Running Blind(The Visitor) - By Lee Child Page 0,29

the Hudson River and through Newburgh. Then she turned south on the Thruway and squirmed back in her seat, like she was settling in for the trip.

"You never fly?" he asked.

"I used to, years ago," she said. "But I can't now."

"Why not?"

"Phobia," she said simply. "I'm terrified, is all."

"You carrying your gun?" he asked.

She lifted a hand from the wheel and pulled back the flap of her jacket. He saw the straps of a shoulder holster, stiff and brown and shiny, curving next to her breast.

"Would you use it?"

"Of course, if I had to."

"Then you're dumb to be scared of flying. Driving a car and getting in gunfights are a million times more likely to kill you."

She nodded. "I guess I understand that, statistically."

"So your fear is irrational," he said.

"I guess," she said.

There was silence. Just the hum of the motor.

"The Bureau got many irrational agents?" he asked.

She made no reply. Just reddened slightly under the pallor. He sat in the silence, watching the road reel in ahead. Then he started to feel bad for riding her. She was under pressure, from more than one direction.

"I'm sorry about your sister," he said.

"Why?" she asked.

"Well, I know you're worried about her."

She kept her eyes on the road. "Blake tell you that? While I was making the coffee?"

"He mentioned it."

"She's my stepsister, actually," she said. "And any worrying I do about her situation is strictly professional, OK?"

"Sounds like you don't get along."

"Does it? Why should it? Should I care more just because I'm close to one of the potential victims?"

"You expected me to. You expected me to be ready to avenge Amy Callan, just because I knew her and liked her."

She shook her head. "That was Blake. I would have expected you to care anyway, as a human being, except in your case I wouldn't, actually, because you match the killer himself for profile."

"Your profile is wrong. Sooner you face up to that, sooner you'll catch the guy."

"What do you know about profiling?"

"Nothing at all. But I didn't kill those women, and I wouldn't have, either. Therefore you're wasting your time looking for a guy like me, because I'm exactly the wrong type of a guy to be looking for. Stands to reason, right? Borne out by the facts."

"You like facts?"

He nodded. "A lot better than I like bullshit."

"OK, try these facts," she said. "I just caught a killer in Colorado, without ever even being there. A woman was raped and murdered in her house, blows to the head with a blunt instrument, left posed on her back with her face covered by a cloth. A violent sexual crime, spontaneously committed, no forced entry, no damage or disruption to the house. The woman was smart and young and pretty. I reasoned the perpetrator was a local man, older, lived within walking distance, knew the victim, had been in the house many times before, was sexually attracted to the victim, but was either inadequate or repressed as to communicating it to her appropriately."

"And?"

"I issued that profile and the local police department made an arrest within an hour. The guy confessed immediately. "

Reacher nodded. "He was a handyman. He killed her with his hammer."

For the first time in thirty minutes, her eyes left the road. She stared at him. "You can't possibly know that. It hasn't been in the paper here."

"Educated guess. The cloth over her face means she knew him and he knew her, and he was ashamed to leave her uncovered. Probably made him feel remorseful, maybe like she was watching him from beyond the grave or something. That kind of semifunctional thinking is indicative of a low IQ. The lack of forced entry and the lack of disruption to the house both mean he was familiar with the place. He'd been there many times before. Easy enough to figure."

"Why easy?"

"Because what kind of a guy with a low IQ has been visiting with a smart and pretty girl many times before? Got to be a gardener or a handyman. Probably not a gardener, because they work outside and they tend to come at least in pairs. So I figured a handyman, probably tormented by how young and cute she was. One day he can't stand it anymore, he makes some kind of a clumsy advance, she's embarrassed by it, she rejects it, maybe even laughs at it, he freaks out and rapes her and kills her. He's a handyman, got his tools with him, he's accustomed to using them, he'd use