Running Blind (The Visitor)

check the mud on the shoulders, maybe up around the next bend.”
    “What for?”
    “Our guy came in from the Spokane road, most likely. Cruised the house, kept on going, turned around, came back. He’d want his car facing the right direction, before he went in and got to work. A guy like this, he’ll have been thinking about the getaway.”
    Blake nodded. “OK. I’ll put somebody on it. Meantime, take me through the house.”
    He called instructions to his team and Reacher joined Harper in the mouth of the driveway. They stood and waited for Blake to catch up with them.
    “So walk me through it,” he said.
    “We paused here for a second,” Harper said. “It was awful quiet. Then we walked up to the door, used the knocker.”
    “Was the weather wet or dry?” Blake asked her.
    She glanced at Reacher. “Dry, I guess. A little sunny. Not hot. But not raining.”
    “The driveway was dry,” Reacher said. “Not dusty dry, but the shale had drained.”
    “So you wouldn’t have picked up grit on your shoes?”
    “I doubt it.”
    “OK.”
    They were at the door.
    “Put these on your feet,” Blake said. He pulled a roll of large-sized food bags from his coat pocket. They put a bag over each shoe and tucked the plastic edges down inside the leather.
    “She opened up, second knock,” Harper said. “I showed her my badge in the spyhole.”
    “She was pretty uptight,” Reacher said. “Told us Julia had been warning her.”
    Blake nodded sourly and nudged the door with his bagged foot. The door swung back with the same creak of old hinges Reacher remembered from before.
    “We all paused here in the hallway,” Harper said. “Then she offered us coffee and we all went through to the kitchen to get it.”
    “Anything different in here?” Blake asked.
    Reacher looked around. The pine walls, the pine floors, the yellow gingham curtains, the old sofas, the converted oil lamps.
    “Nothing different,” he said.
    “OK, kitchen,” Blake said.
    They filed into the kitchen. The floor was still waxed to a shine. The cabinets were the same, the range was cold and empty, the machines under the counter were the same, the gadgets sitting out were undisturbed. There were dishes in the sink and one of the silverware drawers was open an inch.
    “The view is different,” Harper said. She was standing at the window. “Much grayer today.”
    “Dishes in the sink,” Reacher said. “And that drawer was closed.”
    They crowded the sink. There was a single plate, a water glass, a mug, a knife and a fork. Smears of egg and toast crumbs on the plate, coffee mud in the mug.
    “Breakfast?” Blake said.
    “Or dinner,” Harper answered. “An egg on toast, that could be dinner for a single woman.”
    Blake pulled the drawer with the tip of his finger. There was a bunch of cheap flatware in there, and a random assortment of household tools, small screwdrivers, wire strippers, electrical tape, fuse wire.
    “OK, then what?” Blake asked.
    “I stayed here with her,” Harper said. “Reacher looked around.”
    “Show me,” Blake said.
    He followed Reacher back to the hallway.
    “I checked the parlor and the living room,” Reacher said. “Looked at the windows. I figured they were secure. ”
    Blake nodded. “Guy didn’t come in the windows.”
    “Then I went outside, checked the grounds and the barn.”
    “We’ll do the upstairs first,” Blake said.
    “OK.”
    Reacher led the way. He was very conscious of where he was going. Very conscious that maybe thirty hours ago the guy had followed the same path.
    “I checked the bedrooms. Went into the master suite last.”
    “Let’s do it,” Blake said.
    They walked the length of the master bedroom. Paused at the bathroom door.
    “Let’s do it,” Blake said again.
    They looked inside. The place was immaculate. No sign that anything had ever happened there, except for the tub. It was seven-eighths full of green paint, with the shape of a small muscular woman floating just below the surface, which had skinned over into a slick plastic layer, delineating her body and trapping it there. Every contour was visible. The thighs, the stomach, the breasts. The head, tilted backward. The chin, the forehead. The mouth, held slightly open, the lips drawn back in a tiny grimace.
    “Shit,” Reacher said.
    “Yeah, shit,” Blake said back.
    Reacher stood there and tried to read the signs. Tried to find the signs. But there were none there. The bathroom was exactly the