The Midnight Line

Chapter 7

Reacher woke himself up when he figured the lunch rush would be over. He felt OK, after his exertions the previous evening. No real aches or pains. He checked the mirror. He had a light bruise on his forehead, from head-butting the fourth guy. And his right forearm was tender. It had dispatched three of them all by itself. Fully fifty percent. Along the bone there was nothing to bruise, but the skin looked about twice as thick as normal. And red, with tiny puncture wounds here and there. Even through his shirtsleeve. Which happened. Teeth, usually, or chips of bone from broken noses, or eye sockets. Collateral damage. But really nothing to worry about. He was in good shape. Same old same old, on another lonely day.

He showered and dressed and walked over to the emptying restaurant and ate off the all-day breakfast menu. He asked for quarters in his change and stopped at a pay phone near the door. He dialed an ancient number from memory.

It rang twice and was answered.

“West Point,” a woman’s voice said. “Superintendent’s office. How may I help you?”

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” Reacher said. “I’m a graduate of the academy, and I have an inquiry I’m sure will end up in your office anyway, so I figured I might as well start there.”

“May I have your name, sir?”

Reacher gave it, and his date of birth, and his service number, and his graduation year. He heard the woman write it all down.

She said, “What is the nature of your inquiry?”

“I need to identify a female cadet from the class of 2005. Her initials were S.R.S. and she was small. That’s all I’ve got so far.”

He heard her write it down.

She said, “Are you a journalist?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Do you work in law enforcement?”

“Not currently.”

“Then why do you need to make this identification?”

“I have lost property to return.”

“You can send it here. We can forward it.”

“I know you can,” Reacher said. “And I know why you’re suggesting we do it that way. You have all kinds of security issues to worry about now. Privacy rights, too. Not like it was when I was there. I understand that completely. You really shouldn’t tell me anything. Which is fine. I don’t want to put you on the spot, believe me.”

“Then we seem to understand each other.”

“Just do me one favor. Look her up, and then look me up. Consider all the possible circumstances. Either you’ll be kind of happy you didn’t give me a name, or you’ll be kind of sorry. I’ll call you back sometime and you can tell me which it was. Purely out of interest.”

“Why would I be sorry I followed procedure?”

“Because in the end you’ll realize that right now was the first faint whisper you ever heard that a West Pointer with the initials S.R.S. was in some kind of trouble somewhere. Maybe alone and in need of help. Afterward you’ll wish you’d taken it seriously from the beginning. You’ll be sorry you didn’t tell me sooner.”

“Who are you exactly?”

“Look me up,” Reacher said.

The voice said, “Call me back.”

Reacher walked the length of the motel to an area near the fuel pumps, where a kind of unofficial hitchhiking market was being run, by a homeless-looking guy wearing a coat tied up with rope. He would collect the desired destination from each new arriving hitchhiker, and then he would walk around shouting it out to the drivers in line for the pumps, and sooner or later one or another would wave and agree to some particular destination, and the lucky hitchhiker would tip the shouting guy a dollar and climb up in the cab.

Good business. Reacher was happy to pay a buck. Not that he would need help or luck. Every single driver was going to Rapid City. It was 350 miles away, but it was the first stop. There wasn’t much before it. After it there were choices. Wyoming, Montana, Idaho. But everyone had to pass through Rapid City first.

He got a ride inside about a minute and a half, in a huge red truck pulling a white boxed-in trailer. The cab had a quadruple sleeper pod behind the seats, bigger than some accommodations Reacher had been raised in. For cross-country house moving jobs, the driver said. The whole crew could sleep in the vehicle. Saved on motels.

The guy was old, like a lot of drivers. Maybe it was a fading profession. Maybe it had gotten too hard. Reacher thought the last of the frontier would die with it. Those guys were the final generation. The end of the DNA. Now people wanted to be home every night.

The guy said it would be five hours and five minutes to Rapid City. He said it with the kind of confidence that comes from having done it a thousand times before. They rolled out, sitting way up high, with a clear view to the horizon, and they ground up through the gears, and up, and up, until they were bowling along at more than seventy on the flat, and faster still on the down grades. The mile markers flashed past. Five hours and five minutes seemed dead-on plausible.

As always the driver wanted to know where his temporary passenger was traveling to, and why. As if in payment. A long story, for a long distance. For some reason Reacher told him the truth. The pawn shop, the ring, his compulsion to find out what connected the two. Which he said he couldn’t entirely explain.

The driver chewed on it all for ten whole miles.

Then he said, “My wife would say you feel guilty about something.”

Reacher didn’t answer.

“She reads books,” the driver said. “She thinks about things.”

“I don’t even know who this woman is. I don’t know her name. I never met her. How could I feel guilty about her? All I know is she sold her ring.”

