I checked the parlor and the living room," Reacher said. "Looked at the windows. I figured they were secure. "

Blake nodded. "Guy didn't come in the windows. "

"Then I went outside, checked the grounds and the barn. "

"We'll do the upstairs first," Blake said.

"OK. "

Reacher led the way. He was very conscious of where he was going. Very conscious that maybe thirty hours ago the guy had followed the same path.

"I checked the bedrooms. Went into the master suite last. "

"Let's do it," Blake said.

They walked the length of the master bedroom. Paused at the bathroom door.

"Let's do it," Blake said again.

They looked inside. The place was immaculate. No sign that anything had ever happened there, except for the tub. It was seven-eighths full of green paint, with the shape of a small muscular woman floating just below the surface, which had skinned over into a slick plastic layer, delineating her body and trapping it there. Every contour was visible. The thighs, the stomach, the breasts. The head, tilted backward. The chin, the forehead. The mouth, held slightly open, the lips drawn back in a tiny grimace.

"Shit," Reacher said.

"Yeah, shit," Blake said back.

Reacher stood there and tried to read the signs. Tried to find the signs. But there were none there. The bathroom was exactly the same as it had been before.

"Anything?" Blake asked.

He shook his head. "No. "

"OK, we'll do the outside. "

They trooped down the stairs, silent. Harper was waiting in the hallway. She looked up at Blake, expectant. Blake just shook his head, like he was saying nothing there. Maybe he was saying don't go up there. Reacher led him out through the back door into the yard.

"I checked the windows from outside," he said.

"Guy didn't come in the damn window," Blake said for the second time. "He came in the door. "

"But how the hell?" Reacher said. "When we were here, you'd called her ahead on the phone, and Harper was flashing her badge and shouting FBI, FBI, and she still practically hid out in there. And then she was shaking like a leaf when she eventually opened up. So how did this guy get her to do it?"

Blake shrugged. "Like I told you right at the beginning, these women know this character. They trust him. He's some kind of an old friend or something. He knocks on the door, they check him out in the spyhole, they get a big smile on their faces, and they open their doors right up. "

The cellar door was undisturbed. The big padlock through the handles was intact. The garage door in the side of the barn was closed but not locked. Reacher led Blake inside and stood in the gloom. The new Jeep was there, and the stacks of cartons. The big washing machine carton was there, flaps slightly open, sealing tape trailing. The workbench was there, with the power tools neatly laid out on it. The shelves were undisturbed.

"Something's different," Reacher said.

"What?"

"Let me think. "

He stood there, opening and closing his eyes, comparing the scene in front of him with the memory in his head, like he was checking two photographs side by side.

"The car has moved," he said.

Blake sighed, like he was disappointed. "It would have. She drove to the hospital after you left. "

Reacher nodded. "Something else. "

"What?"

"Let me think. "

Then he saw it.

"Shit," he said.

"What?"

"I missed it. I'm sorry, Blake, but I missed it. "

"Missed what?"

"That washing machine carton. She already had a washing machine. Looked brand-new. It's in the kitchen, under the counter. "

"So? It must have come right out of that carton. Whenever it was installed. "

Reacher shook his head. "No. Two days ago that carton was new and sealed up. Now it's been opened. "

"You sure?"

"I'm sure. Same carton, exact same place. But it was sealed up then and it's open now. "

Blake stepped toward the carton. Took a pen from his pocket and used the plastic barrel to raise the flap. Stared down at what he saw.

"This carton was here already?"

Reacher nodded. "Sealed up. "

"Like it had been shipped?"

"Yes. "

"OK," Blake said. "Now we know how he transports the paint. He delivers it ahead of time in washing machine cartons. "

YOU SIT THERE cold and sweating for an hour and at the end of it you know for certain you forgot to reseal the carton. You didn't do it, and you didn't make her do it. That's a fact now, and it can't be denied, and it needs dealing with.

