The Midnight Line

Chapter 12

Reacher arrived in downtown Laramie at six o’clock in the evening, after 152 miles in the passenger seat of an ancient Ford Bronco, driven by a guy who made his living turning logs into sculptures with a chainsaw. He let Reacher out on the corner of Third Street and Grand Avenue, which the guy seemed to regard as some kind of an exact geographic center. Which it might have been. But it was quiet. Everything had closed at five, except the bars and the restaurants, and it was still early for them.

Reacher turned a full circle and got his bearings. The railroad tracks lay to the west. The university was east. South was a straight shot to Colorado, and north was back toward Casper. He headed west for the tracks and stopped in at the first bar he liked the look of. It had a mirror on the wall with a bullet hole in it. As if some old desperado had come in mad about something. Maybe faked, maybe real. It was all the same to the mirror.

The room was quiet and the crowd was thin, and the barman had time on his hands. Reacher asked him directions to Mule Crossing. The guy said he had never heard of it.

“Where are you looking for?” some other guy called out. He had foam on his lip, from a long hard pull on a long-neck bottle. Maybe a helpful guy, maybe a busybody into everyone’s business, maybe a local expert eager to show off his specialist knowledge.

Or a mixture of all three.

“Mule Crossing,” Reacher said.

“Nothing there,” the guy said. “Except a firework store.”

“I heard it was a small town.”

“This is a small town. Mule Crossing is a wide spot in the road. There was a post office, but it closed twenty years ago. I think there’s a flea market in there now. Maybe you can get soda and potato chips. No gas, that’s for sure.”

“How many people live there?”

The guy took another pull on his bottle.

He said, “Five or six, maybe.”

“That all?”

“The flea market guy, for sure. Probably not the firework guy. Who would live above a firework store? Probably wouldn’t sleep a wink. I bet he drives in from somewhere else. But there’s a dirt road into the hills. People have cabins. Maybe four or five of them. According to the postal service it’s all officially Mule Crossing. Which is why they had a post office there, I guess. The Zip Code is about the size of Chicago. With five people. But hey, welcome to Wyoming.”

“Where is it exactly?”

“Forty minutes south. Take the state road out toward Colorado. Look for a billboard about bottle rockets.”

Reacher walked back to the corner of Third and Grand. He was optimistic about getting a ride. To his left was a university and straight ahead an hour away was legal weed. But it was getting dark. Might not be much to see. Clearly Mule Crossing was no kind of a bustling metropolis.

On the other hand, the flea market guy lived there.

He probably had a doorbell.

No time like the present.

Reacher walked south on Third Street, in the gutter, with his thumb out.

Gloria Nakamura rode the elevator two floors down to Computer Crimes, where she found her friend in his cubicle. He had torn her two phones out of their packaging. Now they were side by side on his desk above his keyboard. Their screens were blank.

“Sleep mode,” he said. “All is well.”

“You got the number?”

“You have to act it out. Pretend you’re a Chinese assembly worker. In fact don’t, because your job was just automated and now you’re not there at all. Pretend you’re a machine instead. The phone numbers are carried on the SIM cards, bought in bulk from the service providers, and installed fairly late in the process, I would think. Then the heat-sealed packaging goes on, with the cardboard insert, and the packages slide off the line one after the other into shipping cartons, which are taken away by another conveyor belt. How many in a box, do you think?”

Nakamura thought about it, and said, “Ten, probably. A place like that convenience store wouldn’t want more than ten at a time. Mom-and-pop pharmacies would be the same. The manufacturers must know their market. So it’s a small box. Bigger than a shoebox, but not by much.”

“And are the phone numbers sequential?”

“It would help.”

“Let’s assume they are. Why wouldn’t they be? There are plenty of new numbers to go around. So they fall off the line and go into the box in numerical order, one, two, three, all the way up to ten. So far so good. But we don’t know what happens when they’re unpacked. This is where you need to act it out. You slit the tape and you rest the box on the counter, and then you hang the contents on two pegs on a board behind the register. Talk me through it.”

