The Midnight Line

Chapter 29

The guy with the long-neck bottle said, “I guess it was the start of the winter before the last one. Porterfield’s roof was leaking bad again. My buddy’s friend was out there all the time. Sometimes he would get a look in through a window. He started seeing her stuff. More and more of it. But he never saw her. If he had to do inside work, sometimes she wasn’t there, and if she was, she would hide in the bedroom. He was sure of it.”

“She wasn’t always there?” Reacher said.

“Neither was he sometimes. She must have had a place of her own. I guess they were back and forth.”

“But when she was there, she didn’t hide her stuff,” Reacher said.

“No, it was right out in the open.”

“Any chance of confusion? Maybe it was all Porterfield’s stuff.”

The guy shook his head. He said, “I don’t think so, especially the nightwear. And you can tell by the look of a place. Men and women make a mess two different ways. This was both ways at once, let me tell you, right there. Two of everything. Two people. Two plates in the sink, two books by the sofa, both sides of the bed with a dent.”

“Clearly your buddy’s friend undertook an extensive investigation.”

“A roof covers the whole house, man. Supposed to, anyway.”

“But your buddy’s friend never actually met her.”

“Which is why he called her the secret girlfriend.”

“Never saw her coming and going, or out on the road?”

“Never.”

“Did Porterfield ever say anything about her?”

The guy drained his bottle and set it down on the table.

He said, “He never denied it. He never came right out and said some weird thing like hey, by the way, I don’t have a girlfriend. But equally he never said, by the way, my girlfriend is taking a nap, so don’t go in the bedroom. All he ever said was don’t go in. Period. He never said why. All in all my buddy’s friend said being there was a weird experience. Like Porterfield was hiding her away, and denying her existence, so no one would ever come looking for her. Except that made no sense, because her stuff was everywhere. I think a man with bad intentions would have taken better precautions.”

Reacher said, “Did you believe the story about the bear?”

“The sheriff did,” the guy said. “That’s about all that matters.”

“You got doubts?”

“I wasn’t there. But everyone had the same private reaction. It was automatic. Once or twice in your life you find yourself wondering what you would do, if there truly was a guy who had to go. Or you wonder what you would do if something got way out of hand, and someone ended up dead, when he wasn’t supposed to. Either way, you would dump him in the high woods. Exactly the kind of place where Porterfield was found. It’s a total no-brainer. Maybe you would smear him with honey. Or nick another couple of veins, to keep the smell fresh. Maybe you would get lucky with the big animals, and maybe you wouldn’t, but either way you don’t need them. You got hundreds of other species already lining up and licking their lips. So what I’m saying is, I promise you every guy who heard the news about Porterfield was thinking hell yeah, that’s how I would do it. I know I was.”

“You think the sheriff was really?”

“Privately, sure.”

“But publicly he called it an accident.”

“No proof,” the guy said. “That’s the whole beauty of it.”

“Did Porterfield have enemies?”

“He was a rich guy from back east. I’m sure they all have enemies.”

“What happened to the woman?”

“Rumor was she stuck around. No one knew exactly where. No one knew who they were looking for, because no one knew what she looked like in the first place.”

“What happened to Porterfield’s roof?”

“The sheriff told my buddy’s friend to fix it good, once and for all. So he put new metal over the bad part. Which is what he had wanted to do all along, except Porterfield would never let him, because it wasn’t that way in the architect’s drawing.”

They bought the guy another bottle of his favorite beer, and left him there. They walked back to the Toyota, which was parked across the street from the new-age café, on the far curb about halfway between the two bars, with their beer signs and their dirty windows. By that point the street lights were on. The sky was dark. The café was closed. There was noise in the bars, but their doors were shut.

There were three guys fanned out around the Toyota. Out in the street, casting shadows, as if ready to repel a hostile attack. They were all wiry, but also tall. They all had big blunt hands. They were all wearing denim and boots, one of them lizard.

Bramall stopped in the shadows.

Reacher and Mackenzie stopped behind him.

Mackenzie said, “Who are they?”

“Cowboys,” Reacher said. “Weaned on beef jerky and fried rattlesnake.”

“What do they want?”

“My guess is to scare us off. This kind of choreography usually involves that kind of thing.”

“Scare us off what? What are we doing?”

“We’re poking around. We’re asking questions about a woman who may be involved in some kind of unsavory local business. We’re making them nervous.”

“What do we do?”

“I need to consult with my senior partner about who goes first.”

Bramall said, “Do you have a preference?”

“I think we should all go together. Maybe me one step ahead. But I want you to see their faces.”

“Why?”

“If I lose you can give the cops a description, from my hospital bedside.”

“Lose what?” Mackenzie said. “I’m sure all they want to do is talk to us. I’m sure they’ll be aggressive and unpleasant and so on, but I don’t see how it necessarily becomes a fight. Unless we choose to make it one.”

“Where do you live?”

“Lake Forest, Illinois.”

“OK.”

“What does that mean?”

“This is already a fight. You can tell by the way they’re standing. It’s win or go home.”

“Did Scorpio send them?”

