The Midnight Line (12 page)

He waited.

It slowed.

The dust cloud caught up with it.

It turned in at the driveway.

Billy's ride would be a pick-up truck, Reacher figured. Snowplows usually were. Winter tires, chains, a hydraulic mechanism for the blade, extra spotlights mounted high. All detached in the summer, leaving a familiar silhouette. Hood, cab, bed.

Which Reacher didn't see.

It wasn't a pick-up truck.

It was big and square and boxy. An SUV. A black SUV. Travel stained and dusty. It flashed in and out of sight through the trees. Then it pulled clear and drove the last hundred yards over the beaten red dirt.

It slowed and turned and came to a stop.

It was a Toyota Land Cruiser.

It had Illinois plates.

Reacher watched from the upstairs window. The black SUV parked a respectful distance from the house. The driver's door opened. A man stepped down. A small guy, neat and compact, in a dark suit and a shirt and a tie. Terry Bramall. From Chicago. Retired FBI. The missing persons specialist. Last seen the day before, in Rapid City, in the breakfast place opposite Arthur Scorpio's laundromat.

The guy stood still for a long moment, and then he set out walking toward the house, with a purposeful stride.

Reacher went down the stairs. He made it to the bottom and heard a knock on the door. He opened up. Bramall was standing on the porch. He had taken a polite step back. His hair was brushed. His suit was the same, but his shirt and his tie were different. He had the kind of look on his face that Reacher recognized. The kind of look he had used himself, many times. Open, inquisitive, inoffensive, faintly apologetic for the interruption, but no-nonsense all the same. An experienced investigator's look. Which changed for a split second, first to surprise, then to puzzlement, and then finally it came back the same as before.

“Mr. Bramall,” Reacher said.

“Mr. Reacher,” Bramall said. “I saw you yesterday in the coffee shop in Rapid City. And the night before in the convenience store. You called me and left a message.”

“Correct.”

“I assume your first name isn't Billy.”

“You assume right.”

“Then may I ask what you're doing here?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

“May I come in?”

“Not my house. Not for me to say.”

“Yet you seem to be making yourself at home.”

Reacher looked beyond Bramall's shoulder at the view. The dust cloud over the dirt road had settled. The pronghorn herd had gone back to placid grazing. Nothing was moving. No one was coming.

He said, “What do you want from Billy?”

“Information,” Bramall said.

“He's not here. Probably been gone about twenty-four hours. Or more. Scorpio left him a voicemail around this time yesterday and it was still showing on his phone as a new message. It hadn't been picked up yet.”

“He went out without his phone?”

“It was charging. Maybe it's not his main phone. It looks like a burner. Maybe it's for special purposes only.”

“Did you listen to the message?”

“Yes.”

“What did it say?”

“Scorpio asked Billy to shoot me with a deer rifle from behind a tree.”

“To shoot you?”

“He included a description.”

“That's not very nice.”

“I agree.”

Bramall said, “We should talk.”

“On the porch,” Reacher said. “In case Billy comes back.”

Four eyes were better than two. They sat side by side in Billy's wooden chairs, with Bramall gazing west of dead ahead, and Reacher gazing east. They talked into the void in front of them, not looking at each other, which made the conversation easier in some respects, and harder in others.

Bramall said, “Tell me what you know.”

Reacher said, “You're retired.”

“That's what you know? Hardly relevant. Or even true. I'm pursuing a second career.”

“I mean you're retired FBI. Which means you don't get to use FBI bullshit anymore. As in, you don't get to ask all the questions and then walk away. You get to give as well as take.”

“How do you know I was FBI?”

“A police detective in Rapid City told me. Name of Nakamura.”

“She must have done some research.”

“That's what detectives do.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Who are you looking for?”

“I'm afraid I'm bound by a certain degree of confidentiality.”

Reacher said nothing.

Bramall said, “I don't even know who you are.”

“Jack Reacher. No middle name. Retired military police. Some of your guys came to us for training.”

“And some of yours came to us.”

“So we're on an equal footing. Give and take, Mr. Bramall.”

“Rank?”

“Does it matter?”

“You know it does.”

