Running Blind (The Visitor) by Lee Child Page B

for a smart guy. You saying you’re not a smart guy?”
    Reacher stared at her. “There are thousands of guys as smart as me.”
    “No, there are millions, you conceited son of a bitch,” she said. “But then we started narrowing it down some. A smart guy, a loner, Army, knew both victims, movements unaccounted for, a brutal vigilante personality. That narrowed it down from millions to thousands to hundreds to tens, maybe all the way on down to you.”
    There was silence.
    “Me?” Reacher said to her. “You’re crazy.”
    He turned to Deerfield, who was sitting silent and impassive.
    “ You think I did it?”
    Deerfield shrugged. “Well, if you didn’t, it was somebody exactly like you. And I know you put two guys in the hospital. You’re already in big trouble for that. This other matter, I’m not familiar with the case. But the Bureau trusts its experts. That’s why we hire them, after all.”
    “They’re wrong,” Reacher said.
    “But can you prove that?”
    Reacher stared at him. “Do I have to? What about innocent until proven guilty?”
    Deerfield just smiled. “Please, let’s stay in the real world, OK?”
    There was silence.
    “Dates,” Reacher said. “Give me dates, and places.”
    More silence. Deerfield stared into space.
    “Callan was seven weeks ago,” Blake said. “Cooke was four.”
    Reacher scanned back in time. Four weeks was the start of fall, seven took him into late summer. Late summer, he had done nothing at all. He had been battling the yard. Three months of unchecked growth had seen him outdoors every day with scythes and hoes and other unaccustomed tools in his hands. He had gone days at a time without even seeing Jodie. She had been tied up with legal cases. She had spent a week overseas, in England. He couldn’t recall for sure which week it had been. It was a lonely spell, his time absorbed with beating back rampant nature, a foot at a time.
    The start of fall, he’d transferred his energies inside the house. There were things to be done. But he’d done them all alone. Jodie had stayed in the city, working her way up the greasy pole. There were random nights together. But that was all. No trips anywhere, no ticket stubs, no hotel registers, no stamps in his passport. No alibis. He looked at the seven agents ranged against him.
    “I want my lawyer now,” he said.
    THE TWO LOCAL sentries took him back to the first room. His status had changed. This time they stayed inside with him, one standing on each side of the closed door. Reacher sat in the plastic garden chair and ignored them. He listened to the tireless fluttering of the ventilation inside the exposed trunking in the ceiling, and waited, thinking about nothing.
    He waited almost two hours. The two sentries stood patiently by the door, not looking at him, not speaking, never moving. He stayed in his chair, leaning back, staring at the ducts above his head. There were twin systems up there. One blew fresh air into the room and the other sucked stale air out. The layout was clear. He traced the flow with his eyes and imagined big lazy fans outside on the roof, turning slowly in opposite directions, making the building breathe like a lung. He imagined the spent breath from his body floating away into the Manhattan night sky and out toward the Atlantic. He imagined the damp molecules drifting and diffusing in the atmosphere, catching in the breeze. Two hours, they could be twenty miles offshore. Or thirty. Or forty. It would depend on the conditions. He couldn’t remember if it had been a windy night. He guessed not. He recalled the fog. Fog would blow away if there was a decent wind. So it was a still night, and therefore his spent breath was probably hanging sullenly in the air right above the lazy fans.
    Then there were people in the corridor outside and the door opened and the sentries stepped out and Jodie walked in. She blazed against the gray walls. She was wearing a pastel peach dress with a wool coat over