“A mess, right?” Blake said. “All started by pesky little women like Callan and Cooke?”
Reacher said nothing. Cozo was drumming his fingers on the mahogany.
“I want to get back to the business with Petrosian,” he said.
Reacher swiveled his gaze the other way. “There is no business with Petrosian. I never heard of anybody called Petrosian.”
Deerfield yawned and looked at his watch. He pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.
“It’s past midnight, you know that?” he said.
“Did you treat Callan and Cooke with courtesy?” Blake asked.
Reacher squinted through the glare at Cozo and then turned back to Blake. The hot yellow light from the ceiling was bouncing off the red tint of the mahogany and making his bloated face crimson.
“Yes, I treated them with courtesy.”
“Did you see them again after you turned their cases over to the prosecutor?”
“Once or twice, I guess, in passing.”
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“Did they trust you?”
Reacher shrugged. “I guess so. It was my job to make them trust me. I had to get all kinds of intimate details from them.”
“You had to do that kind of thing with many women?”
“There were hundreds of cases. I handled a couple dozen, I guess, before they set up special units to deal with them all.”
“So give me a name of another woman whose case you handled.”
Reacher shrugged again and scanned back through a succession of offices in hot climates, cold climates, big desks, small desks, sun outside the window, cloud outside, hurt and outraged women stammering out the details of their betrayal.
“Rita Scimeca,” he said. “She would be a random example.”
Blake paused and Lamarr reached down to the floor and came up with a thick file from her briefcase. She slid it sideways. Blake opened it and turned pages. Traced down a long list with a thick finger and nodded.
“OK,” he said. “What happened with Ms. Scimeca?”
“She was Lieutenant Scimeca,” Reacher said. “Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The guys called it hazing, she called it gang rape.”
“And what was the outcome?”
“She won her case. Three men spent time in military prison and were dishonorably discharged.”
“And what happened to Lieutenant Scimeca?”
Reacher shrugged again. “At first she was happy enough. She felt vindicated. Then she felt the Army had been ruined for her. So she mustered out.”
“Where is she now?”
“I have no idea.”
“Suppose you saw her again someplace? Suppose you were in some town somewhere and you saw her in a store or a restaurant? What would she do?”
“I have no idea. She’d probably say hello, I guess. Maybe we’d talk awhile, have a drink or something.”
“She’d be pleased to see you?”
“Pleased enough, I guess.”
“Because she would remember you as a nice guy?”
Reacher nodded, “it’s a hell of an ordeal. Not just the event itself, but the process afterward, too. So the investigator has to build up a bond. The investigator has to be a friend and a supporter.”
“So the victim becomes your friend?”
fuMliftA (£>Ulu( 33
“If you do it right, yes.”
“What would happen if you knocked on Lieutenant Scimeca’s door?”
“I don’t know where she lives.”
“Suppose you did. Would she let you in?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would she recognize you?”
“Probably.”
“And she’d remember you as a friend?”
“T ”
1 guess.
“So you knock on her door, she’d let you in, right? She’d open up the door and see this old friend of hers, so she’d let you right in, offer you coffee or something. Talk a while, catch up on old times.”
“Maybe,” Reacher said. “Probably.”
Blake nodded and stopped talking. Lamarr put her hand on his arm and he bent to listen as she whispered in his ear. He nodded again and turned to Deerfield and whispered in turn. Deerfield glanced at Cozo. The three agents from Quantico sat back as he did so, just an imperceptible movement, but with enough body language in it to say OK, we’re interested. Cozo stared back at Deerfield in alarm. Deerfield leaned forward, staring straight through his glasses at Reacher.
“This is a very confusing situation,” he said.