Running Blind (The Visitor)

the end of the table and sat down with Reacher. He squeezed her hand under the cover of the shiny mahogany slab.
    The two local boys took up station against the walls. Reacher stared forward through the glare. The same lineup was ranged against him. Poulton, Lamarr, Blake, Deerfield, and then Cozo, sitting isolated between two empty chairs. Now there was a squat black audio recorder on the table. Deerfield leaned forward and pressed a red button. He announced the date and the time and the place. He identified the nine occupants of the room. He placed his hands in front of him.
    “This is Alan Deerfield speaking to the suspect Jack Reacher,” he said. “You are now under arrest on the following two counts.”
    He paused.
    “One, for aggravated assault and robbery,” he said. “Against two persons yet to be definitively identified.”
    James Cozo leaned forward. “Two, for aiding and abetting a criminal organization engaged in the practice of extortion.”
    Deerfield smiled. “You are not obliged to say anything. If you do say anything, it will be recorded and may be used as evidence against you in a court of law. You are entitled to be represented by an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you by the state of New York.”
    He leaned forward to the recording machine and pressed the stop button.
    “So did I get it right? Seeing as how you’re the big expert on Miranda?”
    Reacher said nothing. Deerfield smiled again and pressed the red button and the machine hummed back into life.
    “Do you understand your rights?” he asked.
    “Yes,” Reacher said.
    “Do you have anything to say at this point?”
    “No.”
    “That it?” Deerfield asked.
    “Yes,” Reacher said.
    Deerfield nodded. “Noted.”
    He reached forward and clicked the recording machine to off.
    “I want a bail hearing,” Jodie said.
    Deerfield shook his head.
    “No need,” he said. “We’ll release him on his own recognizance.”
    Silence in the room.
    “What about the other matter?” Jodie asked. “The women?”
    “That investigation is continuing,” Deerfield said. “Your client is free to go.”

5
    HE WAS OUT of there just after three in the morning. Jodie was agitated, torn between staying with him and getting back to the office to finish her all-nighter. He convinced her to calm down and go do her work. One of the local guys drove her down to Wall Street. They gave him back his possessions, except for the wad of stolen cash. Then the other local guy drove him back to Garrison, hustling hard, fifty-eight miles in forty-seven minutes. He had a red beacon on the dash connected to the cigar lighter with a cord, and he kept it flashing the whole way. The beam swept through the fog. It was the middle of the night, dark and cold, and the roads were damp and slick. The guy said nothing. Just drove and then jammed to a stop at the end of Reacher’s driveway in Garrison and took off again as soon as the passenger door slammed shut. Reacher watched the flashing light disappear into the river mist and turned to walk down to his house.
    He had inherited the house from Leon Garber, who was Jodie’s father and his old commanding officer. It had been a week of big surprises, both good and bad, back at the start of the summer. Meeting Jodie again, finding out she’d been married and divorced, finding out old Leon was dead, finding out the house was his. He had been in love with Jodie for fifteen years, since he first met her, on a base in the Philippines. She had been fifteen herself then, right on the cusp of spectacular womanhood, and she was his CO’s daughter, and he had crushed his feelings down like a guilty secret and never let them see the light of day. He felt they would have been a betrayal of her, and of Leon, and betraying Leon was the last thing he would have ever done, because Leon was a rough-and-ready prince among men, and he loved him like a father. Which made him feel Jodie was his sister, and you don’t feel that way about your sister.
    Then chance had brought him to Leon’s funeral, and he had met Jodie again, and they had sparred uneasily for a couple of days before she admitted she felt the exact same things and was concealing her feelings for the exact same reasons. It was a thunderclap, a glorious sunburst of happiness in a summer week of big surprises.
    So meeting Jodie again was the good surprise and Leon dying was the bad one, no doubt about it. But inheriting the house was