The Midnight Line (24 page)

Stackley saw the cowboys step back. He recognized them from the day before. The same three guys. Partly they were moving to get out of his way, and partly to form up like a welcoming committee. Or like a guard of honor. Deep down Stackley enjoyed dealing dope. Customers were so grateful and enthusiastic. Not like some jobs he had worked.

Then beyond the cowboys he saw the dusty black Toyota. Right there. The actual truck he had called Scorpio about. He had described it, parked on the shoulder of the dirt road, like a cop, with the two men and the woman in it, who folks said had been asking questions. One of the men was big.

Stackley had called it in, and had gotten his reply.

He looked at the house. All quiet. The door was closed.

He looked right, at the far tree line.

Nothing there.

He looked left, at the rocks near the edge of the ravine.

Three people sitting on them.

An old man in a suit.

A pretty woman.

And a very big guy.

Stackley stopped his truck in the mouth of the driveway. He paused a second, and then shut it down. He got out and led the eager cowboys back to the camper door. Where he did something he never did. He let them see inside. He pulled back his blanket a little too far, as if carelessly, and he exposed the boxes, dozens of them, most still shrink-wrapped, some opened but still mostly full, all white and clean and printed with American writing. Behind his shoulder he felt the hum of desire. Which was good. He needed his new pals to feel what he had to offer.

He huddled them close, and he told them what they could do for him, and what he could do for them. Delegation. Rule one in the modern environment. Especially against a guy so big.

Reacher saw them cluster at the back of the truck. They all looked inside. Inspecting the merchandise, maybe. They seemed happy with the quality, or the quantity, or both. They reminded Reacher of his mother, a lifetime ago, on a foreign base somewhere, huddling on the curb with the other army wives, when the fish truck came to call. Then Stackley moved in close, and started on a big discussion. The price, maybe. Important to them all, in different ways.

Mackenzie said, “Rose isn't coming out of the house. I guess her friends are buying for her. Maybe they always do. Which would mean Billy never saw her. He couldn't have helped us anyway.”

Reacher said, “We need to talk about Billy.”

“Why?”

“He's in the system now. The Boy Detective has already talked to him once.”

“He's denying everything.”

“Will he forever?”

“I assume you guys were kidding about the rubber hoses and the nightsticks.”

“He'll take a deal. Or he'll cough it up by accident. He doesn't know which pieces they're missing. Sooner or later he'll say the wrong thing. It would be prudent to assume the clock is already ticking. We might want to revisit the timescale for getting out of here. No point still being around when the supply cuts off. Definitely no point still being around when the Feds show up. I know how hard this is for both of you, but those kind of problems would make it much worse.”

“You don't think a month is possible?”

Reacher saw money change hands, behind the truck at the mouth of the driveway.

He said, “I think we should aim for a little faster.”

He saw small white boxes change hands in the other direction.

“How much faster?” Mackenzie asked.

“I told Mr. Bramall my instinct would be get out of here within two or three days.”

“Impossible.”

“How fast can you do it?”

The truck started up and turned around, and headed back down the driveway. The cowboys carried the small white boxes toward the house. They stacked half of them on the porch, outside the front door, and they took the rest away with them, down a path that curved through the trees, and out of sight.

“It's about finding the right doctor,” Mackenzie said. “She can't live without this stuff.”

“Ask your neighbors back home.”

“They go to rehab. We need a pusher.”

“We're sitting ducks here,” Reacher said. “Some kind of trouble is coming.”

Mackenzie spent another hour with her sister, and then she came out and said she was ready to go check out of the hotel. Back in four hours, she had promised. With her bags. Ready to stay as long as it took. Bramall shrugged, and finally agreed to do the same. Outside his comfort zone, but hey, second career. Reacher said he was already checked out. He never paid for more than a night at a time. His toothbrush was in his pocket. He had no other luggage. All in all he would prefer to stay in the peace and quiet, and see them later. Mackenzie went back in to tell her sister the updated arrangement, and then she and Bramall drove away.

