The Midnight Line

Chapter 22

They drove back to the old homestead, where Mackenzie’s rental was parked, at an angle, like a garish red blot on the old-timey landscape.

She said, “Now I’m worried about the timescale. Her comb was lost at least a year and a half ago. We know that. Possibly months before. This is likely a two-year thing. Or more. But her ring left Wyoming just six weeks ago. Doesn’t that feel like a final threshold? Like some kind of end stage?”

Reacher said, “Did you call the army during your search?”

“They told me nothing. They had privacy concerns. Any other time, I would have been cheering them on.”

“I called a place I know. I pulled some strings. They didn’t have much. They had a list of her West Point scores. She did very well.”

“I remember.”

“They had a list of her deployments. Iraq and Afghanistan. Five tours and out.”

“OK.”

“They had a list of her medals.”

“I didn’t know she won any.”

“She won a Bronze Star.”

“For what?”

“The regulation says the Bronze Star medal is awarded to individuals who distinguish themselves in a combat theater by heroism, outstanding achievement, or meritorious service.”

“I didn’t know,” Mackenzie said again.

“She also won a Purple Heart.”

Mackenzie was quiet a long moment.

First she said, “I didn’t know.”

Then she said, “What for?”

Last she said, “Oh, no.”

Reacher didn’t recite the regulation. Not happy listening. Awarded to any member of the armed forces who has been wounded, killed, or who has died or may die of wounds.

Mackenzie said, “How bad?”

“Can’t tell,” Reacher said. “Right now it’s just the name of a medal. Lots of people have them. As a matter of fact I have one. Truth is none of them come cheap. Most of them leave a mark. But you heal up and you walk away. Almost always. Certainly a big percentage. Doesn’t have to be bad news.”

Mackenzie said, “Iraq and Afghanistan were all bad news.”

She looked ahead at her sleek red car.

She said, “I’m not going home. I’m staying here. She’s close. You said so yourself. She’s in trouble. Maybe she lost an arm. Maybe she’s a disabled veteran with nowhere to live and nothing to eat.”

She told them to follow her back to the Hertz office, and then take her to see Billy’s place.

Nakamura carried her laptop down the corridor to her lieutenant’s corner suite. She played the captured voicemail. We just got a message from Montana. They sent a rider down especially. They have a Fed up there asking questions. He just left Billings.

She said, “I saw the rider from Montana. He was there four minutes.”

Her lieutenant said, “Does this get us anywhere?”

“My friend in the lab is doing great work with predicting the phone numbers.”

“What does he want, the Medal of Honor?”

“A pat on the back would be good. You know, stick your head in, say hi.”

“What do you want?”

“It would be good to know what kind of Fed they had up there in Billings. And it would be good to know who sent the warning. Was it a subsidiary, an affiliate, a franchise, or just a friendly bunch of guys all loosely in the same boat?”

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“Call the Billings PD and ask them who was in town last night. They’ll know, because they’ll have gotten a courtesy call ahead of time.”

“And this guy is going to Wyoming next? Remind me again, why should I care?”

“Because Scorpio got one of his tentacles trodden on. If we knew exactly who he’s scared of, maybe we could work out exactly what he’s doing.”

The lieutenant called through a closed hutch to his secretary, and told her to get a number for whatever captain or commissioner or other fancy rank was top boy in the Billings PD, over in Montana. And then to dial it, and put it on line one.

They got to Billy’s place in the late afternoon. The sun was over the distant mountains. The pronghorns were throwing shadows taller than they were. The colors were different.

The place was still empty.

They went in the kitchen door, and up to the slept-in bedroom. To the closet. Reacher put the shoeboxes on the bed. Mackenzie whirred her finger down the wadded cash, and then poked through the jewelry, pushing her nail through the inch of clinking metal, gathering necklace chains as fine as hair, tumbling high school rings aside, and brassy wise-guy pinkie-finger signet rings, with black onyx faces and tiny off-center chips of diamond.

She said, “Was the pawn shop window like this?”

“Exactly like that,” Reacher said.

“Poor Rose.”

“Do you know this area?”

“I know Laramie. Or I used to. Down here was all railroad land. Before the track was laid they used mules. Hence the name, probably.”

“No old friends or relatives?”

