Running Blind (The Visitor)

the bathroom and clipped his toothbrush into the inside pocket. Just in case today was the day.
    He sat on the bed with the coat wrapped around him against the cold and waited for Harper. But when the key went into the lock and the door opened, it wasn’t Harper standing there. It was Poulton. He was keeping his face deliberately blank, and Reacher felt the first stirrings of triumph.
    “Where’s Harper?” he asked.
    “Off the case,” Poulton said.
    “Did she talk to Blake?”
    “Last night.”
    “And?”
    Poulton shrugged. “And nothing.”
    “You’re ignoring my input?”
    “You’re not here for input .”
    Reacher nodded. “OK. Ready for breakfast?”
    Poulton nodded back. “Sure.”
    The sun was coming up in the east and sending color into the sky. There was no cloud. No damp. No wind. It was a pleasant walk through the early gloom. The place felt busy again. Monday morning, the start of a new week. Blake was at the usual table in the cafeteria, over by the window. Lamarr was sitting with him. She was wearing a black blouse in place of her customary cream. It was slightly faded, like it had been washed many times. There was coffee on the table, and mugs, and milk and sugar, and doughnuts. But no newspapers.
    “I was sorry to hear the news from Spokane,” Reacher said.
    Lamarr nodded, silently.
    “I offered her time off,” Blake said. “She’s entitled to compassionate leave.”
    Reacher looked at him. “You don’t need to explain yourself to me.”
    “In the midst of life is death,” Lamarr said. “That’s something you learn pretty quickly around here.”
    “You’re not going to the funeral?”
    Lamarr took a teaspoon and balanced it across her forefinger. Stared down at it.
    “Alison hasn’t called me,” she said. “I don’t know what the arrangements are going to be.”
    “You didn’t call her?”
    She shrugged. “I’d feel like I was intruding.”
    “I don’t think Alison would agree with that.”
    She looked straight at him. “But I just don’t know.”
    There was silence. Reacher turned a mug over and poured coffee.
    “We need to get to work,” Blake said.
    “You didn’t like my theory?” Reacher said.
    “It’s a guess, not a theory,” Blake said back. “We can all guess, as much as we want to. But we can’t turn our backs on eighty women just because we enjoy guessing.”
    “Would they notice the difference?” Reacher asked.
    He took a long sip of coffee and looked at the doughnuts. They were wrinkled and hard. Probably Saturday’s.
    “So you’re not going to pay attention?” he asked.
    Blake shrugged. “I gave it some consideration.”
    “Well, give it some more. Because the next woman to die will be one of the eleven I marked, and it’ll be on your head.”
    Blake said nothing and Reacher pushed his chair back.
    “I want pancakes,” he said. “I don’t like the look of those doughnuts.”
    He stood up before they could object and stepped away toward the center of the room. Stopped at the first table with a New York Times on it. It belonged to a guy on his own. He was reading the sports. The front section was discarded to his left. Reacher picked it up. The story he was waiting for was right there, front page, below the fold.
    “Can I borrow this?” he asked.
    The guy with the interest in sports nodded without looking. Reacher tucked the paper under his arm and walked to the serving counter. Breakfast was set out like a buffet. He helped himself to a stack of pancakes and eight rashers of bacon. Added syrup until the plate was swimming. He was going to need the nutrition. He had a long journey ahead, and he was probably going to be walking the first part of it.
    He came back to the table and squatted awkwardly to get the plate down without spilling the syrup or dropping the newspaper. He propped the paper in front of his plate and started to eat. Then he pretended to notice the headline.
    “Well, look at that,” he said, with his mouth full.
    The headline read Gang Warfare Explodes in Lower Manhattan, Leaves Six Dead . The story recounted a brief and deadly turf war between two rival protection rackets, one of them allegedly Chinese, the other allegedly Syrian. Automatic firearms and machetes had been used. The body count ran four to two in favor of the Chinese. Among the four dead on the Syrian side was the alleged gang leader, a suspected felon named Almar Petrosian. There were quotes from the NYPD and the FBI, and background