Nakamura glanced at an imaginary counter, and then over her shoulder at a pair of imaginary pegs. She said, “First I would rotate the box so the plastic blisters were facing toward me. So that I could pick them up, and turn a 180, and place them on the pegs face-out. Any other way would be a contortion.”

The tech said, “And presumably they rode the conveyor belt with the blister upward and the flat side down, for stability. So if you have the blisters toward you, number one is nearest and number ten is farthest away. How many would you pick up at once?”

“I would do them one at a time. Those pegs are awkward.”

“Starting where? Front or back of the box?”

“Front,” she said.

“Which peg first?”

“The further one. More satisfying to fill that first. The nearer one is easier. Like a reward.”

“So what do you get on the right-hand peg?”

“Numbers six through ten, in reverse order. Number ten will get bought first. Then nine, then eight, and so on. What were my numbers?”

“They weren’t sequential,” the tech said. “There was a two-digit gap. You gave me a seven and a four, essentially. Or a four and a seven. I don’t know which came off the peg first.”

“I’m sorry,” Nakamura said. “I should have marked the order.”

“Don’t worry. Let’s make another assumption. Let’s say the convenience store guy gets his satisfaction a different way than you. Maybe he fills the pegs left, right, left, right. Perhaps he likes that better.”

“Then numbers four and seven couldn’t be together on the same peg.”

“So let’s make another assumption, based on the fact that you have the smallest hands in the world, and the convenience store guy is reasonably dexterous, working as he does with knives and what-not, so perhaps he hung them two at a time.”

“Yes,” she said. “That would put three and four on the right, immediately behind seven and eight. If I bought seven and four, then Scorpio bought eight. His phone number is one higher than mine.”

“And listen to what my buddy at the phone company found,” her friend said. He shuffled his mouse and his screen lit up. He clicked on an email, and then on an audio file, and jagged green bandwidth spiked on the screen, and Scorpio said, “Billy, this is Arthur. We got some weird shit going on.”

Reacher got a ride from two kids pulling out of a gas station on the southern edge of town. A boy and a girl. Grad students, probably, or undergrads with great ID. They said they were headed to Fort Collins, across the state line. Shopping, they said, but not for what. Their car was a tidy little sedan. Unlikely to attract a trooper’s attention. Safe enough, for the return leg of their journey.

They said they knew the bottle rocket billboard. And sure enough, after forty minutes on a gentle two-lane road, there it was, on the right shoulder, caught square in the high beams. It was bright yellow, half urgent, and half quaint. The students pulled over, and Reacher got out. The students drove away, and Reacher stood alone in the silence. The firework store itself was dark and closed up tight. Beyond it fifty yards south was a ramshackle building with a light in a small square upstairs window. The flea market, presumably. The former post office.

Reacher walked toward it.

Nakamura carried her laptop to her lieutenant’s office, and played him the voicemail. Use a deer rifle from behind a tree. Your privileges are suspended till I hear back from you.

“He’s ordering a homicide,” she said.

Her lieutenant said, “His lawyer will say talk is cheap. And he’ll point out we don’t have a warrant. Not for the new number.”

Nakamura said nothing.

Her lieutenant said, “Anything else?”

“Scorpio mentioned privileges. I don’t know what that means.”

“A business relationship of some kind, I suppose. Discount, priority, or access.”

“To what? Soap powder?”

“Surveillance should tell us.”

“We’ve never seen anything that looks like privileged access to something. Never. Nothing goes in or out.”

“Billy might not agree. Whoever Billy is.”

“Bigfoot is going to walk right into trouble. We should call someone.”

Her lieutenant said, “Play the voicemail again.”

She did. He’s got to go, because he’s a random loose end. Easier for you to deal with out there than it would be for me here. So get it done.

“He’s ordering a homicide,” she said again.

