Running Blind (The Visitor)

cop?”
    She nodded again. “Yes, I told him I was sorry.”
    “He has to be allowed in, right?”
    “I told him, whenever he needs it.”
    “He has to find you. He has to be the one. That’s the way I want it.”
    “OK,” Scimeca said.
    The visitor was silent for a long moment, just standing there, saying nothing, watching carefully. Scimeca waited, awkward.
    “Yes, he should be the one to find me,” she said. “If that’s the way you want it.”
    “You did good with the padre,” the visitor said.
    “He wanted to help me.”
    “Nobody can help you.”
    “I guess not,” Scimeca said.
    “Let’s go into the kitchen,” the visitor said.
    Scimeca moved away from the door. Squeezed past the visitor in the narrow hallway and led the way into her kitchen.
    “The paint is right here,” she said.
    “Show me.”
    Scimeca took the can out of the bag and held it up by the wire handle.
    “It’s olive green,” she said. “Closest they had.”
    The visitor nodded. “Good. You did very well.”
    Scimeca blushed with pleasure. A tiny pink flush under the white of her skin.
    “Now you need to concentrate,” the visitor said. “Because I’m going to give you a lot of information.”
    “What about?”
    “About what I want you to do.”
    Scimeca nodded.
    “OK,” she said.
    “First thing, you have to smile for me,” the visitor said. “That’s very important. It means a lot to me.”
    “OK,” Scimeca said.
    “So can you smile for me?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Try it, OK?”
    “I don’t smile much anymore.”
    The visitor nodded, sympathetic. “I know, but just try now, OK?”
    Scimeca ducked her head and concentrated and came back up with a shy, weak smile. Just a faint new angle to her lips, but it was something. She held it, desperately.
    “That’s nice,” the visitor said. “Now remember, I want you smiling all the time.”
    “OK.”
    “Got to be happy in our work, right?”
    “Right.”
    “We need something to open the can.”
    “My tools are downstairs,” Scimeca said.
    “Have you got a screwdriver?”
    “Of course,” Scimeca said. “I’ve got eight or nine.”
    “Go get a big one for me, would you?”
    “Sure.”
    “And don’t forget the smile, OK?”
    “Sorry.”
    THE MUG WAS too big for the Crown Vic’s cup holder, so he drank all the coffee straight off because he couldn’t put it down between sips. That always happened. At a party, if he was standing up holding a bottle, he drank it much faster than if he was sitting at a bar where he could sometimes rest it on the napkin. Like smoking. If there was an ashtray to rest the butt in, the cigarette lasted much longer than if he was walking around with it, whereupon he demolished it in about a minute and a half.
    So he was sitting there with the empty mug resting on his thigh, thinking about carrying it back up to the house. Here’s your mug back , he could say. Thanks very much . It would give him another chance to drop a hint about how cold he was. Maybe he could get her to put a chair in the hallway, and he could finish his shift inside. Nobody could complain about that. Better protection that way.
    But he was nervous about ringing the bell again. She was an uptight character, that was for damn sure. Who knows how she might react, even though he was being real polite, just returning her mug? Even though he’d gotten rid of the chaplain for her? He bounced the mug up and down on his knee and tried to balance out between how cold he was and how offended she might get.
    THE TAXI DROVE on, through Gresham, through Kelso, through Sandy. Route 26 picked up a name, Mount Hood Highway. The grade steepened. The old V-8 dug deep and rumbled upward.
    “Who is it?” Harper asked.
    “The key is in Poulton’s report from Spokane.”
    “It is?”
    He nodded. “Big and obvious. But it took me some time to spot it.”
    “The UPS thing? We went through all of that.”
    He shook his head. “No, before that. The Hertz thing. The rental car.”
    SCIMECA CAME BACK up the basement stairs with a screwdriver in her hand. It was the third-largest she had, about eight inches long, with a blade fine enough to slip between the can and the lid, but broad enough to make an effective lever.
    “I think this is the best one,” she said. “You know, for the purpose.”
    The visitor looked at it from a distance. “I’m sure it’s fine. As long as you’re comfortable with it. You’ll be using it, not me.”
    Scimeca