The Midnight Line

Chapter 47

Sanderson eased off a beat, to let a guy one lane over get well out of the way, and then she merged on the highway, and crept back to sixty. Four and a half minutes to the rest area. The car felt rough and noisy. Not up to Bramall’s standards. But possibly better than her ancient Bronco.

She said, “How much did we get?”

The thing that mattered most.

“More than two weeks’ worth,” he said. “That’s for damn sure. You owe me the story now.”

“I did all the hard work.”

“Doesn’t matter. You said you would tell me the story if we won tonight. No difference who did the work.”

“When I’ve seen it,” she said. “When I’ve seen more than two weeks’ worth.”

“It’s way more.”

“I want to bathe in it.”

“You should. You did well tonight.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you still doing well?”

“Did you see the way those guys looked at my sister?”

“Yes,” Reacher said.

“Did you see the way they looked at me?”

“Yes,” Reacher said. “I saw.”

“That’s how I’m doing.”

They pulled off again, just a short hop, into the rest area. They rolled past the gas and the diesel, and the fast food, and the highway patrol, and the highway department weighbridge. All the way to the chain motel. Where Bramall had scouted two main advantages. It had private parking in back, so the Toyota would be hidden from casual view. And it was so absurdly close to the scene of the crime that no one would think to look there. They were in South Dakota. There was infinite space all around. Every instinct would be to search the far end of a radius that was growing by sixty miles every hour. No one would look close to home.

Sanderson drove around the back and found the Toyota waiting. Bramall and Mackenzie were standing one on either side of the tailgate. Which was open. They had been tidying the load.

Which was spectacular.

There were dozens and dozens of boxes. They were stacked in a block a yard high and a yard wide and a yard deep. There were brand names and pictures. There were quantities. There were tens, and twenties, and fifties, and hundreds. Over and over again. One box had twenty packs of twenty patches. Some kind of pharmacy size. Four hundred items right there.

“More than two weeks,” Sanderson said.

She leaned in and pulled out a box. She opened it up and took out a foil pack the size of a fat playing card. Twenty patches. She put it in her pocket. The richest woman in the world. The new gold standard for affluence. An addict with more than one hit.

She turned to Reacher and said, “Now I’ll tell you the story.”

“Later,” he said. “First I’m going to pay Arthur Scorpio a visit.”

“I’m coming with you,” she said. “Scorpio has a place in the story.”

They trawled through Mackenzie’s bag and found the phone they had taken from the guard at the door. There was an old batch of text messages from three days before, ending with the guard telling Scorpio All good tonight including the new Billy. The current batch was not as happy, and it was very one-sided. Since a quarter past midnight Scorpio had been sending increasingly frequent and urgent demands for information. What is going on? Must hear back from you immediately.

Reacher said, “Tell him there was a delay. Tell him the guy will come over to the laundromat and explain in person as soon as he can. Write it so it sounds like him.”

Mackenzie did the texting. She seemed most at home with it.

Sanderson traded her last-round Ruger for Bramall’s three-round Colt.

Then she got back in the Durango with Reacher, and they drove away.

Gloria Nakamura saw the whole thing through the trees. In the end she had figured the Toyota was parked where it was for the same reason everyone else was parked where they were. Why give themselves an extra walk? The folks from the Toyota had wanted to hike the other way. Not toward the restrooms, but into the trees. Toward nothing, unless the maintenance depot was there. Which it had to be, or else who would want to hike in that direction? Circular logic, but it made sense to her.

She followed.

She stopped ten feet short.

She saw Bigfoot. She saw Terrence Bramall from Chicago. The private investigator. Who had taken her table in the breakfast place. Two times. She saw a pretty woman. She saw a second woman, horribly disfigured. Immediately she knew this was the owner of the ring. She sensed it. The ring she had worn herself, just briefly. West Point 2005. The black stone.

She watched. Bramall and the normal woman walked back through the trees. They passed twenty feet from her, but they didn’t notice. Then nothing happened for nearly an hour. Then vehicles started to show up, and finally the white panel van, New Jersey plates, fast and furious, just as she had predicted. Running wild, technically not there at all, erased from the record.

Then there was a gunshot, and the black Toyota showed up again, and drove in and drove out, and then a Dodge Durango, and then it all went quiet again, until about a dozen different guys crept out and started milling around.

They looked sheepish.

She stepped out of the trees, with her badge in one hand and her gun in the other.

They ran, hard and fast, in eleven different directions.

She called it in, but she knew it was hopeless. The highway belonged to the state troopers, not the PD’s traffic division, plus late at night any number of guys could run across all three lanes undetected, and then they could disappear beyond the shoulder to either the north or the south, into space so big it was effectively infinite.

They were gone.

She looked at the empty panel van, and the eight parked vehicles, and then she walked back through the trees, and drove back to town. She wanted to see what Scorpio was doing.