Her lieutenant said, “Can we ID Billy from his phone number?”

Nakamura shook her head. “Another drugstore burner.”

“Where is Mule Crossing exactly?”

“In a county measuring seven thousand square miles. Which is run by a sheriff’s department likely no bigger than two men and a dog.”

“You think we should play the Good Samaritan?”

“I think we have a duty.”

“OK, call them in the morning. Fingers crossed the men answer, not the dog. Tell them the story. Ask them if they know a guy named Billy, with a deer rifle and a tree.”

The ramshackle building looked like a post office. Something about the shape, and the size. It was plain and bureaucratic, but also prideful. As if it was saying the mail could be carried anywhere, even into empty and inhospitable regions. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. All that good stuff. But not anymore. A car passed by on the road and in the wash of its lights Reacher saw less-faded wood where twenty years before stern metal letters had been pried out of the siding: United States Post Office, Mule Crossing, Wyo. Below that was a replacement message, hand-painted in gaudy multicolored foot-high letters: Flea Market.

The market itself had a sign in the window saying it was closed. It was dark inside. The door was locked. No knocker, no bell. Reacher walked back to where he could see the lit-up window. Below it in the end wall of the building was a door, with a shallow stoop, which had a boot scraper on one side and a garbage can on the other. All very domestic. The entrance to the residence, presumably. To the foot of a staircase direct to the second floor. Where the lit window was. Living above the store, literally.

There was no doorbell.

Reacher knocked, hard and loud. Then waited. No response. He knocked again, harder and louder. He heard a voice.

It roared, “What?”

A man, not young, not delighted at being disturbed.

“I want to talk to you,” Reacher called back.

“What?”

“I need to ask you a question.”

“What?”

Reacher said nothing. He just waited. He knew the guy would come down. He had been an MP for thirteen years. He had knocked on a lot of doors.

The guy came down. He opened the door. He was a white man, maybe seventy years old, tall but stooping, with not much flesh over a solid frame.

He said, “What?”

Reacher said, “I was told only five or six people live here. I’m looking for one of them. Which makes it about an eighteen percent chance that person is you.”

“Who are you looking for?”

“Tell me your name first.”

“Why?”

“Because if you’re the guy, you’ll deny it. You’ll pretend you’re someone else and send me on a wild goose chase.”

“You think I would do that?”

“If you’re the guy,” Reacher said again. “It’s been known to happen.”

“You a cop?”

“Once upon a time. In the army.”

The guy went quiet.

He said, “My son was in the army.”

“What branch?”

“Rangers. He was killed in Afghanistan.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not as much as I am. So remind me again, how may I help the army tonight?”

“I’m not here for the army,” Reacher said. “I’ve been out a long time. This is a purely private matter. Purely personal. I’m looking for a man I was told was from Mule Crossing, Wyoming.”

“But you won’t tell me his name till I tell you mine. Because if I’m him, I’ll lie about it. Have I got that straight?”

“Hope for the best, plan for the worst.”

“If I was the sort of guy other guys came looking for, wouldn’t I lie anyway?”

Reacher nodded.

He said, “This whole thing would go better if I saw ID.”

“You got some nerve, you know that?”

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

The guy stood still for a second, deciding, and then he shook his head and smiled and hauled a wallet out of his back pants pocket. He flipped it open and held it out. There was a Wyoming driver’s license behind a scratched plastic window. The photograph was right. The address was right. The name was John Ryan Headley.

Reacher said, “Thank you, Mr. Headley. My name is Reacher. I’m pleased to meet you.”

The guy clapped his wallet shut and put it back in his pocket.

He said, “Am I the man you’re looking for, Mr. Reacher?”

“No,” Reacher said.

“I thought not. Why would anyone look for me?”

“I’m looking for a guy named Seymour Porterfield. Apparently people call him Sy.”

“You’re a little late for Sy, I’m afraid.”