“Doesn’t have to be about her. There’s a word. Transference, I think. Or projection, although that might be something different. My wife would say you feel guilty about a separate issue.”

“Would it have to be related?”

“Broadly, I suppose. Not necessarily that you made some other woman sell her jewelry, too. Doesn’t have to be obvious. My wife would say it might be some other failure or injustice.”

Reacher said nothing.

“My wife would ask if you had a wife or girlfriend to talk things over with.”

Chang would be halfway through her first full day back to work. Maybe she had new cases. Maybe she was already back at the airport.

“Tell your wife to keep on reading,” Reacher said. “She sounds like a very smart woman.”

As so often, getting from the highway to the city was the hardest part of the trip. The red truck was too big for downtown. Reacher got out at the cloverleaf, at ten to eight in the evening, after five hours and five minutes exactly. He stretched and breathed and set out looking for a local ride. There was plenty of traffic. Plenty of pick-up trucks, and SUVs, and regular cars. But there was the wrong frame of mind. They were all coming off the highway. They were all on their last lap. All almost home. Almost there. Almost to the bar. Almost to the girlfriend’s house. Almost to wherever. They all sped past. No one was in the mood to offer a ride. Not then. Did not compute. Rides were offered at the start of a journey. Not at the end.

Best hope in such a situation would always be a guy who had shaken his head three hundred miles ago, and then regretted it all the way since. Mostly a self-image thing. Such a guy was cooler than that. Such a guy would stop in his last few miles, maybe secretly hoping his limited offer would get a rueful refusal, thereby salving his conscience at zero personal cost, but also weirdly happy to actually go ahead and pick a guy up and drive him five or ten miles. In Reacher’s experience, given the traffic density, such a guy would come along about every twenty or twenty-five minutes. Visibility was key. The earlier they saw you, the better your chances. More time for the cool-guy thing to kick back in. Enough space to glide to a casual stop, and lean across with a smile.

In the end it took forty minutes. At eight-thirty exactly a Dodge crew cab pulled over. The driver put on a generous but apologetic expression and said he was going only as far as downtown. Reacher said that was great. He said he needed the part with the cheap motels. The guy said he would be passing by that general area, about two streets over, and would be happy to point the way.

The cheap part of downtown was dark. Daylight was long gone. There were lights on some street corners, and some of them worked, but not enough. Reacher got out of the Dodge and walked a long block west, mostly by feel, with visibility about a yard, and then another block just the same, and then he turned left and as promised he found two side-by-side motels, on a strip that also featured a diner and a gas station and a tire shop, which likely meant it was a popular route in and out of town. The right-hand motel had a tall lit-up sign, with come-on offers stacked up vertically, like logs in a pile: Free Breakfast, Free Cable, Free Wi-Fi, Free Upgrades.

The left-hand motel had: Free Everything.

Which Reacher doubted. Not the actual accommodation itself, surely. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. There was an old lady at the desk. She was slender and refined. She had blue hair, spun as fine as cotton candy. She was maybe eighty. Maybe she was the original owner, from way back long ago. Reacher asked his question, and she smiled and said no, he had to pay for his room, but everything else was included. She said it with a half-amused look in her eye, up and then down, and he sensed she meant Free Everything partly as a response to her neighbor’s boasting, whether good humored or teasing or edgy all in the eye of the beholder, but also partly she meant it as a despairing lament that these days, whatever you did, there was always someone in the world prepared to do it cheaper. Where could she go after free?

Reacher paid for a room.

He asked her, “Where could I wash my clothes around here?”

“What clothes?” she said. “You don’t have a bag.”

“Theoretically. Suppose I got a bag.”

“You would go to a laundromat.”

“How many do you have?”

“How many do you need?”

“Some might be better than others.”

“Are you worried about bedbugs? You shouldn’t be. That’s what laundromats are for. Turn the dryer on high, and you kill them stone dead. That’s what I do here. With the sheets.”

“Good to know,” Reacher said. “How many laundromats are there in Rapid City? I’m curious, is all. I like to know things.”

She thought about it and almost answered, but then she stopped herself, too naturally meticulous to rely on memory alone. She wanted corroboration. She took a thin Yellow Pages from a drawer. She checked under L, and again under C, for coin-operated.

“Three,” she said.

“Do you know the owners?”

Again she thought about it, at first looking skeptical, as if the question was odd and such acquaintances unlikely, but then her face changed, as if she was recalling old trade associations, and local business campaigns, and rubber chicken, and cocktail parties.

She said, “Actually I do know two of the three.”

“What are their names?”

“Does it matter?”

“I’m looking for a man named Arthur Scorpio.”