Sanderson and Reacher took the four-lane south past Klinger’s restaurant. She was chewing steadily all the way. Not partying or bathing yet. She was maintaining. She was getting herself where she wanted to be, and she was keeping herself there. He thought the huge quantity they had gotten from the panel van had changed her. He guessed part of being an addict was always being anxious. The next buck, the next hit, the next day, the next hour. She was no longer anxious. She would not be anxious for a very long time. Maybe ever again, if it worked out with the sister. So was she still an addict? Not the same way. Now it was all upside. The highs, literally, and none of the lows.

He could see the highs were worth having. Her face was not expressive. It didn’t work that way. But her eyes were alive. And her body. She looked like she was having the best day of her life. Without a near-fatal dose. Once necessary, maybe, to obliterate how bad it was for the other twelve hours of the day. But not anymore. Now she could take it easy. Maybe she would be OK.

Not his area of expertise.

He said, “The supe told me why you were on the road outside the small town.”

She said, “I told you.”

“You told me you were representing the support operation. Representing is a real five-dollar word. Maybe you could use it, if you were asked to stand in by a senior officer. But you were already a major. We didn’t need a colonel to figure out how to haul ass up a hill. So there was no senior officer, which makes it a weird choice of word.”

She was quiet for a moment.

Then she said, “How did the supe know?”

“A shrink wrote a paper.”

“He saw it?”

“He’s been looking for you.”

“Bullshit.”

“He’s calling in favors.”

“For me?”

“He said you felt betrayed.”

“By the shrink.”

“He meant by the situation.”

Again she was quiet.

She said, “I was in the hospital a long time, and I got to know a lot of people. Missing an arm or a leg. Believe me, no one had it easy. But I hated those guys. They wore shorts. They could make the best of it. I would have been OK with a leg. Even for doing a favor. I was overseas five times. Some shit was going to happen. Even an arm. But not my face. You saw how those guys looked at me.”

Reacher said nothing.

She said, “They wrote it down wrong. All they did was check a box. I never felt betrayed. Truth is I felt unlucky. Literally for the first time ever. At first I didn’t even know what it was. It was new to me. It was like getting a lifetime of bad luck all in one day. Every rotten thing. Of course the guy who asked me to go for him was out catching a disease. He had to be. It was inevitable. I’m surprised he wasn’t doing something worse.”

He said, “Now tell me Porterfield’s story.”

She ducked her head and looked up at the street signs.

She said, “Do you know where we are?”

He said, “We make a right up ahead. Then a left somewhere.”

“I’m going to pull over.”

“Why?”

“To tell you the story. Before we get there.”

Nakamura eased to a stop on the cross street, and then rolled forward until her view was perfect. Scorpio’s back door was open. She could see the rim of light.

She turned the engine off.

She got out of the car, and walked halfway there. The Supreme Court said if she was reasonably sure a crime was afoot in a public place, then she could intervene without a warrant. But Scorpio’s back office was not a public place. The Court said therefore she would need evidence tantamount to an emergency. Gunshots or screams or cries for help.

The alley was silent.

She crept closer.

She heard Scorpio’s voice, talking low. A composed sentence. A monologue. He was leaving a message. He sounded worried. He wanted answers. The guard at the gate, no doubt. His man on the spot. Who couldn’t answer. Reacher had taken their phones. She had heard him, even in the trees. She had absolutely believed he would shoot them through the back of the knee.

She crept closer.

Now Scorpio was off the phone. There was no discernible sound at all. Maybe a low hum. Maybe the noise of a fan. Certainly no gunshots or screams or cries for help.

She crept closer.

She put her eye to the gap.

No angle.

She put her fingertips on the door and pushed it open.

Sanderson pulled over in a strip mall lot. She put the lever in park, but she kept the engine running. The Durango was full of gas. It was ready for a long trip somewhere. A sales trip. Idaho, maybe, or Washington State.

She said, “Turns out there are a lot of nerves in the groin.”

“Who knew?” Reacher said.

“Sy was in pain all the time. Also addicted, of course. At first he got treatment direct from the Marine Corps. Then they stopped prescribing. No reason was given. At first he thought it was medical caution. These were powerful opiates, after all. But he needed them. He argued about it, but it got him nowhere. So he started doctor shopping. He drove all over. Then he started buying. Which was easy enough. Back then there was plenty to go around. Which made him mad. Every other faucet was wide open. Why was the Corps being cautious? He got back to them. They let something slip. Turned out it wasn’t caution about prescribing. Their inventory was all screwed up. They were running out.”

“Someone was stealing.”

“Sy made it his life’s work to find out who. On behalf of himself and his brother Marines. He was made for the job. He was already buying, after all. He was already in the network. All he had to do was poke around a little. Eventually he figured it out and wrote it up and sent it to the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

“Why them?”

“He had a theory. DIA spanned all the services. Better than sending it direct to the Marine Corps. They might bury it.”

“What happened?”

“We waited. We figured five or six days. The mails are slow from here. But he was sure they would get back to us immediately. What actually happened was we heard nothing for six months. Then he got the arrest warrant.”

“Someone was covering his ass.”

