The Midnight Line

Chapter 42

An hour later they stopped late for lunch in a one-light town. There was a Shell station and a family restaurant. Reacher saw that Sanderson wanted to stay outside, on the smokers’ benches, to take care of business. But she forced herself inside, and ate first, fast and dirty, and then she excused herself and ducked back out again.

Reacher went with her. He sat beside her, a yard away. A concrete bench in a blacktop lot. With almost the same person. She had a ready-cut quarter-inch, rolled tight and set to go. The size of a wad of gum. She slipped it in, and chewed a little, and sucked a little. She clicked her neck and leaned back and looked up at the sky.

She said, “I can’t believe you talk to the supe on the phone.”

He said, “Someone has to.”

“What did he tell you?”

“There was an arrest warrant out on Porterfield.”

She breathed out, a deep sigh of release and contentment. The fentanyl, Reacher guessed, not memories of her boyfriend’s demise.

She said, “Arrest warrants lapse when the suspect dies. Obviously. So that’s ancient history now. You should forget all about it. Although I’m sure you won’t. My sister says you still think like a cop. You won’t let things go. Probably you think I killed him. You have to, really. We were domestic partners at the time. Statistics don’t lie.”

“Did you kill him?”

“In a way.”

“What way?”

“Better that you don’t know. Or you’ll want to do something about it.”

“That’s not a smart thing to say to someone who won’t let things go.”

She didn’t answer. She just breathed. Deep, long, slow, in and out. All was well with the world. Reacher had read a report that called it a euphoria users swore had no equal.

She said, “Sy was wounded in the groin.”

Reacher said, “I’m sorry.”

“Not a glamorous location,” she said. “The second most feared, as a matter of fact, after a disfiguring facial wound. But they sewed him back together again. It all worked. He could have sex. Except one of the sutures always leaked. Under certain circumstances. It could get messy.”

Reacher said nothing.

“Apparently there’s a lot of blood pressure involved,” she said.

“I hope,” Reacher said.

“And he had an infection. From the day he was wounded. His uniform pants were filthy dirty. He had been wearing them every day since California. The bullet punched tiny shreds of dirty cloth way deep inside. Happened all the time. The bugs take hold, and then you can’t move them. They must be smarter than we are.”

“That was twelve years before.”

“He started out seeing doctors. But he didn’t like them. In the end he looked after himself.”

“Like you did,” he said.

“I was like him,” she said. “He showed me how to do it. He showed me how to do everything. He showed me the gates of death. The doctor said the leaky suture was equally likely to burst. Every night he could have bled to death. He said he learned to live with it. Then to love it. In the end I did, too. Mostly.”

“Sounds like an interesting way to live.”

“He told me he felt secure with me. But I was never sure why. Did he think it was because I was a nice person? Or did he think I owed him for his attentions, because I was even more hideous? I couldn’t let him think that. Or I would have to think it, too. I would have to accept I needed special favors. Which I never took before. Why should I start now?”

Reacher didn’t answer. She was quiet a long moment. She sighed again. A deep low shudder of pure contentment. She spread her arms along the back of the bench. Her right hand came near Reacher’s shoulder. She laid back and looked up at the sky.

She said, “How important is a woman’s face?”

“To me?”

“For example.”

“A little bit, I guess. But for me it’s mostly the eyes. Either there’s someone home or there isn’t. Either you want to knock on that door or you don’t.”

She sat up and half turned on the bench. To face him, full on. She dropped the zipper on her silver top, maybe three inches down, and she eased her hood back, all the way, and off. Her hair spilled out and down and forward. Like her sister’s, but shorter. Maybe grayer. But it fell the same way. It framed her face the same way.

Her eyes were green, and they were warm and liquid with some kind of deep dreamy satisfaction. There was sparkle, muted, like winking sunlight on a woodland stream. And bitter amusement. She was mocking him, and herself, and the whole wide world.

He said, “We’re of equal rank, so I’m allowed to say it. Discouraged, but permitted. I would knock on your door.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“For real. I’m sure Porterfield was for real, too. He won’t be the only one. People react in different ways.”

She pulled her hood back in place and tucked in her hair.

He said, “You should get the IV. It’s the foil that looks weird.”

