Running Blind Read online

  “Where does this go?” he called.

  Blake was ten yards behind him. “Back of beyond, probably.”

  “It’s narrow, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve seen wider,” Blake allowed.

  Reacher strolled back to join him. “So you should 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 same as it had been before.

  “Anything?” Blake asked.

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “OK, we’ll do the outside.”

  They trooped down the stairs, silent. Harper was waiting in the hallway. She looked up at Blake, expectant. Blake just shook his head, like he was saying nothing there. Maybe he was saying don’t go up there. Reacher led him out through the back door into the yard.

  “I checked the windows from outside,” he said.

  “Guy didn’t come in the damn window,” Blake said for the second time. “He came in the door.”

  “But how the hell?” Reacher said. “When we were here, you’d called her ahead on the phone, and Harper was flashing her badge and shouting FBI, FBI, and she still practically hid out in there. And then she was shaking like a leaf when she eventually opened up. So how did this guy get her to do it?”

  Blake shrugged. “Like I told you right at the beginning, these women know this character. They trust him. He’s some kind of an old friend or something. He knocks on the door, they check him out in the spyhole, they get a big smile on their faces, and they open their doors right up.”

  The cellar door was undisturbed. The big padlock through the handles was intact. The garage door in the side of the barn was closed but not locked. Reacher led Blake inside and stood in the gloom. The new Jeep was there, and the stacks of cartons. The big washing machine carton was there, flaps slightly open, sealing tape trailing. The workbench was there, with the power tools neatly laid out on it. The shelves were undisturbed.

  “Something’s different,” Reacher said.

  “What?”

  “Let me think.”

  He stood there, opening and closing his eyes, comparing the scene in front of him with the memory in his head, like he was checking two photographs side by side.

  “The car has moved,” he said.

  Blake sighed, like he was disappointed. “It would have. She drove to the hospital after you left.”

  Reacher nodded. “Something else.”

  “What?”

  “Let me think.”

  Then he saw it.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I missed it. I’m sorry, Blake, but I missed it.”

  “Missed what?”

  “That washing machine carton. She already had a washing machine. Looked brand-new. It’s in the kitchen, under the counter.”

  “So? It must have come right out of that carton. Whenever it was installed.”

  Reacher shook his head. “No. Two days ago that carton was new and sealed up. Now it’s been opened.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. Same carton, exact same place. But it was sealed up then and it’s open now.”

  Blake stepped toward the carton. Took a pen from his pocket and used the plastic barrel to raise the flap. Stared down at what he saw.

  “This carton was here already?”

  R
eacher nodded. “Sealed up.”

  “Like it had been shipped?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK,” Blake said. “Now we know how he transports the paint. He delivers it ahead of time in washing machine cartons.”

  YOU SIT THERE cold and sweating for an hour and at the end of it you know for certain you forgot to reseal the carton. You didn’t do it, and you didn’t make her do it. That’s a fact now, and it can’t be denied, and it needs dealing with.

  Because resealing the cartons guaranteed a certain amount of delay. You know how investigators work. A just delivered appliance carton in the garage or the basement was going to attract no interest at all. It was going to be way down on the list of priorities. It would be just another part of the normal household clutter they see everywhere. Practically invisible. You’re smart. You know how these people work. Your best guess was the primary investigators would never open it at all. That was your prediction, and you were proved absolutely right three times in a row. Down in Florida, up in New Hampshire, down in California, those boxes were items on somebody’s inventory, but they hadn’t been opened. Maybe much later when the heirs came to clear out the houses they’d open them up and find all the empty cans, whereupon the shit would really hit the fan, but by then it would be way too late. A guaranteed delay, weeks or even months.

  But this time, it would be different. They’d do a walk-through in the garage, and the flaps on the box would be up. Cardboard does that, especially in a damp atmosphere like they have up there. The flaps would be curling back. They’d glance in, and they wouldn’t see Styrofoam packaging and gleaming white enamel, would they?

  THEY BROUGHT IN portable arc lights from the Suburban and arrayed them around the washing machine carton like it was a meteor from Mars. They stood there, bent forward from the waist like the whole thing was radioactive. They stared at it, trying to decode its secrets.

  It was a normal-sized appliance carton, built out of sturdy brown cardboard folded and stapled the way appliance cartons are. The brown board was screenprinted with black ink. The manufacturer’s name dominated each of the four sides. A famous name, styled and printed like a trademark. There was the model number of the washing machine below it, and a crude picture representing the machine itself.

  The sealing tape was brown, too. It had been slit along the top to allow the box to open. Inside the box was nothing at all except ten three-gallon paint cans. They were stacked in two layers of five. The lids were resting on the tops of the cans like they had been laid back into position after use. They were distorted here and there around the circumference where an implement had been used to lever them off. The rims of the cans each had a neat tongue-shaped run of dried color where the paint had been poured out.

  The cans themselves were plain metal cylinders. No manufacturer’s name. No trademark. No boasts about quality or durability or coverage. Just a small printed label stenciled with a long number and the small words Camo/Green.

  “These normal?” Blake asked.

  Reacher nodded. “Standard-issue field supply.”

  “Who uses them?”

  “Any unit with vehicles. They carry them around for small repairs and touch-ups. Vehicle workshops would use bigger drums and spray guns.”

  “So they’re not rare?”

  Reacher shook his head. “The exact opposite of rare.”

  There was silence in the garage.

  “OK, take them out,” Blake said.

  A crime scene technician wearing latex gloves leaned over and lifted the cans out of the carton, one by one. He lined them up on Alison Lamarr’s workbench. Then he folded the flaps of the carton back. Angled a lamp to throw light inside. The bottom of the box had five circular imprints pressed deep into the cardboard.

