The Midnight Line

Chapter 9

Out the window the front sentry walked back into view, after parking Scorpio’s car. He resumed his position, leaning on the wall to the left of the laundromat door, arms folded, impassive.

He had been gone just over five minutes.

Still no customers inside.

Into the phone Reacher said, “Where is Serena Rose Sanderson from?”

“As a cadet her home state was listed as Wyoming,” the supe said. “That’s all we’ve got. You think she went back there?”

“Depends,” Reacher said. “For some people, home is the first place they go. For others, it’s the last. What was she like?”

“She was before my time,” the supe said. “But her file is very solid. She was pretty close to outstanding, without ever quite getting there. Never in the top five, always in the top ten. That kind of person. She branched infantry, which was considered a smart choice for a woman, back in ’05. She knew she wouldn’t see combat, but she guessed the chaos would push her pretty damn near to it. Which I’m sure is what happened. Close support units were always busy. A lot of driving for resupply, which meant a lot of roadside IEDs. Plus vehicle recovery, which would have exposed her out in the open. Off post she would have been armed at all times. I’m sure she was in firefights. Those units took plenty of casualties, same as anyone else. She has a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. So she was wounded herself at some point.”

“Rank?”

“Terminal at major,” the guy said. “Like you. On her last tour she was doing a pretty big job. She led her soldiers well. On paper she’s a credit to the school.”

“OK,” Reacher said. “Thank you, general.”

“So proceed, but with caution.”

“Don’t worry.”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“I read your file,” the guy said again. “If you tilt it right and hold it in a sunbeam you can see the invisible writing. You were effective, but reckless.”

“Was I?”

“You know you were. You got away with things time after time.”

“Did I?”

“One damn thing after another. But you always came up smelling of roses.”

“Then draw the appropriate conclusion, general. I wasn’t reckless. I was relying on methods I knew had worked before, and would likely work again. I felt I was the opposite of reckless. There’s a clue in the word. Reck comes from reckon, and I felt I did more reckoning than most folks. Not less.”

“Call me back,” the guy said. “Let me know about Sanderson.”

For the second day running Gloria Nakamura was early to work. She parked her car and walked up the stairs. The mother hen at the gate to the detectives’ pen told her the lieutenant wanted to see her. First thing. Urgent but not critical. The mother hen said his voice on the phone had sounded OK. Not particularly angry.

Nakamura dropped her bag at her desk and headed off down the corridor. The lieutenant’s office was a corner suite at the far end of the floor. He was a cancer survivor, worn down to nothing but lacy bone and sinew, but lit up through his papery skin by some kind of crazed internal energy. He had gotten some bonus years, and he was going to slap the shit out of them. He was going to get big things done. Privately Nakamura felt his brush with death had produced an epiphany. He was afraid of being forgotten.

He was at his desk, reading email.

He said, “You sent me a thing about Arthur Scorpio.”

She said, “The voicemail from Wisconsin. Yes, boss. There have been developments.”

“Has Bigfoot arrived?”

“Yes, boss, I believe he has. But first there was a private eye from Chicago.”

“What did he want?”

“He wouldn’t say. But I checked him out. He’s a missing persons specialist. Very expensive.”

“Who’s missing?”

“About a million people nationwide.”

“Any reason to believe one of them is washing his shorts in Scorpio’s place?”

“There’s nothing on the wires.”

“Tell me about Bigfoot.”

“He’s a military veteran named Reacher. He found a West Point class ring in a pawn shop and he’s tracing its provenance.”

“Like a hobby?”

“No, like a matter of military honor. Like a moral obligation. Verging on the sentimental, in my opinion.”

“How is Scorpio involved?”

“The likelihood is the ring was stolen property fenced by Scorpio to a Wisconsin biker named Jimmy Rat, who then sold it onward to the pawn shop, where Bigfoot found it. Bigfoot says the pawn shop owner told him Jimmy Rat’s name, who told him Arthur Scorpio’s name. Now he wants Scorpio to name the next name. Whoever he got the ring from. And so on, all the way down the line. Bigfoot wants to return the ring to its rightful owner. That’s my assessment.”