“First I have to live through the night.”

“Sheriff Connelly found ten grand in a box.”

“Sy didn’t trust banks. He preferred cash. What was in the box was all he had left. The banks lost the rest, back when I was overseas. Maybe that’s why he didn’t trust them.”

“How long would ten grand have lasted?”

She sighed again, deeply contented.

“Not long,” she said. “Not the way we were going at it. And sometimes we had to buy food. And he was forever paying the guy who fixed his roof.”

“Why did you stop calling your sister after he died?”

“That’s easy,” she said. “Reduced circumstances. I had to sell my phone.”

“Was it DIA who burgled his house?”

She nodded. “They were late to the party. The circus was over by the time they arrived. But they got what they wanted.”

“Which was?”

She didn’t answer. She just waved the question away, like it didn’t matter.

Nakamura’s cell phone rang. Her friend from Computer Crimes. He said, “Scorpio is making calls. Or at least the signal we think is Scorpio. The traffic feels about the same as three days ago. And he called the same number again. The one that texted back about the new Billy.”

She said, “He’s still in his office.”

“He’s doing it by remote control. It’s happening a little ways north of here. I assume the guy who texted is his man on the spot.”

“Can we tap his computer wires?”

“We already are. It’s called the internet. But he has a firewall. We could hack him but it would take us days.”

She said, “The driver must be his. Of the ghost truck that never leaves the factory. Except it does. The guy must know where to drive it.”

Her friend said, “I wonder if they remembered about employment records. They would need to amend the guy’s hours and miles. That might be a way in.”

“We don’t have the records.”

“Then there’s nothing you can do.”

“Maybe there is. Only half of this thing is records and computers. The other half is a physical reality. It’s a real truck, driving on a real road, with physical stuff in it. How would it get here?”

“From where?”

“New Jersey, I think.”

“I-90.”

“And what’s a little ways north of here, where the text came from?”

“I-90.”

“Where could he stop?”

“Lots of places. A lonely gas station ten miles out from an exit. Or some old industrial park somewhere, full of empty sheds with roll-up doors.”

She said, “Scorpio is not going to leave his office tonight, right?”

“He never does,” her friend said. “Except to go home.”

“OK, I’m heading up to the highway to take a look.”

She clicked off and started her motor.

They had already driven as far as New York to Boston, but they were still in Wyoming, and so far barely halfway through their trip. The big Toyota kept on rolling. Mackenzie and Sanderson talked together in the back, in quiet murmurs, in the kind of fast, unfinished shorthand Reacher guessed must be second nature to twins. Sanderson stayed in the good zone for most of an hour. Then she started to fade. Pretty fast. She withdrew into herself, as if she was preparing for a hard internal battle. She seemed to cramp up and get uncomfortable. She stared out the window. Maybe she was setting herself a new target. Different than on the highway. Maybe three herds of antelope, or two of mule deer, or a break in the snow fence.

Nakamura drove north out of town on the four-lane, past Klinger’s family restaurant, where she ate sometimes, if work brought her out in that direction. She kept on going, through the empty miles before the I-90 ramps, looking left and right, seeing what there was to see. Which wasn’t much. In fact nothing at all, from the truck driver’s point of view. Not exactly a stolen vehicle, but hot nonetheless. Or in fact cold. Zero degrees. It wasn’t there. It didn’t exist. Which put a lot of pressure on the driver. Attention had to be avoided. No speeding tickets, no weird maneuvers, no traffic cameras, no exposure at all. South of the highway felt wrong. He wouldn’t go there.

North of the highway was worse. She carried on under the bridge and came out amid no density whatsoever. No cover, no concealment. Mostly open prairie. Flat land. Distant horizons. She drove ten minutes, and pulled over on the shoulder. There was nothing ahead of her.

South of the highway felt wrong.

North of the highway felt wrong.

Therefore the guy stayed on the highway. Had to. No other choice. He never got off. There was a rest area six miles east. It was a big place. She had been there before. Food, fuel, a state trooper building, a motel in back, some highway department stuff. All kinds of nooks and crannies.

She U-turned ditch to ditch and headed back to the highway. She hit the ramp and hit the gas.

