The Visitor (Jack Reacher #4)

by Lee Child

The dynamics of the city. The strong terrorize the weak. They keep on at it, like they always have, until they come up against somebody stronger with some arbitrary humane reason for stopping them.

‘Who the hell are you?’ the right-hand guy said. Reacher glanced at him. The first guy to speak is the dominant half of any partnership, and in a one-on-two situation you put the dominant one down first.

He swung it way too far back, and he swung it way too low. He went for a massive blow aimed at the middle of Reacher’s body. Two things wrong with that. A big backswing takes time to get into. And a blow aimed at the middle of the body is too easy to defend against. Better to aim high at the head or low at the knees.

The way to take a blow from a bat is to get near, and get near early. The force of the blow comes from the weight of the bat multiplied by the speed of the swing. A mathematical thing. Mass times velocity equals momentum. Nothing you can do about the mass of the bat. The bat is going to weigh exactly the same wherever the hell it is. So you need to kill the speed. You need to get close and take it as it comes off the backswing. While it’s still in the first split second of acceleration. While it’s still slow. That’s why a big backswing is a bad idea. The further back you swing it, the later it is before you can get it moving forward again. The more time you give away.

‘We’re not going to talk about the Yankees,’ Deerfield said. ‘So what about the Dow? We going to see a big crash any time soon?’ Deerfield shook his head. ‘Don’t mess with me, Reacher. Right now I’m the best friend you got.’ ‘No, Ernesto A. Miranda is the best friend I got,’ Reacher said. ‘Miranda versus Arizona, Supreme Court decision in June of 1966. They said his Fifth Amendment rights were infringed because the cops didn’t warn him he could stay silent and get himself a lawyer.’ ‘So?’ ‘So you can’t talk to me until you read me my Miranda rights. Whereupon you can’t talk to me anyway because my lawyer could take some time to get here and then she won’t let me talk to you even when she does.’

‘You want to know an interesting fact?’ Blake said. ‘Perpetrators of serial homicide used to drive Volkswagen Bugs. Almost all of them. It was uncanny. Then they switched to minivans. Then they switched to sport-utilities. Big four-wheel drives, exactly like yours. It’s a hell of an indicator.’ Lamarr leaned across and pulled the sheaf of papers back from Deerfield’s place at the table. She tapped them with a finger. ‘They live solitary lives,’ she said. ‘They interact with one other person at most. They live off of other people, often relatives or friends, often women. They don’t do much normal stuff. Don’t talk much on the phone, they’re quiet and furtive.’ ‘They’re law enforcement buffs,’ Poulton said. ‘They know all kinds of stuff. Like all kinds of obscure legal cases defining their rights.’ More silence. ‘Profiling,’ Blake said. ‘It’s an exact science. It’s regarded as good enough evidence to get an arrest warrant in most states of the Union.’ ‘It never fails,’ Lamarr said. She stared at Reacher and then she sat back with her crooked teeth showing in a satisfied smile. Silence settled over the room. ‘So?’ Reacher said. ‘So somebody killed two women,’ Deerfield said. ‘And?’ Deerfield nodded to his right, toward Blake and Lamarr and Poulton. ‘And these agents think it was somebody exactly like you.’ ‘So?’ ‘So we asked you all those questions.’ ‘And?’ ‘And I think they’re absolutely right. It was somebody exactly like you. Maybe it even was you.’

And a house has an existence beyond the physical. It’s also a bureaucratic thing. Something had come in the mail about title. There was insurance to consider. Taxes. Town tax, school tax, inspection, assessment. There was a bill to pay for garbage collection. And something about a scheduled propane delivery.

‘Because you seem to think trust and friendship is important to the MO in some way. And nobody in the service trusts an MP. Or likes them much, in my experience.’ ‘You told us Rita Scimeca would remember you as a friend.’ ‘I was different. I put the effort in. Not many of the guys did.’