Because resealing the cartons guaranteed a certain amount of delay. You know how investigators work. A just delivered appliance carton in the garage or the basement was going to attract no interest at all. It was going to be way down on the list of priorities. It would be just another part of the normal household clutter they see everywhere. Practically invisible. You're smart. You know how these people work. Your best guess was the primary investigators would never open it at all. That was your prediction, and you were proved absolutely right three times in a row. Down in Florida, up in New Hampshire, down in California, those boxes were items on somebody's inventory, but they hadn't been opened. Maybe much later when the heirs came to clear out the houses they'd open them up and find all the empty cans, whereupon the shit would really hit the fan, but by then it would be way too late. A guaranteed delay, weeks or even months.

But this time, it would be different. They'd do a walk-through in the garage, and the flaps on the box would be up. Cardboard does that, especially in a damp atmosphere like they have up there. The flaps would be curling back. They'd glance in, and they wouldn't see Styrofoam packaging and gleaming white enamel, would they?

THEY BROUGHT IN portable arc lights from the Suburban and arrayed them around the washing machine carton like it was a meteor from Mars. They stood there, bent forward from the waist like the whole thing was radioactive. They stared at it, trying to decode its secrets.

It was a normal-sized appliance carton, built out of sturdy brown cardboard folded and stapled the way appliance cartons are. The brown board was screenprinted with black ink. The manufacturer's name dominated each of the four sides. A famous name, styled and printed like a trademark. There was the model number of the washing machine below it, and a crude picture representing the machine itself.

The sealing tape was brown, too. It had been slit along the top to allow the box to open. Inside the box was nothing at all except ten three-gallon paint cans. They were stacked in two layers of five. The lids were resting on the tops of the cans like they had been laid back into position after use. They were distorted here and there around the circumference where an implement had been used to lever them off. The rims of the cans each had a neat tongue-shaped run of dried color where the paint had been poured out.

The cans themselves were plain metal cylinders. No manufacturer's name. No trademark. No boasts about quality or durability or coverage. Just a small printed label stenciled with a long number and the small words Camo/Green.

"These normal?" Blake asked.

Reacher nodded. "Standard-issue field supply. "

"Who uses them?"

"Any unit with vehicles. They carry them around for small repairs and touch-ups. Vehicle workshops would use bigger drums and spray guns. "

"So they're not rare?"

Reacher shook his head. "The exact opposite of rare. "

There was silence in the garage.

"OK, take them out," Blake said.

A crime scene technician wearing latex gloves leaned over and lifted the cans out of the carton, one by one. He lined them up on Alison Lamarr's workbench. Then he folded the flaps of the carton back. Angled a lamp to throw light inside. The bottom of the box had five circular imprints pressed deep into the cardboard.

"The cans were full when they went in there," the tech said.

Blake stepped back, out of the pool of blazing light, into the shadow. He turned his back on the box and stared at the wall.

"So how did it get here?" he asked.

Reacher shrugged. "Like you said, it was delivered, ahead of time. "

"Not by the guy. "

"No. He wouldn't come twice. "

"So by who?"

"By a shipping company. The guy sent it on ahead. FedEx or UPS or somebody. "

"But appliances get delivered by the store where you buy them. On a local truck. "

"Not this one," Reacher said. "This didn't come from any appliance store. "

Blake sighed, like the world had gone mad. Then he turned back and stepped into the light again. Stared at the box. Walked all around it. One side showed damage. There was a shape, roughly square, where the surface of the cardboard had been torn away. The layer underneath showed through, raw and exposed. The angle of the arc lights emphasized its corrugated structure.

"Shipping label," Blake said.

"Maybe one of those little plastic envelopes," Reacher said. "You know, 'Documents enclosed. ' "

"So where is it? Who tore it off? Not the shipping company. They don't tear them off. "

"The guy tore it off," Reacher said. "Afterward. So we can't trace it back. "

He paused. He'd said we. Not you. So we can't trace it back. Not so you can't trace it back. Blake noticed it too, and glanced up.

"But how can the delivery happen?" he asked. "In the first place? Say you're Alison Lamarr, just sitting there at home, and UPS or FedEx or somebody shows up with a washing machine you never ordered? You wouldn't accept the delivery, right?"