Reacher sat on the porch step. Already his accustomed spot. Ahead of him the ravine widened and fell away. Beyond it the horizon was dusty orange, with ghostly blue mountains behind it. The air was clear and silent. He watched birds of prey riding thermals, and condensation trails eight miles up, and a chipmunk on a rock ten feet away.

Then behind him the front door opened.

The chipmunk disappeared.

The shared voice said, “Major Reacher?”

He stood up and turned around. She was in the doorway, in her silver track suit top. The hood was pulled forward. She was peering out from deep inside. Shadowy scars, and aluminum foil. Steady eyes.

She said, “I would like to continue yesterday's conversation.”

“Which part?”

“When I thought you were here on business.”

“I'm not.”

“I accept that. All I want is your opinion. You might know things I don't.”

“Come sit down here,” he said. “It's a beautiful day.”

She paused a beat, and then stepped out and crossed the porch. She was lithe and petite and moved like an athlete. Which she was. The infantry was an athletic discipline. She sat on the same step as Reacher, maybe a yard apart. She smelled of soap, and something astringent. The stuff on her face, he figured. Under the foil. Sideways on all he could see was the hood, pulled forward like a tunnel.

The chipmunk came out again.

She said, “I told you I had a friend whose case is still open.”

“Sy Porterfield,” he said.

“You are here on business.”

“No, but I picked things up along the way.”

“How much do you know about him?”

“Very little,” Reacher said. “Except he was your friend for a spell, and a rich Ivy Leaguer, and a Marine, and wounded, and he liked authenticity so much he would rather catch drips in a bucket than replace his leaky roof.”

“That's a fair summary.”

“Also he had three sealed files in the Pentagon.”

“I can't talk about those.”

“Then how can I give an opinion?”

“In theory,” she said. “Why would an investigation just die away?”

“All kinds of reasons. Maybe it wasn't what they hoped it was. Maybe it dead-ended. Maybe it was too hard all along. I would need to know more.”

“I can't tell you.”

“Then let me make an educated guess. Maybe it fell between two stools. The Pentagon seems to have the original file. Let's say two years ago Porterfield had something on his mind. Why would he call the Pentagon? That was not a natural reflex. Twelve years before he had been a combat lieutenant in the Marines. The Pentagon was never a part of his life. I bet he never even saw the place. I bet he didn't have the phone number. But he found it out and dropped a dime. Which means the thing on his mind must have had some kind of high-level military aspect. Then the Pentagon copied in the DEA, which means it must also have had some kind of high-level narcotics aspect. Maybe there was miscommunication. Maybe the Pentagon thought the DEA was dealing with it, and the DEA thought the Pentagon was dealing with it. So in the end no one dealt with it.”

“I can't talk about the details.”

“We know his house was broken into after he died.”

“Yes, I saw that. I went back a few times, just to walk around.”

“Looked like an old-fashioned black-bag job to me.”

“I agree it was neat.”

“You know who it was.”

“I can't talk about it.”

“You know what was taken.”

“Yes.”

“Will you answer one question?”

“Depends what it is.”

“Just a yes or no answer. That's all I need. No details, no background. Nothing more than you want to say.”

“Promise?”

“Just a yes or no. To put my mind at rest about something.”

“About what?”

“Do you know how Porterfield died?”

“Yes,” she said. “I was there.”

Special Agent Kirk Noble's division was based in Denver, Colorado. His office was a bland beige space temporarily brightened up by the gold from the shoebox he had taken from Billy's house in Wyoming. It was all laid out on his desk, all in an orderly fashion. All the gold trinkets. The crosses on the chains, the earrings, the bracelets, the charms, the chokers, the fashion rings, the wedding rings, the class rings. He had to fill out an inventory form. Description and value.