“Terminal at major.”

“Unit?”

“Mostly the 110th MP.”

“Which was?”

“Like the FBI, but with better haircuts.”

“Is the military connection why you're here?”

“Should it be?”

“I'm serious,” Bramall said. “Clients like discretion. Most of the time I make my living by keeping things quiet. For all I know, you work for a website now.”

“I don't. Whatever that means.”

“Who do you work for?”

“I don't work.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Tell me about your client, Mr. Bramall. Broad strokes, if you like. No names at this point. No identifying details.”

“You can call me Terry.”

“And you can call me Reacher. And you can quit stalling.”

“My client is someone in the Chicago area worried about a family member.”

“Worried why?”

“No contact for a year and a half.”

“What took you to Rapid City?”

“Land line calls in old phone records.”

“What brought you here?”

“The same.”

“Was the family with the missing member originally a Wyoming family?”

Bramall said nothing.

“There are hundreds of families in Wyoming,” Reacher said. “Maybe even thousands. You won't be giving anything away.”

“Yes,” Bramall said. “Originally it was a Wyoming family. From the other side of the Snowy Range. About sixty miles from here. Maybe seventy. That's about two blocks away, by Wyoming standards.”

Reacher said, “Had the family member in question spent time overseas?”

“Give and take, Mr. Reacher. You're retired too.”

Reacher checked his part of the horizon, from the dirt road out past Mule Crossing's forlorn buildings, to the two-lane. No movement. Nothing coming. He checked Bramall's part too, tracing the dirt road west until it disappeared in the hills. No dust. No movement. Nothing coming.

He took the ring out of his pocket. He balanced it on his palm. He held out his hand. Bramall took the ring from him. He looked at it. He took out a pair of tortoiseshell reading glasses from an inside pocket. He read the engraving on the inner face.

S.R.S. 2005
.

He said, “Now we really need to talk.”

Reacher told him the story. The bus out of Milwaukee, and the comfort stop, and the pawn shop, and Jimmy Rat in the biker bar, and Arthur Scorpio in the Rapid City laundromat, and the tale about how a guy named Porterfield brought him the ring, which had proved to be a lie, because of the big sensation with either the bear or the mountain lion, or both.

Bramall said, “That was a year and a half ago?”

Reacher nodded. “The start of spring last year.”

“Which was when my client got worried.”

“If you say so.”

“And you're here in his house because you think Billy replaced Porterfield in the ring-transportation business?”

“I think it's likely.”

“Why?”

“I'll show you,” Reacher said. He checked the view again, both ways, and saw no one coming. He led Bramall into the house, and up the stairs, and to Billy's bedroom. To the closet. He showed him the shoeboxes, one crammed with cash, the other rattling and tinkling with cheap gold jewelry.

“Drug dealers,” Bramall said. “Don't you think? Small time. Home-cooked meth or cheap heroin up from Mexico. Twenty bucks sees you right, and if you can't pay you trade your rings and your necklaces. Or you steal someone else's.”

“I thought it was all pain pills now,” Reacher said.

“That boom is over,” Bramall said. “Now it's back to how it used to be. Scorpio is the wholesaler, employing first Porterfield and now Billy as his local retailer, using the first guy as a decoy and secretly telling the second guy to get rid of you. He doesn't like scrutiny.”

“Possible,” Reacher said.

“You got another coherent explanation?”

“Who's your client?”

“A woman in Lake Forest named Tiffany Jane Mackenzie. Serena Rose Sanderson's twin sister. Married, hence the different name. They were close as children, but pretty soon went their separate ways. Mackenzie's living the dream. Big house, rich husband. She didn't altogether approve of her sister's career choice. But blood is thicker than water. There was occasional contact. Until the start of spring last year. How thorough was the investigation about the bear and the mountain lion?”

“Very,” Reacher said. “By rural standards, anyway. The sheriff looks solid. There was only one body, and it was all Porterfield. They knew from his dental records and the keys in his pocket.”

“So you think Sanderson is still alive?”