‘You know what it’s like. Everybody hates everybody else. Blake said that to me. And it’s true. MPs wouldn’t piss on Quantico if it was on fire. Because of Vietnam. Your dad could have told you all about it. He’s an example.’

‘There was a rule of thumb, draft dodgers were the Bureau’s business, and deserters were ours. Different categories, right? And we knew how to handle deserters. Some of them went to the slammer, but some of them got a little TLC. The jungle wasn’t a lot of fun for the grunts, and the recruiting depots weren’t exactly bulging at the seams, remember? So the MPs would calm the good ones down and send them back, but nine times out of ten the Bureau would arrest them again anyway, on the way to the airport. Drove the MPs crazy. Hoover was unbearable. It was a turf war like you never saw. Result was a perfectly reasonable guy like Leon would hardly even speak to the FBI ever again. Wouldn’t take calls, didn’t bust a gut answering the mail.’

‘No, not Petrosian or the killer. You mustn’t do either thing they want.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because then they own you, Reacher. Two vigilante homicides, with their knowledge? Right under their noses? The Bureau would own you, the whole rest of your life.’ He leaned his hands on the window frame and stared at the street below. ‘You’re in a hell of a spot,’ she said. ‘We both are.’

Time and tide wait for no man. The Navy was built on all kinds of bullshit like that.

They didn’t speak again, all the way to Seattle. Five hours, without a word. Reacher was comfortable enough with that. He was not a compulsively sociable guy. He was happier not talking. He didn’t see anything odd about it. There was no strain involved. He just sat there, not talking, like he was making the journey on his own.

profiling works, Reacher. Those people have had some spectacular successes.’ ‘Among how many failures?’ ‘What do you mean?’ Reacher turned back to face her. ‘Suppose I was in Blake’s position? He’s effectively a nationwide homicide detective, right? Gets to hear about everything. So suppose I was him, getting notified about every single homicide in America. Suppose every single time I said the likely suspect was a white male, age thirty and a half, wooden leg, divorced parents, drives a blue Ferrari. Every single time. Sooner or later, I’d be right. The law of averages would work for me. Then I could shout out, hey, I was right. As long as I keep quiet about the ten thousand times I was wrong, I look pretty good, don’t I? Amazing deduction.’

‘Something smaller, I guess. It was a huge, huge thing. You’ve got no idea. It stretched all around the world. They were going to make it smaller. I’d have gotten promotion, so I would have been higher up in a smaller organization.’ ‘What’s wrong with that? Big fish in a small pond, right?’ ‘I didn’t want to be a big fish,’ he said. ‘I liked being a small fish.’

‘You ever been raped?’ Harper shook her head. ‘No, ma’am, I haven’t.’ Scimeca nodded. ‘Well, don’t be,’ she said. ‘That’s my advice.’ There was silence. ‘It changes your life,’ Scimeca said. ‘It changed mine, that’s for damn sure.

‘This is a very smart guy, right? Very, very smart. Smart in a very particular way. He’s committed four homicides, bizarre, elaborate scenarios, and he hasn’t left the slightest shred of evidence behind. He’s only made one mistake, by leaving one box open. And that was a fairly trivial mistake, because it’s not getting us anywhere. So we’ve got a guy who’s successfully handled a thousand decisions, a thousand details, under urgent and stressful conditions. He’s killed four women and so far we don’t even know how.’ ‘So?’ Blake said. ‘What’s your point?’ ‘His intelligence,’ Reacher said. ‘It’s a specific type. It’s practical, efficient, real-world. He’s got his feet on the ground. He’s a planner, and he’s pragmatic. He’s a problem-solver. He’s intensely rational. He deals with reality.’

‘First I need to figure out what I really want.’ ‘You know what you really want,’ she said. ‘Everybody always does, instinctively. Any doubt you’re feeling is just noise, trying to bury the truth, because you don’t want to face it.’