“Why’s that?”

“He’s dead.”

“Since when?”

“About eighteen months ago, I guess. Around the start of spring last year.”

“Someone told me he was seen in South Dakota six weeks ago.”

“Then someone was lying to you. There’s no doubt about it. It was a big sensation. He was found in the hills, mostly eaten up. Killed by a bear, they thought. Maybe waking up after hibernation. They’re hungry then. Other folks thought a mountain lion. His guts were all ripped out, which is what mountain lions do. Then the ravens came, and the crows, and the raccoons. He was scattered all over the place. They made the ID with his teeth. And the keys in his pocket. April, I think. April last year.”

“How old was he?”

“He could have been forty.”

“What did he do for a living?”

“Come on in,” Headley said. “I’ve got coffee brewing.”

Reacher followed him up a narrow stair, to a long A-shaped attic that had been paneled with pine boards, and boxed off into separate rooms. There was an aluminum percolator thumping away on the stove. All the furniture was small. No sofas. The staircase was too narrow and the turns too tight to get them in. Headley poured two cups and handed one over. The coffee was thick and inky and smelled a little scorched.

“What did Porterfield do for a living?” Reacher asked again.

“No one knew for sure,” Headley said. “But he always had money in his pocket. Not a whole lot, but a little more than made any kind of sense.”

“Where did he live?”

“He had a log house up in the hills,” Headley said. “Twenty miles away, maybe, on one of the old ranches. All by himself. He was pretty much a loner.”

“West of here?”

Headley nodded. “Follow the dirt road. I guess his place is empty now.”

“Who else lives out in that direction?”

“Not sure. I see folks driving by. I don’t necessarily know who they are. This ain’t the post office anymore.”

“Were you here when it was?”

“Man and boy.”

“How many folks do you see driving by?”

“Could be ten or twenty total.”

“I was told four or five.”

“Who pay their taxes and sign their names. But there are plenty of abandoned places. Plenty of unofficial residents.”

Reacher said, “You know a woman, also ex-army, very small, name of Serena Sanderson?”

Headley said, “No.”

“You sure?”

“Pretty much.”

“Maybe she got married. You know any kind of a Serena?”

“No.”

“What about Rose? Maybe she goes by her middle name.”

“No.”

“OK,” Reacher said.

“What is this about exactly?”

Reacher took the ring out of his pocket. The gold filigree, the black stone, the tiny size. West Point 2005. He said, “This is hers. I want to return it. I was told Sy Porterfield sold it in Rapid City six weeks ago.”

“He didn’t.”

“Evidently.”

“What’s the big deal?”

“Would your boy have given up his Ranger tab?”

“Not after what he went through to get it.”

“Exactly.”

“I can’t help you,” Headley said. “Except I can promise you Sy Porterfield didn’t sell that ring in Rapid City six weeks ago, on account of getting ate up by a bear or a mountain lion more than a year before in another state entirely.”

“So someone else sold it.”

“From here?”

“Possibly. Fifty-fifty maybe. Mule Crossing was mentioned. Either true or false.”

“I see folks drive by. I don’t know who they are.”

“Who would?”

Headley squirmed around in his chair, as if gazing west through the wall, as if picturing the dirt road rolling away into the darkness. He turned back and said, “The guy who runs the snowplow in the winter lives in the first place on the left. About two miles in. I guess he knows who lives where, from seeing their tire tracks, and maybe towing them out from time to time.”

“Two real miles in, or two Wyoming miles?”

“It’s about a five minute drive.”

Which even on a dirt road could be more than two real miles. At an average speed of thirty, it would be two and a half. At forty, it would be more than three. And then back again.

“You got a car?” Reacher asked.

“I got a truck.”

“Can I borrow it?”

“No, you can’t.”

“OK,” Reacher said. “What’s the guy’s name, with the snowplow?”

“I don’t know his second name. Not sure I ever heard it. But I know his first name is Billy.”