“Probably. The ring showed up in Rapid City about six weeks ago, and in Wisconsin about two weeks later. I'm guessing they move stuff along pretty quickly. The sheriff said Porterfield's car had a lot of miles. He was probably running back and forth pretty regularly. I imagine Billy is too. What we've got here in the shoebox is probably just a few weeks' worth. The sheriff said Porterfield had cash in his closet too. A similar amount. Small time, maybe, but it seems to add up.”

“So where is Billy now?”

Reacher stepped to the window and checked the view. No one coming, either east or west. He said, “I have no idea where Billy is. There are dishes in the sink. Feels like he stepped out for a minute.”

“Show me the phone.”

Reacher led Bramall down the stairs, to the small parlor in back. To the phone on the desk. Bramall stabbed at buttons and played the message again.
He's like the Incredible Hulk. Don't even let him see you. But get on it, OK? He's got to go, because he's a random loose end
.

Bramall said, “You took a risk coming here.”

“Getting up in the morning is a risk. Anything could happen.”

“Did you know Sanderson?”

“No,” Reacher said. “I was already out eight years before 2005.”

“Then what's your interest?”

“You wouldn't understand.”

“Why not?”

“I'm not sure I understand.”

“Try me.”

“I felt sad when I saw the ring. Simple as that. It wasn't right.”

“You a West Pointer too?”

“Long time ago.”

“Where's your ring?”

“I didn't buy one.”

Bramall pressed more buttons. Checked the call log, looked for old voicemails. Didn't find any. He went to another menu and chose a keep-as-new option. The screen went back to announcing one new message, the way it was when Reacher found it. Deniability. Score one for the Bureau.

Bramall said, “Leaving dishes in his sink doesn't mean much. Maybe he's just a slob. Leaving the phone at home doesn't necessarily mean much either. Probably doesn't work in the hills. No signal. Right here he's got a direct line of sight to the tower in Laramie. Maybe he never carries a phone with him.”

Reacher said, “Scorpio seems to have expected some kind of an instant response.”

“Do you believe the story about the bears and the mountain lions?”

“The sheriff has his doubts. He thinks maybe Porterfield was stabbed or gut shot and dumped in the woods to let nature take its course.”

“Maybe Billy did it. Maybe he took over from Porterfield by force. Like an armed coup. Now maybe someone else has done the same thing to Billy. Live by the sword, die by the sword. What goes around comes around.”

“I don't care,” Reacher said. “I'm here to find Sanderson. That's all.”

“Might not be a happy ending. Not if she traded her ring to a two-bit dope dealer. You might not like what you find.”

“Someone else might have stolen it. You said so yourself.”

“I sure hope so,” Bramall said. “Because sooner or later I'll have to give the sister the news. And then give her my invoice. Sometimes that doesn't go down so well.”

“How big of an invoice?”

“She has a house on the lake. She can afford it.”

“You worth it?”

“Usually.”

“So what's your next move?”

“I think she's close by. This feels like the end of the line. I think Billy is the final interface with the public. We're down to one degree of separation. Either she gave the ring to him herself or a neighbor stole it and gave it to him.”

“Not bad for the FBI,” Reacher said. “Plus Billy drives the snowplow. He knows all the local roads. Ideal cover for getting around and supplying his customers. Never held up by the weather, either. But his retail territory must be huge. Like you said, two blocks is seventy miles out here. All the way to Sanderson's childhood home, as a matter of fact. I assume you've already looked there?”

“The assumption is Sanderson won't go back. Her sister was sure of it.”

“Why?”

“She didn't explain. So knowing that, where would you start?”

“I could tell you, but then I'd have to bill you.”

Bramall said, “Did you park your car in the barn?”

Reacher said, “I don't have a car.”

“Then how did you get all the way out here?”

“Hitchhiked and walked.”

“Suppose I let you ride in my truck?”

“That would be nice.”

“Suppose you shut up about a bill?”

“Deal,” Reacher said.

“So where?”

“What other information did the sister give you? Any names or places?”

“She says Sanderson was always very cagey. Maybe embarrassed, maybe upset. She never mentioned locations. She never said what she was doing. They could go three months without talking.”

“Is that usual for twins?”

“Twins are siblings, same as anyone else.”

“She got nothing at all?”