‘And the plain-vanilla motive is money.’ ‘Has to be,’ Reacher said. ‘Always love or money. And it can’t be love, because love makes you crazy, and this guy isn’t crazy.’

‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘I want you to look at me,’ Reacher replied. ‘What?’ ‘What do you see?’ ‘Nothing,’ McGuire said. ‘You blind?’ ‘No, I ain’t blind.’ ‘Then you’re a liar,’ Reacher said. ‘You don’t see nothing.’ ‘I see some guy,’ McGuire said. ‘You see some guy bigger than you who had all kinds of special training while you spent your time shuffling paper in some piece-of-shit quartermaster’s stores.’ ‘So?’ ‘So nothing. Just something to bear in mind for later, is all.’ ‘What’s later?’ ‘You’ll find out,’ Reacher said.

‘Last factor,’ Reacher said gently. ‘You need to understand, sooner or later you’ll tell me anyway. It’s just a question of timing. Your choice. You can tell me right now, or you can tell me in a half-hour, right after I’ve broken your arms and legs and I’m about to snap your spine.’ ‘He’s a bad guy,’ McGuire said. Reacher nodded. ‘I’m sure he’s real bad. But you need to prioritize. Whatever he says he’s going to do, that’s theoretical, way off in the future, and like I told you, it isn’t going to happen anyway. But what I’m going to do, it’s going to happen right now. Right here.’ ‘You ain’t going to do nothing,’ McGuire said. Reacher turned and picked up the wooden stool. Flipped it upside down and held it chest-high with his hands around two of the legs. Took a firm backhand grip and bunched his shoulders and pulled steadily. Then he breathed hard and snapped his elbows back and the legs tore away from the rungs. The rungs clattered to the floor. He reversed the stool and held the seat in his left hand and splintered a leg free with his right. Dropped the wreckage and retained the leg. It was about a yard long, the size and weight of a ball bat. ‘Now you do the same,’ he said. McGuire tried hard. He turned over his own stool and grasped the legs. His muscles bunched and the tattoos swelled, but he got nowhere with it. He just stood there, holding the stool upside down. ‘Too bad,’ Reacher said. ‘I tried to make it fair.’

‘One victim stole the paint?’ Reacher said. ‘And another provided the list of names?’ Leighton nodded, sombre. ‘That’s how it was, I promise you. And you know I wouldn’t bullshit one of Garber’s boys.’

Harper, it would have been an infidelity. Perfectly sound reasons, but reasons not to do something don’t kill the original impulse.

‘Truth, and lies,’ he said. ‘And means, motive, opportunity. The holy trinity of law enforcement. Three out of three is the real deal, right?’

She had to force herself to eat. Maybe everybody who lived alone had the same problem. Solo mealtimes weren’t much fun.

The plane was on descent. Reacher could feel it in his ears. And he could feel abrupt turns. The pilot was

military, so he was using the rudder. Civilian pilots avoid using the rudder. Using the rudder makes the plane slew, like a car skids. Passengers don’t like the feeling. So civilian pilots turn by juicing the engines on one side and backing off on the others. Then the plane comes around smoothly. But military pilots don’t care about their passengers’ comfort. It’s not like they’ve bought tickets.

‘We’re the Bureau,’ Deerfield said. ‘We can make your life very difficult.’ Reacher shook his head. ‘My life’s already very difficult,’ he said. ‘Nothing you guys can do to make it any harder. But you can stop with the threats, anyway. Because I’ll keep your secret.

‘But we’ll be watching you,’ Deerfield said. ‘Always. Never forget that.’ Reacher smiled again. ‘Well, don’t let me catch you at it,’ he said. ‘Because you should remember what happened to Petrosian. You guys never forget that, OK?’

But we’ll be watching you,’ Deerfield said. ‘Always. Never forget that.’ Reacher smiled again. ‘Well, don’t let me catch you at it,’ he said. ‘Because you should remember what happened to Petrosian. You guys never forget that, OK?’