“He’s the third of the three,” she said. “I don’t know him at all.”

“But you know the name.”

“This is a small town. We gossip.”

“And?”

“He’s not well spoken of.”

“In what way?”

“Just gossip. I shouldn’t repeat it. But a friend with a great-nephew in the police department says they have a file on Mr. Scorpio three inches thick.”

“He buys and sells stolen property,” Reacher said. “That’s the story I got.”

“Are you a policeman?”

“No. Just a regular guy.”

“What do you want from Arthur Scorpio?”

“I want to ask him a question.”

“You should proceed with great caution. Mr. Scorpio has a reputation for hostility.”

“I’ll ask politely,” Reacher said.

There was a Rapid City street plan in the front of the Yellow Pages. The old lady tore it out, very carefully, and she marked where the motel was, and where Scorpio’s laundromat was. She folded the page in quarters and gave it to Reacher. For the morning, no doubt she assumed, but he went straight there. Nearly ten o’clock in the evening. He walked long pitch-dark blocks, checking the old lady’s map wherever he found a bulb that worked, and then up ahead he saw the glow of neon. A late-night convenience store, on a corner. According to the old lady’s map, Scorpio’s laundromat was across the street and halfway down the block.

Reacher found it right where it should be. Just beyond a dead tree. It was in the middle of the block, in the center unit of a larger structure that ran from corner to corner. It was currently closed for business. The lights were off. The door was locked, and it had a padlocked chain wrapped through the handles. The door was glass, with a wider window next to it. Inside was gloom, with a row of stacked machines on one wall, ghostly white and bulky, and a row of plastic lawn chairs on the other, below dispensers for change and soap and fabric conditioner and dryer sheets. Everything seemed to cost a dollar.

Across the street was the lit-up convenience store way on the left, and then a shoe outlet, and then a couple of empty units dead ahead, and then a little right of center was a breakfast place. A real greasy spoon. Its front window was small, but its line of sight would be good. Its food, too, probably. And its coffee. Reacher made a mental note.

Then he walked around the block, and located the laundromat’s rear door, in an alley. It was a blank fireproof slab, made of metal. A standard industrial product. Nothing special. A zoning requirement, maybe, or insurance. It was locked.

He walked back. He paced out the depth of the building, from the alley to the street. Too much. It was about twice the depth he could see through the laundromat’s window. Which meant there was another room in back, about equal in size. A storeroom, maybe, or offices. Where business was done, that gave rise to gossip.

He stood in the dark a minute more, and then headed back the way he had come. On the opposite corner he stopped in at the convenience store. He figured a cup of coffee would be a good idea. Maybe a sandwich. He was hungry. There was another guy in there on the same mission. He was standing at the deli counter sipping from a go-cup. He was a small man, neat and compact, in a dark suit and a necktie. Apparently he had ordered an elaborate construction involving a fried egg and a large quantity of grated cheese. Clearly not worried about cholesterol. The counterman finished his work and wrapped the sloppy result first in paper, and then in aluminum foil. He handed it over and the guy in the suit turned and stepped around Reacher and headed for the door.

Reacher ordered his go-to, which was roast beef and Swiss cheese, with mayo and mustard, on white bread. Plus coffee. The counterman turned away and spun up the slicing machine. Reacher asked him, “What do you know about the laundromat down the block?”

The guy turned back. The blade hissed and sung behind him. He looked puzzled at first, and then a little hostile, as if he suspected someone was making fun of him. Then he looked preoccupied, as if he was struggling with a difficult arithmetic calculation, and coming out with an answer he liked but didn’t trust.

He said, “That’s what the other guy just asked.”

Reacher said, “The guy with the fried egg sandwich?”

“But what does that kind of guy need with a laundromat? The suits go to the dry cleaner, and the shirts get starched for a buck and a half. Am I right?”

“I’ll be back in a second,” Reacher said.

He stepped to the door, and out to the sidewalk.

No sign of the guy in the suit and the tie.

No echo of lonely nighttime footsteps.

Reacher came back in and stepped back to the counter, and the guy making his sandwich said, “He would need to wash his underwear, maybe. And socks. But all the hotels have laundry bags in the closet. A guy like that wouldn’t sit and watch the soap suds go around and around.”

“You think he’s staying in a hotel?”

“He’s not local. Did you get a look at him? He’s some kind of a professional person. I would say a lawyer, in town to try a big case, but he didn’t look rich enough. So now I’m thinking IRS or something. A government worker. And then you asked the same question. About the laundromat. I don’t think you’re IRS, but you could be a cop. So now I’m thinking Arthur Scorpio has got trouble coming.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“Whether it works. Mr. Scorpio has been in trouble before. Nothing ever sticks.”