Running Blind (The Visitor)

vehicles were shiny clean and painted in Boeing’s corporate colors. The flight crew stayed on board to analyze computer data. The minivan took Reacher and Harper around to the arrivals lane, where the taxis waited. Head of the line was a battered Caprice with a checkerboard stripe down the side. The driver wasn’t local. He needed to check his map to find the road east toward the tiny village on the slopes of Mount Hood.
    SHE WAS IN the house all of five minutes, and then the doorbell went. The cop was back. She came out of the kitchen and walked the length of the hallway and unlocked the door. Opened it up. He was standing there on the porch, not saying anything, trying to communicate his request with the rueful expression on his face.
    "Hi,” she said.
    Then she just looked at him. Didn’t smile or anything.
    “Hi,” he said back.
    She waited. She was going to make him say it anyway. It was nothing to be embarrassed about.
    “Guess what?” he said.
    “What?”
    “Can I use the powder room?”
    Cold air was swirling in around her legs. She could feel it striking through her jeans.
    “Of course,” she said.
    She closed the door behind him, to keep some warmth in. Waited next to it, while he disappeared and then came back again.
    “Nice and warm in here,” he said.
    She nodded, although it wasn’t really true. She kept the house as cold as she could stand it. For the piano tone. So the wood didn’t dry out.
    “Cold out there in the car,” he said.
    She nodded again.
    “Run the motor,” she said. “Get the heater going.”
    He shook his head. “Not allowed. Can’t idle the engine. Some pollution thing.”
    “So take off for a spell,” she said. “Drive around, get warm. I’ll be OK here.”
    Clearly it wasn’t the invitation he was looking for, but he thought about it. Then he shook his head again.
    “They’d take my badge,” he said. “I’ve got to stay here.”
    She said nothing.
    “Sorry to bother you with that padre,” he said, making the point he’d intervened, and gotten rid of him.
    She nodded.
    "I’ll bring you some hot coffee,” she said. “Five minutes, OK?”
    He looked pleased. A shy smile.
    “Then I’ll need the powder room again,” he said. “Goes right through me.”
    “Whenever,” she said.
    She closed the door on him and went back to the kitchen and set her coffee machine going. Waited on the stool next to the shopping bags until it was done. She found the biggest mug she owned and poured the coffee. Added cream from the refrigerator and sugar from the cupboard. He looked like a cream-and-sugar guy, young, a little fat. She carried the mug outside and walked down the path. Steam swirled off the coffee and hung in a thin horizontal band all the way to the sidewalk. She tapped on his window and he turned and smiled and buzzed the glass down. He took the cup, awkwardly, two-handed.
    "Thanks,” he said.
    He touched it to his lips like an extra gesture of politeness and she walked away, into the driveway, up the path, in through the door. She closed it behind her and locked it and turned around to find the visitor she was expecting standing quietly at the head of the stairs from the garage.
    “Hello, Rita,” the visitor said.
    “Hello,” she said back.
    THE TAXI DROVE south on 205 and found the left turn east on 26. It rode like its next trip should be to the scrap heap. The colors inside the door seams didn’t match the outside. It had probably already done three years in New York, and maybe three more in the suburbs of Chicago. But it moved along steadily enough, and its meter clicked a lot slower than it would have in New York or Chicago. And that was important, because Reacher had just realized he had almost no money in his pockets.
    “Why is a demonstration of mobility important?” Harper asked.
    “That’s one of the big lies,” Reacher said. “We just swallowed it whole.”
    SCIMECA STOOD THERE inside her front door, calmly. The visitor gazed back at her from the other end of the hallway, eyes inquiring.
    “Did you buy the paint?”
    She nodded.
    “Yes, I did,” she said.
    “So, are you ready?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    The visitor watched her a moment longer, just gazing, very calm, eyes steady.
    “Are you ready now?”
    “I don’t know,” she said.
    The visitor smiled.
    “I think you’re ready. I really do. What do you think? Are you ready?”
    She nodded, slowly.
    “Yes, I’m ready,” she said.
    “Did you apologize to the