“Seven months of the year the road is closed. This was the other side of the world to us.”

“Nowhere she would remember?”

“From later on, probably bars and restaurants downtown. Some stores, possibly. Sometimes we went out to the university. For music, or whatever. But I don’t think she would want to live out there now. We’re thirty-five years old.”

“So where?”

“Forget what I said. Ignore familiarity. I was wrong. I was desperate. Every idea looked like a good idea. Maybe she chose unfamiliarity instead. Somewhere she didn’t know at all.”

“She knows Wyoming.”

“Exactly. To have both is just right. Familiarity and unfamiliarity.”

Reacher checked the view from the bedroom window. There was dust on the dirt road. A long cloud, vivid red in the softening light, spiraling and drifting. A tiny dot at its head, winking in the low sun.

Six minutes, maybe.

“Coming here?” Bramall said.

“Maybe,” Reacher said. “Maybe not. But I hope so. I hope it’s Billy. He knows where Rose lives. From plowing her driveway, if nothing else.”

“He might have his deer rifle.”

“Has he listened to his voicemail yet?”

“We didn’t check. I guess he could have snuck home at some point. A fast in-and-out. We’ve been gone for hours.”

“OK,” Reacher said.

“How do you want to do this?”

“Inside, obviously. Downstairs would be best. There’s a poker on the fireplace. I’ll head in that direction. You take the other side. Find what you can. Look for steak knives. Often in a sideboard drawer.”

Mackenzie said, “What should I do?”

“You go check if the phone is still there. On the desk in the back parlor. If it is, it should say one new message. That’s how Mr. Bramall left it. If it’s there but it’s showing a regular screen, that means Billy came back and listened to it, but left the phone home again for whatever reason. So check it out and tell us which. Shout it out good and loud. Then we’ll know what we’re dealing with here. We’ll know how hard to hit the guy.”

“If it’s Billy,” Bramall said.

“Hope for the best,” Reacher said.

They went down the stairs, Reacher first, heading left, then Bramall, heading right, and last Mackenzie, looping back toward the parlor. Reacher took a look out the front window. The dust was closer. It was lit up from within by the setting sun. Four minutes, maybe. He moved on to the fireplace and picked up the poker. The yard of iron, with the hook at the end, like a hitchhiker’s thumb.

Mackenzie called out, “The phone is still here and now it says two new messages.”

Reacher paused a beat.

Then he called back, “Listen to the second one.”

He heard a static whisper from the distant earpiece as the first message was skipped, and then more as the second was played. He figured there might be some kind of urgency behind the faint breathy cadence.

Mackenzie called out, “It’s Arthur Scorpio leaving another voicemail for Billy. They got a warning about a federal agent leaving Montana for parts unknown. And Scorpio wants Billy to call him back. He sounds mad. He said, don’t make me worried, Billy. Not in a nice way.”

Bramall said, “Got to be either ATF or DEA in Montana. They both have western task forces.”

Reacher said, “I don’t care.”

They waited.

From the shadows deep in the room Reacher saw a truck nose through the trees and come out at the top of the driveway. Not a pick-up truck. It was a Chevy Suburban SUV, the large size. Black in color, but caked red from the road. A basic specification. Cheap wheels, not much chrome. An aftermarket antenna, mounted in the center of the roof.

It crunched over the dirt and came to a stop not far from Bramall’s Toyota. A guy got out. He was broad but not tall, maybe fifty-something, with a lot of hard miles on his clock. He was dressed in gray flannel pants and a tweed sport coat. He moved with a certain amount of grace. Maybe once an athlete. Given his shape, probably field not track. Maybe he had put the shot, or thrown the discus.

Now he worked for the government.

The pants and the coat and the truck made that clear.

“Relax, guys,” Reacher called. “Step down to Defcon Two.”

Mackenzie called back, “What does that mean?”

“We’ll try talking to this guy. Before we do anything else.”

“Is it Billy?”

“I’m pretty sure not,” Reacher said.

Out on the dirt the guy tweaked the tails of his coat and squared up his shoulders and headed for the porch. On the way he took out an ID wallet and held it ready. Reacher saw straps under his coat, for a shoulder holster.

They heard footsteps on the porch boards, and then a knock at the door.