“That’s what Sy thought. He gave it up, there and then. You win some, you lose some. You can’t fight city hall. We went up to the high woods, because it was the start of spring. The first tiny shoots were out. He was happy as can be. He was an East Coast guy, really, quite reserved in his nature, but he was messing around that day and chewing on a stick and pretending to be a mountain man. We lay down on the ground. We had stuff in our pockets. A day like that, we both knew we were going to chase it. We were going to hit it hard. We were a couple who shared a hobby. We wanted to make it epic together.”

“What happened?”

“He died.”

Nakamura pushed the door. Six inches, eight, ten, twelve. She leaned in the room. Scorpio had his back to her. He was sitting alone at a long bench covered with humming computers. Tower units, screens, keyboards, mice. The room was hot. A fan was running. She took out her badge and her gun. She pushed the door all the way open.

Scorpio heard it. Or felt the air, or sensed her presence.

He turned around.

“Stay where you are,” she said. “Let me see your hands.”

He said, “You’re trespassing.”

“You’re committing a crime.”

“You’re harassing me.”

She took a step and raised her gun.

She said, “Face down on the floor.”

He said, “You’re making a fool of yourself. I’m doing my accounts after a long hard day. So I can pay my taxes to pay your wages. One of the many burdens a small businessman bears.”

“You’re hacking pharmaceutical industry security. Which is supervised by the federal government. Are they going to find Russian software? In which case you’re in a lot of trouble.”

“I run a laundromat.”

“The laundromat of the future. It looks like IBM in here. But your system just crashed. Check your GPS. Your panel van is stuck in a snowplow shed. Reacher took the key. And everything else.”

Scorpio went quiet.

She put her badge away and took out her handcuffs.

Then it all fell apart.

Behind her a guy walked through the open door with two go-cups of coffee from the convenience store. Black coat, black sweater, black pants, black shoes. More than six feet tall. A bruise on his neck. She had seen him before.

Scorpio hit her in the back of her head, and she sprawled on the floor, and her gun went clattering away. She was dazed for a second, and felt herself being mauled and manhandled, and then she came to sitting on the floor, cuffed to a table leg. With her own handcuffs. Her skirt was up. She pulled it down, one-handed. Her bag was gone. With her phone.

Scorpio asked her, “What did you mean, everything else?”

She said, “All of it.”

The guy in black said, “Want me to go check it out?”

“We’ll both go,” Scorpio said.

He looked at the alley door, at the inner door, at Nakamura.

“Bring the car to the front,” he said. “I’ll go out that way. We’ll leave her right here.”

The guy in black hustled out. Scorpio locked the alley door. He sat down and stared at a screen.

Nakamura said, “You’re out of business.”

“No,” he said. “I’ll never be out of business. It’s about moving on, that’s all. One door closes, another door opens. Nothing lasts forever. I’ll get what I need somewhere else. I always did before.”

He left her there, sitting on the floor, handcuffed to the table. He turned out the lights. He stepped through the inner door to the laundromat. He closed the door behind him. The office went pitch dark. She heard the door lock from the other side. Then immediately she heard the street door open. Not Scorpio going out. Too soon. He was still thirty feet away. It was someone else coming in. The guy in black, presumably. With the car.

But then she heard a muffled voice.

Familiar.

She thought it said, “What have you got in your pockets?”

Sanderson said, “Afterward I realized he wasn’t chewing on a stick. Or just a stick. It was to hide himself chewing on something else, too. He had started the party early. He was going for the big OD. One fatal dose on the walk up the hill, and another when we got there. He hated his life. The thing with the DIA kept him going. But that was over now. They had closed ranks against him. He gave up. He decided this time, when he knocked on the gates, if they opened for him, he would go in.”

Reacher said nothing.

“And why not?” she said. “It was the end of everything. He had no money. Which was different for him. Like me being unlucky. I watched him go. He started out good. He was happy as could be. I guess he knew what was coming. He was lying on his back, with the smell of pine all around. His breathing got slower and slower. Then it stopped. That’s how it was.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I was, too. For myself. For him, I was happy. It was for the best. Like people say. I left him there. He loved those hillsides. He loved the animals there. I packed my stuff and drove home.”

“What was the black-bag burglary for?”

“His copy of the report. In the desk drawer. The first place anyone would look.”

“What was in the report?”

“Old-fashioned cash at the supply depot door. A colonel in a Marine Corps medical battalion was selling stuff to Arthur Scorpio. That’s how Scorpio did it two years ago. Different now. But back then Sy was buying the stuff he should have been getting all along. It was weird. I guess the colonel saw the file and took care of the problem behind the scenes.”

“Scorpio knew Sy’s name, too,” Reacher said. “He gave it to me as a decoy.”

“Maybe the colonel told him.”

“Or maybe he told the colonel. If the roofer saw things, then Billy did, too. Maybe Billy told Scorpio, and Scorpio told the colonel. The investigation hadn’t started yet. Now it never would. The guy shut it down with the phony warrant. I think that’s the only way the timing works.”

“You’re saying Scorpio sold him out.”

“We should get going,” Reacher said. “Time to pay him a visit.”