"Maybe it came when she was out," Reacher said. "Maybe when she was up at the hospital with her dad. Maybe the driver just wheeled it into the garage and left it. "

"Wouldn't he need a signature?"

Reacher shrugged again. "I don't know. I've never had a washing machine delivered. I guess sometimes they don't need a signature. The guy who sent it probably specified no signature required. "

"But she'd have seen it right there, next time she went in the garage. Soon as she stashed her car, when she got back. "

Reacher nodded. "Yes, she must have. It's big enough. "

"So what then?"

"She calls UPS or FedEx or whoever. Maybe she tore off the envelope herself. Carried it into the house, to the phone, to give them the details. "

"Why didn't she unpack it?"

Reacher made a face. "She figures it's not really hers, why would she unpack it? She'd only have to box it up again. "

"She mention anything to you or Harper? Anything about unexplained deliveries?"

"No. But then she might not have connected it. Foul-ups happen, right? Normal part of life. "

Blake nodded. "Well, if the details are in the house, we'll find them. Crime scene people are going to spend some time in there, soon as the coroner is through. "

"Coroner won't find anything," Reacher said.

Blake looked grim. "This time, he'll have to. "

"So you're going to have to do it differently," Reacher said. He concentrated on the you. "You should take the whole tub out. Take it over to some big lab in Seattle. Maybe fly it all the way back to Quantico. "

"How the hell can we take the whole tub out?"

"Tear the wall out. Tear the roof off, use a crane. "

Blake paused and thought about it. "I guess we could. We'd need permission, of course. But this must be Julia's house now, in the circumstances, right? She's next of kin, I guess. "

Reacher nodded. "So call her. Ask her. Get permission. And get her to check the field reports from the other three places. This delivery thing might be a one-shot deal, but if it isn't, it changes everything. "

"Changes everything how?"

"Because it means it isn't a guy with time to drive a truck all over the place. It means it could be anybody, using the airlines, in and out quick as you like. "

BLAKE WENT BACK to the Suburban to make his calls, and Harper found Reacher and walked him fifty yards up the road to where agents from the Spokane office had spotted tire marks in the mud on the shoulders. It had gone dark and they were using flashlights. There were four separate marks in the mud. It was clear what had happened. Somebody had swung nose-in to the left shoulder, wound the power steering around, backed across the road and put the rear tires on the right shoulder, and then swooped away back the way he had come. The front-tire marks were scrubbed into fan shapes by the operation of the steering, but the rear-tire marks opposite were clear enough. They were not wide, not narrow.

"Probably a midsize sedan," the Spokane guy said. "Fairly new radial tires, maybe a 195/70, maybe a fourteen-inch wheel. We'll get the exact tire from the tread pattern. And we'll measure the width between the marks, maybe get the exact model of the car. "

"You think it's the guy?" Harper asked.

Reacher nodded. "Got to be, right? Think about it. Anybody else hunting the address sees the house a hundred yards ahead and slows enough to check the mailbox and stop. Even if they don't, they overshoot a couple of yards and just back right up. They don't overshoot fifty yards and wait until they're around the corner to turn. This was a guy cruising the place, watching out, staying cautious. It was him, no doubt about it. "

They felt the Spokane guys setting up miniature waterproof tents over the marks and walked back toward the house. Blake was standing by the Suburban, waiting, lit from behind by the dome light inside.

"We've got appliance cartons listed at all three scenes," he said. "No information about contents. Nobody thought to look. We're sending local agents back to check. Could be an hour. And Julia says we should go ahead and rip the tub out. I'm going to need some engineers, I guess. "

Reacher nodded vaguely and paused, immobilized by a new line of thought.

"You should check on something else," he said. "You should get the list of the eleven women, call the seven he hasn't gotten to yet. You should ask them. "

Blake looked at him. "Ask them what? Hi, you still alive?"

"No, ask them if they've had any deliveries they weren't expecting. Any appliances they never ordered. Because if this guy is speeding up, maybe the next one is all ready and set to go. "

Blake looked at him some more, and then he nodded and ducked back inside the Suburban and took the car phone out of its cradle.

"Get Poulton to do it," Reacher called. "Too emotional for Lamarr. "

Blake just stared at him, but he asked for Poulton anyway. Told him what he wanted and hung up within a minute.