Some of it was junk. Some of it was pressed out of thin alloys no jeweler would have recognized. Twenty cents, literally, for some of the items. Others were merely mediocre. Seven bucks by weight for this, nine if you were lucky for that. Other items were better. There was an eighteen-carat wedding band, thick and heavy. A handsome piece. Fifty bucks in a pawn shop, easy. Same for a pair of earrings. Eighteen carat, solid and heavy. Two of them. Maybe sixty bucks together.

When he was finished he looked at his list. The right-hand column. The values. They made no sense. They were completely random. From practically zero all the way to a decent wad of cash. Stopping, crucially, at every price point along the way. Two bucks, three bucks, four bucks, all the way to more than sixty. Which was not how the business worked. It was not like a boutique delicatessen, where you bought a pinch of this and a twist of that. You bought a ten-dollar bag of brown powder for ten dollars. Or you didn't. Or you bought two for twenty dollars. Or three for thirty. What an economist would have called stair-step pricing.

Whereas Billy's pricing was notably granular. As if he was selling five-dollar bags, and six-dollar bags, and thirteen-dollar bags, and seventeen-dollar, and nine-dollar. Full service. Whatever the customer wanted. Filled there and then, and weighed on a scale.

Highly unlikely.

Therefore perhaps he wasn't selling bags of powder at all. Perhaps his product came in bulk. Perhaps for retail purposes the large quantities could be broken down, all the way to individual items if necessary, for folks with limited resources. Or cut with scissors into halves and quarters, for the truly broke.

Just like the old days.

Impossible.

He picked up his desk phone and called down to the jail.

He said, “I'm expecting a transfer from Oklahoma. Name of Billy something.”

The voice on the phone said, “We just processed him in.”

“Take him straight to an interview room. Tell him I have questions. I'll come down in a couple hours. Let him sweat till then.”

Nothing more than you want to say, Reacher had promised, and it turned out Rose Sanderson wanted to say nothing more. Not on the subject of Porterfield, at least. She just nodded to herself, inside her hood, as if the matter was settled.

Then she said, “My sister told me you asked how it felt to be pretty.”

“Yes,” he said.

“You knew about me by then.”

“It made sense.”

“I'm sure she gave a conflicted answer. She's still pretty. Deep down pretty people know other people feel they're getting something for nothing. They have to be aw-shucks about it. They have to say it makes them feel shallow. But now I can tell you. It makes them feel great. It's like bringing a gun to a knife fight. Sometimes I would dial it up and just mow them down, one by one, bam, bam, bam. It's a superpower. Like clicking the phasers from stun to kill. There's no point denying it. It's a significant evolutionary advantage. Like being as big as you are.”

“We should have children,” he said.

He heard a click of foil inside the hood. A smile, he hoped.

She said, “Those days are over.”

“Apparently Porterfield didn't agree.”

“We were friends, that's all.”

“There were two dents in the bed.”

“How do you know?”

“The guy who fixed his roof told a guy who told a guy who told us in a bar.”

“The roofer was looking at my bed?”

“Your bed? Sounds like you agree with him.”

She said, “Sy was different.”

He said, “What would it take to fix the infection?”

“A long course of IV antibiotics. It's a common thing. Most wounds get infected. The bacteria wall themselves off. It's hard to get rid of.”

“And you don't want to go to the hospital.”

“I didn't like it. I was an embarrassment. I was every soldier's worst fear. A disfiguring wound. The glamour was with the arms and legs. All that scientific technology. Titanium and carbon fiber. Some of those legs cost a million bucks. They looked better than new. Guys would wear shorts to show them off. Not me. I would have been a PR disaster.”

“You can get IVs at home,” Reacher said. “With a certain kind of doctor. Your sister will find one. The kind who will also advocate a very long slow glide path, when it comes to dependency issues. The kind who might want to maintain your current habit for at least another year, while you settle in.”

“I don't believe her.”

“That she wants to?”

“That she can.”

“She has money. This is the civilian healthcare system we're talking about here. She can get what she wants.”

“People will see me. It's a suburb.”