Running Blind (The Visitor)

beam caught Nelson Blake first, and then the parts of Julia Lamarr that weren’t in his shadow. Blake’s face was showing nothing except strain. Lamarr’s face was still full of hostility and contempt.
    “You’re still up,” Blake said. A statement, not a question.
    Reacher nodded.
    “Come on in, I guess,” he said.
    Lamarr shook her head. The yellow light caught her hair.
    “We’d rather not,” she said.
    Blake moved his feet. “There someplace we can go? Get some breakfast?”
    “Four thirty in the morning?” Reacher said. “Not around here.”
    “Can we talk in the car?” Lamarr asked.
    “No,” Reacher said.
    Impasse. Lamarr looked away and Blake shuffled his feet.
    “Come on in,” Reacher said again. “I just made coffee. ”
    He walked away, back to the kitchen. Pulled a cupboard door and found two more mugs. Rinsed the dust out of them at the sink and listened to the creak of the hallway floor as Blake stepped inside. Then he heard Lamarr’s lighter tread, and the sound of the door closing behind her.
    “Black is all I got,” he called. “No milk or sugar in the house, I’m afraid.”
    “Black is fine,” Blake said.
    He was in the kitchen doorway, moving sideways, staying close to the hallway, unwilling to trespass. Lamarr was moving alongside him, looking around the kitchen with undisguised curiosity.
    “Nothing for me,” she said.
    “Drink some coffee, Julia,” Blake said. “It’s been a long night.”
    The way he said it was halfway between an order and paternalistic concern. Reacher glanced at him, surprised, and filled three mugs. He took his own and leaned back on the counter, waiting.
    “We need to talk,” Blake said.
    “Who was the third woman?” Reacher asked.
    "Lorraine Stanley. She was a quartermaster sergeant. ”
    "Where?”
    “She served in Utah someplace. They found her dead in California, this morning.”
    “Same MO?”
    Blake nodded. “Identical in every respect.”
    “Same history?”
    Blake nodded again. “Harassment complainant, won her case, but quit anyway.”
    “When?”
    “The harassment thing was two years ago, she quit a year ago. So that’s three out of three. So the Army thing is not a coincidence, believe me.”
    Reacher sipped his coffee. It tasted weak and stale. The machine was obviously all furred up with mineral deposits. There was probably a procedure for cleaning it out.
    “I never heard of her,” he said. “I never served in Utah.”
    Blake nodded. “Somewhere we can talk?”
    “We’re talking here, right?”
    “Somewhere we can sit?”
    Reacher nodded and pushed off the counter and led the way into the living room. He set his mug on the side table and pulled up the blinds to reveal pitch dark outside. The windows faced west over the river. It would be hours until the sun got high enough to lighten the sky out there.
    There were three sofas in a rectangle around a cold fireplace full of last winter’s ash. The last cheery blazes Jodie’s father had ever enjoyed. Blake sat facing the window and Reacher sat opposite and watched Lamarr as she fought her short skirt and sat down facing the hearth. Her skin was the same color as the ash.
    “We stand by our profile,” she said.
    “Well, good for you.”
    “It was somebody exactly like you.”
    “You think that’s plausible?” Blake asked.
    “Is what plausible?” Reacher asked back.
    “That this could be a soldier?”
    “You’re asking me if a soldier could be a killer?”
    Blake nodded. “You got an opinion on that?”
    “My opinion is it’s a really stupid question. Like asking me if I thought a jockey could ride a horse.”
    There was silence. Just a muffled whump from the basement as the furnace caught, and then rapid creaking as the steam pipes heated through and expanded and rubbed against the floor joists under their feet.
    “So you were a plausible suspect,” Blake said. “As far as the first two went.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “Hence the surveillance,” Blake said.
    “Is that an apology?” Reacher asked.
    Blake nodded. “I guess so.”
    “So why did you haul me in? When you already proved it wasn’t me?”
    Blake looked embarrassed. “We wanted to show some progress, I guess.”
    “You show progress by hauling the wrong guy in? I don’t buy that.”
    “I already apologized,” Blake said.
    More silence.
    “You got anybody who knew all three?” Reacher asked.
    “Not yet,” Lamarr said.
    “We’re thinking maybe previous personal