Running Blind (The Visitor)

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    He got out first and stretched his cramped frame in the cold, damp air. The highway traffic was roaring behind him. Lamarr was inert in the car, so he strolled away to the bathroom. Then she was nowhere to be seen, so he walked inside the building and lined up for a sandwich. She joined him within a minute.
    “You’re not supposed to do that,” she said.
    “Do what?”
    “Stray out of my sight.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because we have rules for people like you.”
    She said it without any trace of softness or humor. He shrugged. “OK, next time I go to the bathroom I’ll invite you right inside with me.”
    She didn’t smile. “Just tell me, and I’ll wait at the door.”
    The line shuffled forward and he changed his selection from cheese to crabmeat, because he figured it was more expensive and he assumed she was paying. He added a twenty-ounce cup of black coffee and a plain doughnut. He found a table while she fiddled with her purse. Then she joined him and he raised his coffee in an ironic toast.
    “Here’s to a few fun days together,” he said.
    “It’ll be more than a few days,” she said. “It’ll be as long as it takes.”
    He sipped his coffee and thought about time.
    “What’s the significance of the three-week cycle?” he asked.
    She had chosen cheese on whole-wheat and was pecking a crumb from the corner of her mouth with her little finger.
    “We’re not entirely sure,” she said. “Three weeks is an odd interval. It’s not lunar. There’s no calendar significance to three weeks.”
    He did the math in his head. “Ninety-one targets, one every three weeks, it would take him five and a quarter years to get through. That’s a hell of a long project.”
    She nodded. “We think that proves the cycle is imposed by something external. Presumably he’d work faster if he could. So we think he’s on a three-week work pattern. Maybe he works two weeks on, one week off. He spends the week off staking them out, organizing it, and then doing it.”
    Reacher saw his chance. Nodded.
    “Possible,” he said.
    “So what kind of soldier works that kind of pattern?”
    “That regular? Maybe a rapid-response guy, two weeks on readiness, one week stood down.”
    “Who’s on rapid response?”
    “Marines, some infantry,” he said.
    Then he swallowed. “And some Special Forces.”
    Then he waited to see if she’d take the bait.
    She nodded. “Special Forces would know subtle ways to kill, right?”
    He started on the sandwich. The crabmeat could have been tuna fish. “Silent ways, unarmed ways, improvised ways, I guess. But I don’t know about subtle ways. This is about concealment, right? Special Forces are interested in getting people dead, for sure, but they don’t care about leaving anybody puzzled afterward about how they did it.”
    “So what are you saying?”
    He put his sandwich down. “I’m saying I don’t have a clue about who’s doing what, or why, or how. And I don’t see how I should. You’re the big expert here. You’re the one studied landscape gardening in school.”
    She paused, with her sandwich in midair. “We need more from you than this, Reacher. And you know what we’ll do if we don’t get it.”
    “I know what you say you’ll do.”
    “You going to take the chance we won’t?”
    “She gets hurt, you know what I’ll do to you, right?”
    She smiled. “Threatening me, Reacher? Threatening a federal agent? You just broke the law again. Title 18, paragraph A-3, section 4702. Now you’re really stacking up the charges against yourself, that’s for sure.”
    He looked away and made no reply.
    “Stay on the ball, and everything will be OK,” she said.
    He drained his cup, and looked at her over the rim. A steady, neutral gaze. “The ethics bothering you here?” she asked.
    “Are there ethics involved?” he asked back.
    Then her face changed. A hint of embarrassment crept into it. A hint of softening. She nodded. “I know, it used to bother me too. I couldn’t believe it, when I got out of the Academy. But the Bureau knows what it’s doing. I learned that, pretty quick. It’s a practical thing. It’s about the greatest good for the greatest number. We need cooperation, we ask for it first, but you better believe we make damn sure we get it.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “It’s a policy I believe in, now,” Lamarr said. “But I want you to know using your girlfriend as a threat wasn’t my idea.”
    Reacher said