“That would be a logical assumption,” Reacher said. “Technically the unsavory local business is his. All the way up to Montana, apparently. But it’s also the opposite of logical. If Scorpio can whistle up three good-looking cowboys at the drop of a hat, why would he have told a half-assed punk like Billy to shoot me from behind a tree? He would have told these guys instead. Maybe this is some kind of distant local subcommittee. Some kind of spontaneous democracy, that Scorpio knows nothing about.”

“You worried about them?” Bramall said. “You mentioned losing.”

“Cowboys are the worst,” Reacher said. “Not much I can do to them, that a horse already hasn’t.”

He stepped out of the shadows and walked ahead through the evening gloom. His heels were loud on the concrete. Behind him Bramall and Mackenzie caught up and closed the gap. They stepped off the sidewalk and crossed the street at an angle. They headed straight for the car.

The three guys moved, flowing outward to meet them, bunching up, one guy ahead and two behind, like a mirror image. Reacher was wrestling with the brawler’s eternal dilemma, which was why not just take out the point man immediately? A surprise head-butt. Don’t even stop walking.

Often the smart play.

But not always.

Reacher stopped and the cowboys stopped and they ended up about eight feet apart. That close Reacher thought they looked like three useful characters. Two could have been in their early forties, and the third could have been ten years younger. He was the point man. He had the lizard boots.

“Let me guess,” Reacher said. “You’re here to give us a message. That’s fine. Everyone has the right to be heard. We’ll give you thirty seconds. Start now, if you like. Speak clearly. Translate any local words or phrases.”

The guy with the lizard boots said, “The message is go back where you came from. Ain’t nothing for you here.”

Reacher shook his head.

“That can’t be right,” he said. “Are you sure you heard the message correctly? Generally speaking, folks out here like to welcome a stranger.”

The guy said, “I got the message right.”

Nothing more.

Reacher said, “Tell me when we get to the part where you say you’ll kick our ass if we don’t get going.”

The guy didn’t answer.

Reacher watched him. Watched all of them. They weren’t backing off. But they weren’t coming on forward either. They were static. They were like a rookie squad when the plan stops working. Something had derailed them. Not Mackenzie. They were looking at her way more than they should, in the middle of a tense get-out-of-town showdown, but the looking was pure animal biology. Not recognition. Mostly it showed in their mouths.

The guy with the boots said, “No one’s ass needs to get kicked.”

“I agree,” Reacher said. “Least of all mine.”

“But you should give it up.”

“Here’s a counteroffer,” Reacher said. “You don’t mess with me, I won’t mess with you.”

The guy nodded. Not like he agreed, but like he understood the sentence. Reacher said, “Look, kid,” and beckoned the guy close, as if for a private word, like two world leaders sharing a confidence.

Reacher put his hand on the guy’s elbow. A friendly gesture, inclusive, intimate, maybe even conspiratorial.

He squeezed.

He whispered, “Tell whoever sent you this won’t be like the FBI or the DEA or the ATF. Tell whoever sent you this time it’s the U.S. Army.”

The guy reacted. Reacher felt it in his elbow. Then he let him go, and the eight-foot gap opened up again. Reacher stood square on and up straight. His old professional pose. Sooner or later everyone’s thoughts turned to violence. Better to deal with that upfront. Better to say, you have got to be kidding me. So he stood chin up, his full height, shoulders back, hands loose, not a circus freak, but a little bigger all around than a normal big guy, enough so they noticed. Plus the eyes, which he found most people liked, except he could blink and come back different, like changing the channel, from a happy show to some bleak documentary about prehistoric survival a million years ago.

Then suddenly he changed the channel again and smiled and nodded, in a shared, self-deprecating kind of a way, as if obviously two guys such as them could only be kidding around, and the other four would catch on eventually.

Always offer the other guy a graceful exit.

The guy in the boots took it. He smiled back, like they were just two old boys horsing around, which could happen anytime, and especially in the presence of such a pretty lady. Then he turned around and led his guys away. Reacher crossed to the opposite sidewalk and watched them around the corner. They climbed in a huge crew-cab pick-up parked head-in by a fence. It backed out and took off. It turned left at the first four-way, and was lost to sight.

“See?” Mackenzie said. “It didn’t have to be a fight.”

Reacher said nothing. He stared at her. Then he stared at the corner, where the pick-up had turned.

Something wrong.

With the wrong thing.

He said to Bramall, “Did you take interrogation classes with us?”

Bramall said, “Only the semester with the rubber hoses.”

“We were taught the art of interrogation is mostly about listening. His language was weird. His choice of phrase. At the end he said we should give it up. What did that mean? Give what up?”

“Our quest,” Mackenzie said. “Our search for Rose. Obviously. I mean, to give something up, you have to be doing it in the first place, and that’s about all we’ve been doing. There’s nothing else we could give up.”

“What category of person would care either way about our search for Rose?”

“All kinds. We could be treading on a lot of different toes.”

“What category of person might care most of all?”

Mackenzie didn’t answer.

Tell whoever sent you.

In his mind Reacher heard General Simpson’s voice, on the phone from West Point: She might not want to be found.

Then he thought no, that can’t be right.