Running Blind (The Visitor)

remover.”
    The skin turned greenish white where the paint washed off. Stavely used his gloved fingertips to peel the crust away. The strength in his hands moved the body. It lifted and fell, slackly. He pushed the hose underneath her, probing for stubborn adhesions. The technician stood next to him and lifted her legs. Stavely reached under them and cut the crust and the rubber together, peeling it away up to her thighs. The acetone ran continuously, rinsing the green stream into the drain.
    Stavely moved up to the head. Placed the hose against the nape of her neck and watched as the chemical flooded her hair. Her hair was a nightmare. It was matted and crusted with paint. It had floated up around her face like a stiff tangled cage.
    “I’m going to have to cut it,” he said.
    Blake nodded, somber.
    “I guess so,” he said.
    “She had nice hair,” Harper said. Her voice was quiet under the noise from the fan. She half turned and backed off a step. Her shoulder touched Reacher’s chest. She left it there a second longer than she needed to.
    Stavely took a fresh scalpel from the cart and traced through the hair, as close to the paint crust as he could get. He slid a powerful arm under the shoulders and lifted. The head came free, leaving hair matted into the crust like mangrove roots tangled into a swamp. He cut through the crust and the rubber and pulled another section free.
    “I hope you catch this guy,” he said.
    “That’s the plan,” Blake said back, still somber.
    “Roll her over,” Stavely said.
    She moved easily. The acetone mixed with the slick paint was like a lubricant against the dished steel of the table. She slid face up and lay there, ghastly under the lights. Her skin was greenish white and puckered, stained and blotched with paint. Her eyes were open, the lids rimed with green. She wore the last remaining square of the body bag stuck to her skin from her breasts to her thighs, like an old-fashioned bathing suit protecting her modesty.
    Stavely probed with his hand and found the metal implement under the rubber. He cut through the bag and wormed his fingers inside and pulled the object out in a grotesque parody of surgery.
    “A screwdriver,” he said.
    The technician washed it in an acetone bath and held it up. It was a quality tool with a heavy plastic handle and a handsome chromed-steel shaft with a crisp blade.
    “Matches the others,” Reacher said. “From her kitchen drawer, remember?”
    “She’s got scratches on her face,” Stavely said suddenly.
    He was using the hose, washing her face. Her left cheek had four parallel incisions running down from the eye to the jaw.
    “Did she have these before?” Blake asked.
    “No,” Harper and Reacher said together.
    “So what’s that about?” Blake said.
    “Was she right-handed?” Stavely asked.
    “I don’t know,” Poulton said.
    Harper nodded. “I think so.”
    Reacher closed his eyes and trawled back to her kitchen, watched her pouring coffee from the jug.
    “Right-handed,” he said.
    “I agree,” Stavely said. He was examining her arms and hands. “Her right hand is larger than the left. The arm is heavier.”
    Blake was leaning over, looking at the damaged face. “So?”
    “I think they’re self-inflicted,” Stavely said.
    “Are you sure?”
    Stavely was circling the head of the table, looking for the best light. The wounds were swelled by the paint, raw and open. Green, where they should have been red.
    “I can’t be sure,” he said. “You know that. But probability suggests it. If the guy did them, what are the chances he would have put them in the only place she could have put them herself?”
    “He made her do it,” Reacher said.
    “How?” Blake asked.
    “I don’t know how. But he makes them do a hell of a lot. I think he makes them put the paint in the tub themselves.”
    “Why?”
    “The screwdriver. It’s to get the lids off with. The scratches were an afterthought. If he’d been thinking about the scratches, he’d have made her get a knife from the kitchen instead of the screwdriver. Or as well as the screwdriver.”
    Blake stared at the wall. “Where are the cans right now?”
    “Materials Analysis,” Poulton said. “Right here. They’re examining them.”
    “So take the screwdriver over there. See if there are any marks that match.”
    The technician put the screwdriver in a clear plastic evidence bag and Poulton shrugged off his gown and kicked off his overshoes and hurried