There was suddenly tension in the air. Lamarr stared down at the table. Blake was silent. Then he nodded.
“You’ve got three minutes, Reacher,” he said. “Tell us what’s on your mind.”
“You’re wrong about his motive,” Reacher said. “That’s what’s on my mind. It’s keeping you away from looking in the right places.”
“We’ve done this work already,” Lamarr said again.
“Well, we need to do it over,” Reacher said, gently. “Because we won’t find the guy if we’re looking in the wrong places. That stands to reason, right?”
“Do we need this?” Lamarr said.
“Two minutes and thirty seconds,” Blake said. “Give us what you’ve got, Reacher.”
Reacher took a breath. “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. Hes 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,
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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.”
“So?” Blake said again.
“So let me ask you a question. You got a problem with black people?”
“What?”
“Just answer the question.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Good or bad as anybody, right?”
“Sure. Good or bad.”
“What about women? Good or bad as anybody, right?”
Blake nodded. “Sure.”
“So what if some guy is saying to you that black people are no good, or women are no good?”
“I’d say he’s wrong.”
“You’d say he’s wrong, and you’d know he’s wrong, because deep down you know what the truth of the matter is.”
Blake nodded again. “Sure. So?”
“So that’s my experience, too. Racists are fundamentally wrong. Sexists, too. No room for argument about it. Fundamentally, it’s a completely irrational position to hold. So think about it. Any guy who gets in a big tantrum about this harassment issue is a guy who’s wrong. Any guy who blames the victims is wrong. And any guy who goes around looking for revenge against the victims is very wrong. He’s got a screw loose. His brain doesn’t function right. He’s not rational. He’s not dealing with reality. He can’t be. Deep down, he’s some kind of an idiot.”
” C }”
So?
“But our guy isn’t an idiot. We just agreed he’s very smart. Not eccentric smart, not lunatic smart, but real-world smart, rational and pragmatic and practical. He’s dealing with reality. We just agreed on that.”
“So?”
“So he’s not motivated by anger at these women. He can’t be. It’s not possible. You can’t be real-world smart and real-world dumb, all at the same time. You can’t be rational and irrational. You can’t deal with reality and simultaneously not deal with it.”
There was silence again.
“We know what his motive is,” Lamarr said. “What else could it be? The target group is too exact for it to be anything else.”
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Reacher shook his head. “Like it or not, the way you’re describing his motive, you’re calling him deranged. But a deranged guy couldn’t commit these crimes.”
Lamarr clamped her teeth. Reacher heard them click and grind. He watched her. She shook her head. Her thin hair moved with it, stiff, like it was full of lacquer.
“So what’s his real motive, smart guy?” she asked, her voice low and quiet.
“I don’t know,” Reacher said.
“You don’t know? You better be kidding. You question my expertise and you don’t know?’
“It’ll be something simple. It always is, right? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the simple thing is the correct thing. Maybe doesn’t work like that for you guys down here, but that’s how it works out there in the real world.”
Nobody said a word. Then the door opened and Poulton walked into the silence, small and sandy with a faint smile hanging there under his mustache. The smile disappeared as soon as the atmosphere hit him. He sat down quietly next to Lamarr and pulled a stack of paper in front of him, defensively.