  “The cans were full when they went in there,” the tech said.

  Blake stepped back, out of the pool of blazing light, into the shadow. He turned his back on the box and stared at the wall.

  “So how did it get here?” he asked.

  Reacher shrugged. “Like you said, it was delivered, ahead of time.”

  “Not by the guy.”

  “No. He wouldn’t come twice.”

  “So by who?”

  “By a shipping company. The guy sent it on ahead. FedEx or UPS or somebody.”

  “But appliances get delivered by the store where you buy them. On a local truck.”

  “Not this one,” Reacher said. “This didn’t come from any appliance store.”

  Blake sighed, like the world had gone mad. Then he turned back and stepped into the light again. Stared at the box. Walked all around it. One side showed damage. There was a shape, roughly square, where the surface of the cardboard had been torn away. The layer underneath showed through, raw and exposed. The angle of the arc lights emphasized its corrugated structure.

  “Shipping label,” Blake said.

  “Maybe one of those little plastic envelopes,” Reacher said. “You know, ‘Documents enclosed.’ ”

  “So where is it? Who tore it off? Not the shipping company. They don’t tear them off.”

  “The guy tore it off,” Reacher said. “Afterward. So we can’t trace it back.”

  He paused. He’d said we. Not you. So we can’t trace it back. Not so you can’t trace it back. Blake noticed it too, and glanced up.

  “But how can the delivery happen?” he asked. “In the first place? Say you’re Alison Lamarr, just sitting there at home, and UPS or FedEx or somebody shows up with a washing machine you never ordered? You wouldn’t accept the delivery, right?”

  “Maybe it came when she was out,” Reacher said. “Maybe when she was up at the hospital with her dad. Maybe the driver just wheeled it into the garage and left it.”

  “Wouldn’t he need a signature?”

  Reacher shrugged again. “I don’t know. I’ve never had a washing machine delivered. I guess sometimes they don’t need a signature. The guy who sent it probably specified no signature required.”

  “But she’d have seen it right there, next time she went in the garage. Soon as she stashed her car, when she got back.”

  Reacher nodded. “Yes, she must have. It’s big enough.”

  “So what then?”

  "She calls UPS or FedEx or whoever. Maybe she tore off the envelope herself. Carried it into the house, to the phone, to give them the details.”

  “Why didn’t she unpack it?”

  Reacher made a face. “She figures it’s not really hers, why would she unpack it? She’d only have to box it up again.”

  “She mention anything to you or Harper? Anything about unexplained deliveries?”

  “No. But then she might not have connected it. Foul-ups happen, right? Normal part of life.”

  Blake nodded. “Well, if the details are in the house, we’ll find them. Crime scene people are going to spend some time in there, soon as the coroner is through.”

  “Coroner won’t find anything,” Reacher said.

  Blake looked grim. “This time, he’ll have to.”

  “So you’re going to have to do it differently,” Reacher said. He concentrated on the you. “You should take the whole tub out. Take it over to some big lab in Seattle. Maybe fly it all the way back to Quantico.”

  “How the hell can we take the whole tub out?”

  “Tear the wall out. Tear the roof off, use a crane.”

  Blake paused and thought about it. “I guess we could. We’d need permission, of course. But this must be Julia’s house now, in the circumstances, right? She’s next of kin, I guess.”

  Reacher nodded. “So call her. Ask her. Get permission. And get her to check the field reports from the other three places. This delivery thing might be a one-shot deal, but if it isn’t, it changes everything.”

  “Changes everything how?”

  “Because it means it isn’t a guy with time to drive a truck all over the place. It means it could be anybody, using the airlines, in and out quick as you like.”

 
BLAKE WENT BACK to the Suburban to make his calls, and Harper found Reacher and walked him fifty yards up the road to where agents from the Spokane office had spotted tire marks in the mud on the shoulders. It had gone dark and they were using flashlights. There were four separate marks in the mud. It was clear what had happened. Somebody had swung nose-in to the left shoulder, wound the power steering around, backed across the road and put the rear tires on the right shoulder, and then swooped away back the way he had come. The front-tire marks were scrubbed into fan shapes by the operation of the steering, but the rear-tire marks opposite were clear enough. They were not wide, not narrow.

  “Probably a midsize sedan,” the Spokane guy said. “Fairly new radial tires, maybe a 195/70, maybe a fourteen-inch wheel. We’ll get the exact tire from the tread pattern. And we’ll measure the width between the marks, maybe get the exact model of the car.”

  “You think it’s the guy?” Harper asked.

  Reacher nodded. “Got to be, right? Think about it. Anybody else hunting the address sees the house a hundred yards ahead and slows enough to check the mailbox and stop. Even if they don’t, they overshoot a couple of yards and just back right up. They don’t overshoot fifty yards and wait until they’re around the corner to turn. This was a guy cruising the place, watching out, staying cautious. It was him, no doubt about it.”

  They felt the Spokane guys setting up miniature waterproof tents over the marks and walked back toward the house. Blake was standing by the Suburban, waiting, lit from behind by the dome light inside.

  “We’ve got appliance cartons listed at all three scenes,” he said. “No information about contents. Nobody thought to look. We’re sending local agents back to check. Could be an hour. And Julia says we should go ahead and rip the tub out. I’m going to need some engineers, I guess.”

  Reacher nodded vaguely and paused, immobilized by a new line of thought.

  “You should check on something else,” he said. “You should get the list of the eleven women, call the seven he hasn’t gotten to yet. You should ask them.”

  Blake looked at him. “Ask them what? Hi, you still alive?”

  “No, ask them if they’ve had any deliveries they weren’t expecting. Any appliances they never ordered. Because if this guy is speeding up, maybe the next one is all ready and set to go.”