They stopped again, at a gas station that had a two-table coffee shop next to the car wash machine. Mackenzie used the bathroom. Sanderson popped another quarter-inch strip. She sat on a bench outside, and nursed a go-cup of coffee, with the smell of unleaded coming from one direction, and auto shampoo from the other. Reacher came out and she scooted over, as if to offer him room, plus a yard of space between.

An invitation.

He sat down.

He said, “You OK?”

“Right now,” she said.

“Tell me about the gates of death.”

She was quiet a long moment.

Then she said, “You build up a tolerance. You need to use more and more, just to get to the same place. Pretty soon you’re taking what is technically a fatal dose. One sniff would kill a straight person stone dead. And then you want more. Now you’re taking literally higher than a fatal dose. Are you brave enough for the next step?”

“Were you?”

“I felt the same way when I was overseas. The only way to get through was never back down. Always step up. Always take it on. You had to be scornful. Like, is that all you got? So sure, I took the next step. And the next.”

She sighed. The new quarter-inch strip was kicking in.

She said, “That’s the beautiful thing about next steps. There’s always another one coming.”

Reacher said, “Logically there must be a last one.”

She didn’t answer.

He said, “What did Porterfield do for a living?”

“Didn’t the roofer tell you?”

“He said he talked a lot on the phone. Sheriff Connelly said he drove a lot of miles in his car.”

“Sy was a disabled veteran. He didn’t work.”

“Apparently he filled his time somehow. Was it a hobby?”

“Why do you care about Sy so much?”

“Just a professional thing. Either he was killed somewhere else and dumped in the woods, or he got eaten by a bear. I never had a situation where getting eaten by a bear was a genuine possibility.”

“There’s a third possibility.”

“I know. And I know you were there. You told me.”

She was quiet another moment.

“I’ll make a deal,” she said. “I’ll tell you the story if we win tonight.”

“That’s a hard bargain,” he said. “Could be tough. Is the story worth it?”

“It’s not exciting,” she said. “But it’s sad.”

“Then we need more of a prize. I would want to hear your story, too.”

“About the roadside bomb? My sister told me your theories. A failed operation with multiple U.S. casualties.”

“Worst case,” he said.

She sighed again, long, hard, deeply, happily.

Almost like purring.

She said, “It was way worse than worst case. It was a catastrophe. But it wasn’t my operation. I was representing the support effort, but the whole thing was a much bigger deal than that. It was devised at a much higher level. The town was in hilly country, compact in size, not walled but well defended. The road looped in on the right and out on the left. Long story short, we needed to take the town, but the pointy-heads said we had to do it without unprovoked civilian casualties. Which at the time was code for no air strikes. So we planned approaches by armored infantry on the road from both directions at once. But the same pointy-heads had some clever analysis that said the enemy would expect that, and be capable of defending it, so we should mount a third approach up the open hillside, halfway in between, so we could come up in the middle of the town and isolate both sets of defenders at once.”

Reacher said, “How bad was the terrain?”

“That was everyone’s first question. It was the kind of place you had to get eyes-on. The pointy-heads worked out a spot where we could see the whole rise at once. They said in terms of seeing one contour in particular it was where we had to be. They were very precise. But they said not to worry, because it was outside RPG range. So we went there. The dead dog was on the exact same spot. Three of us died, and eleven were hurt.”

“Any of yours?”

“Happily no. Only upward, which isn’t the same. But that was the problem. That’s why the files were sealed. Some big names went down. It was a failure of intelligence. With a small letter, not a capital. Ours was less than theirs. Once again we underestimated them. These unshaven guys wearing dresses had predicted exactly how we were going to attack, and even exactly where we would stand to plan it out, and exactly when we would show up to do it. A day either way on that, maybe. But four-day dogs are what they like best, and that’s what we got. The umpires would have to call it one — zip for them. We had fourteen down. Cost them nothing except a cell phone and someone else’s dog.”

“OK,” Reacher said.

“You were worried I got my people killed.”

“I thought it would upset you.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I had,” she said. “I wouldn’t have made it through.”

Then Mackenzie came out, and next Bramall, and they both stood around in let’s-go poses, so eventually Sanderson got up, and Reacher followed her back to the car.

They hit Rapid City’s southern limit just as the sun was setting.