Running Blind (The Visitor)

down in Quantico. A smart guy.”
    Jodie said nothing.
    “But a very confident guy,” Deerfield said. “He stopped calling you two days before Petrosian finally bought the farm.”
    There was silence in the kitchen. Deerfield turned to Reacher.
    “So am I on the money?” he asked.
    Reacher shrugged. “Why should anybody have been worrying about Petrosian?”
    Deerfield smiled again. “Oh, sure, we can’t talk about that. We’ll never admit Blake said a word to you on that subject. But like I told Ms. Jacob, information is king. I just want to be a hundred percent sure what I’m dealing with here. If you stirred it up, just tell me and maybe I’ll pat you on the back for a job well done. But if by some chance it was a genuine dispute, we need to know about it.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Reacher said.
    “So why did you stop calling Ms. Jacob?”
    “That’s my business.”
    “No, it’s everybody’s business,” Deerfield said. “Certainly it’s Ms. Jacob’s business, right? And it’s mine too. So tell me about it. And don’t go thinking you’re out of the woods yet, Reacher. Petrosian was a piece of shit for sure, but he’s still a homicide, and we can crank up a pretty good motive for you anyway, based on what was witnessed by two credible witnesses the other night in the alley. We could call it a conspiracy with persons unknown. Careful preparation of the case, you could be inside two years, just waiting for the trial. Jury might let you go in the end, but then who really knows what a jury might do?”
    Reacher said nothing. Jodie stood up.
    “You should leave now, Mr. Deerfield,” she said. “I’m still his lawyer, and this is an inappropriate forum for this discussion.”
    Deerfield nodded slowly, and looked around the kitchen, like he was seeing it for the first time.
    “Yes, it sure is, Ms. Jacob,” he said. “So maybe we’ll have to continue this discussion someplace more appropriate at some future time. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe next year. Like Mr. Blake pointed out, we know where you both live.”
    He turned on the spot, with the grit on his shoes loud in the silence. They heard him walk through the living room and they heard the apartment door open and slam shut.
    “So you took Petrosian out,” Jodie said.
    “I never went near him,” Reacher replied.
    She shook her head. “Save that stuff for the FBI, OK? You arranged it or provoked it or engineered it or whatever the correct phrase would be. You took him out, as surely as if you were standing right next to him with a gun.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “And I told you not to do that,” she said.
    Reacher said nothing.
    “Deerfield knows you did it,” she said.
    “He can’t prove it.”
    “That doesn’t matter,” she said. “Don’t you see that? He can try to prove it. And he’s not kidding about the two years in jail. A suspicion of gang warfare? A thing like that, the courts will back him up all the way. Denial of bail, continuances, the prosecutors will really go to bat for him. It’s not an empty threat. He owns you now. Like I told you he would.”
    Reacher said nothing.
    “Why did you do it?”
    He shrugged. “Lots of reasons. It needed doing.”
    There was a long silence.
    “Would my father have agreed with you?” Jodie asked.
    “Leon?” Reacher said. He recalled the photographs in Cozo’s packet. The photographs of Petrosian’s handiwork. The dead women, displayed like centerfolds. Pieces missing, things inserted. “Are you kidding? Leon would have agreed with me in a heartbeat.”
    “And would he have gone ahead and done what you did?”
    “Probably.”
    She nodded. “Yes, he probably would. But look around you, OK?”
    “At what?”
    “At everything. What do you see?”
    He looked around. “An apartment.”
    She nodded. “My apartment.”
    “So?”
    “Did I grow up here?”
    “Of course not.”
    “So where did I grow up?”
    He shrugged. “All over the place, on Army bases, like I did.”
    She nodded. “Where did you first meet me?”
    “You know where. Manila. On the base.”
    “Remember that bungalow?”
    “Sure I do.”
    She nodded. “So do I. It was tiny, it stank, and it had cockroaches bigger than my hand. And you know what? That was the best place I ever lived as a kid.”
    “So?”
    She was pointing at her briefcase. It was a leather pilot’s case, stuffed with legal paper, parked against the wall just inside the kitchen door.