"Now we wait," he said.

"SIR!" THE CORPORAL said.

The list was in the drawer, and the drawer was locked. The colonel was motionless at his desk, staring into the electric gloom of his windowless office, focusing on nothing, thinking hard, trying to recover. The best way to recover would be to talk to somebody. He knew that. A problem shared is a problem halved. That's how it works inside a giant institution like the Army. But he couldn't talk to anybody about this, of course. He smiled a bitter smile. Stared at the wall, and kept on thinking. Faith in yourself, that's what would do it. He was concentrating so hard on recapturing it he must have missed the knock at the door. Afterward he figured it must have been repeated several times, and he was glad he had the list in the drawer, because when the corporal eventually came in he couldn't have hidden it. He couldn't have done anything. He was just motionless, and evidently he was looking blank, because right away the corporal started acting worried.

"Sir?" he said again.

He didn't reply. Didn't move his gaze from the wall.

"Colonel?" the corporal said.

He moved his head like it weighed a ton. Said nothing.

"Your car is here, sir," the corporal said.

THEY WAITED AN hour and a half, crowded inside the Suburban. The evening crept toward night, and it grew very cold. Dense night dew misted the outside of the windshield and the windows. Breathing fogged the inside. Nobody talked. The world around them grew quieter. There was an occasional animal noise in the far distance, howling down at them through the thin mountain air, but there was nothing else at all.

"Hell of a place to live," Blake muttered.

"Or to die," Harper said.

EVENTUALLY YOU RECOVER, and then you relax. You've got a lot of talent. Everything was backed up, double-safe, triple-safe. You put in layer upon layer upon layer of concealment. You know how investigators work. You know they won't find anything beyond the obvious. They won't find where the paint came from. Or who obtained it. Or who delivered it. You know they won't. You know how these people work. And you're too smart for them. Way, way too smart. So you relax.

But you're disappointed. You made a mistake. And the paint was a lot of fun. And now you probably can't use it anymore. But maybe you can think of something even better. Because one thing is for damn sure. You can't stop now.

THE PHONE RANG inside the Suburban. It was a loud electronic blast in the silence. Blake fumbled it out of the cradle. Reacher heard the indistinct sound of a voice talking fast. A man's voice, not a woman's. Poulton, not Lamarr. Blake listened hard with his eyes focused nowhere. Then he hung up and stared at the windshield.

"What?" Harper asked.

"Local guys went back and checked the appliance cartons," Blake said. "They were all sealed up tight, like new. But they opened them anyway. Ten paint cans in each of them. Ten empty cans. Used cans, exactly like we found. "

"But the boxes were sealed?" Reacher said.

"Resealed," Blake said. "They could tell, when they looked closely. The guy resealed the boxes, afterward. "

"Smart guy," Harper said. "He knew a sealed carton wouldn't attract much attention. "

Blake nodded to her. "A very smart guy. He knows how we think. "

"But not totally smart anymore," Reacher said. "Or he wouldn't have forgotten to reseal this one, right? His first mistake. "

"He's batting about nine hundred," Blake said. "That makes him smart enough for me. "

"No shipping labels anywhere?" Harper asked.

Blake shook his head. "All torn off. "

"Figures," she said.

"Does it?" Reacher asked her. "So here, why should he remember to tear off the label but forget to reseal the box?"

"Maybe he got interrupted here," she said.

"How? This isn't exactly Times Square. "

"So what are you saying? You're downgrading how smart he is? How smart he is seemed awful important to you before. You were going to use how damn smart he is to prove us all wrong. "

Reacher looked at her and nodded. "Yes, you are all wrong. " Then he turned to Blake. "We really need to talk about this guy's motive. "

"Later," Blake said.

"No, now. It's important. "

"Later," Blake said again. "You haven't heard the really good news yet. "

"Which is what?"

"The other little matter you came up with. "

Silence inside the vehicle.

"Shit," Reacher said. "One of the other women got a delivery, right?"

Blake shook his head.

"Wrong," he said. "All seven of them got a delivery. "