Running Blind (The Visitor)

of them and held it up. Ducked away to a light box on the wall and hit the switch and held the film against the light with his big fingers splayed.
    “Look at that,” he said.
    It was a photograph of the midsection from just below the sternum to just above the pubic area. Reacher saw the outlines of ghostly gray bones, ribs, spine, pelvis, with a forearm and a hand lying across them at an angle. And another shape, dense and so bright it shone pure white. Metal. Slim and pointed, about as long as the hand.
    “A tool of some sort,” Stavely said.
    “The others didn’t have anything like that,” Poulton said.
    “Doc, we need to see it right away,” Blake said. “It’s important.”
    Stavely shook his head. “It’s underneath her body right now, because she’s upside down. We’ll get there, but it won’t be real soon.”
    “How long?”
    “Long as it takes,” Stavely said. “This is going to be messy as hell.”
    He clipped the gray photographs in sequence on the light box. Then he walked the length of the ghostly display and studied them.
    “Her skeleton is relatively undamaged,” he said. He pointed to the second panel. “Left wrist was cracked and healed, probably ten years ago.”
    “She was into sports,” Reacher said. “Her sister told us.”
    Stavely nodded. “So we’ll check the collarbone.”
    He moved left and studied the first panel. It showed the skull and the neck and the shoulders. The collar-bones gleamed and swooped down toward the sternum.
    "Small crack,” Stavely said, pointing. "It’s what I’d expect. An athlete with a cracked wrist will usually have a cracked collarbone too. They fall off their bike or their Rollerblades or whatever, throw out their arm to break their fall, end up breaking their bones instead.”
    “But no fresh injuries?” Blake asked.
    Stavely shook his head. “These are ten years old, maybe more. She wasn’t killed by blunt trauma, if that’s what you mean.”
    He hit the switch and the light behind the X rays went out. He turned back to the examination table and knitted his fingers again and his knuckles clicked in the silence.
    “OK,” he said. “Let’s go to work.”
    He pulled a hose from a reel mounted on the ceiling and turned a small faucet built into its nozzle. There was a hissing sound and a stream of clear liquid started running. A heavy, slow liquid with a sharp, strong smell.
    “Acetone,” Stavely said. “Got to clear this damn paint.”
    He used the acetone sluice on the body bag and on the steel table. The technician used handfuls of kitchen towel, wiping the bag and pushing the thick liquid into the drain. The chemical stink was overpowering.
    “Ventilator,” Stavely said.
    The technician ducked away and twisted a switch behind him and the fans in the ceiling changed up from a hum to a louder roar. Stavely held the nozzle closer and the bag began to turn from wet green to wet black. Then he held the hose low down on the table and set up a swirling rinse under the bag straight into the drain.
    “OK, scissors,” he said.
    The technician took scissors from a cart and snipped a corner of the bag. Green paint flooded out. The acetone swirl caught it and it eddied sluggishly to the drain. It kept on coming, two minutes, three, five. The bag settled and drooped as it emptied. The room went quieter under the roar of the fan and the hiss of the hose.
    “OK, the fun starts here,” Stavely said.
    He handed the hose to the technician and used a scalpel from the cart to slit the bag lengthwise from end to end. He made sideways cuts top and bottom and peeled the rubber back slowly. It lifted and sucked away from skin. He folded it back in two long flaps. Alison Lamarr’s body was revealed, lying facedown, slimy and slick with paint.
    Stavely used the scalpel and slit the rubber around the feet, up alongside the legs, around the contours of the hips, up her flanks, close to her elbows, around her shoulders and head. He pulled away the strips of rubber until the bag was gone, all except for the front surface, which was trapped between the crust of paint and the steel of the table.
    The crust of paint was top down to the table, because she was upside down. Its underside was bubbled and jellified. It looked like the surface of a distant alien planet. Stavely started rinsing its edges, where it was stuck to her skin.
    “Won’t that damage her?” Blake asked.
    Stavely shook his head. “It’s the same stuff as nail polish