“Scorpio won’t tell him shit.”

“I think he might. I’m not sure Bigfoot was telling the whole truth about what happened in Wisconsin. I don’t think a biker with a lucrative trade in stolen property would tell anyone anything. Least of all the name of a supplier. Not voluntarily. You should listen to the audio. Jimmy Rat sounds scared.”

“Of Bigfoot?”

“I saw him, boss. You could put him in a zoo.”

“You think Scorpio will be scared, too?”

“Either way I think a serious crime is about to be committed. Either Bigfoot will squeeze too hard, or Scorpio will push back too hard.”

Then she waited.

The lieutenant said, “I think we should get the surveillance going again.”

She said, “Yes, boss,” and breathed out.

“Just you. Eyes on at all times. Nothing subtle. Get right up in his grill.”

“I might need back up. I might need to intervene.”

“No,” the guy said. “Don’t intervene. Let nature take its course. It’s a win-win. If Scorpio hurts the guy, that’s great, because then we’ve got something on him at last. We’ve got you as an actual eyewitness to a felony assault. On the other hand, if the guy hurts Scorpio, that’s good news anyway. The worse the better. Plus you could always arrest the guy afterward. If you wanted to. For a felony assault of his own. If you need to boost your quarterly numbers, I mean.”

Reacher left the breakfast place through the kitchen door and slipped away through the alley. He didn’t want the front sentry to see him. Not yet. The Bigfoot description would leave the guy in no doubt. Word would pass instantly to Scorpio inside. Better not to get them too excited too soon.

So he skirted around at a safe radius, and then headed downtown, and started looking for better hotels than his own. The kind of place a retired-FBI gumshoe might choose. No fleapits, but nothing fancy, either. Probably a mid-market national chain. The guy probably had a loyalty card.

Reacher found four possibilities. At the first he went in and asked the clerk for a guest named Terrence Bramall, small guy, neat, in a suit and tie. If he was in a car, it might have Illinois plates. The woman pattered at her keyboard and stared at her screen, and then she said she was sorry, but currently the hotel had no guests with that name.

At the second possibility Reacher was told Terrence Bramall had checked out just thirty minutes before.

Or maybe even less, the clerk said. Maybe only twenty. She called up the closed account, to calibrate her memory. It was twenty-seven minutes ago. The guy had stopped at the desk, in his suit and tie, with a leather traveling bag in one hand, and a leather briefcase in the other. He paid his bill, and headed out to his car, which was in the covered lot. It was a black SUV, with Illinois plates. Bramall loaded his bags, and then got in and drove off, toward the Interstate, but whether he then turned east or west was anyone’s guess.

“Do you have his cell phone number?” Reacher asked.

The woman glanced at her screen. Left-hand column, Reacher thought, maybe two-thirds of the way up.

The woman said, “I really can’t give it out.”

Reacher pointed at the base of the wall behind her.

“Is that a cockroach?” he said.

Not a word hotel keepers liked to hear.

She turned to look. He leaned over the desk and bent his neck. Left-hand column, two-thirds of the way up. Ten digits. Not a prodigious feat of memory.

He straightened up.

She turned back.

“I didn’t see anything,” she said.

“False alarm,” Reacher said. “Sorry. Maybe just a shadow.”

Reacher found a pay phone in the lobby of an all-day Chinese restaurant. It was a chromium instrument mounted on a wall of red velvet. Not as glamorous as it looked from a distance. The chrome was pitted and the velvet was threadbare and tacky with grease.

Reacher dialed Bramall’s cell number. It rang and rang. It wasn’t picked up. No big surprise. The guy was probably on the Interstate. Probably a safety first type of person. Probably had to be, to survive a lifetime in the FBI.

No answer.

A recorded voice came on, inviting Reacher to leave a message.

He said, “Mr. Bramall, my name is Reacher. We waited in line together last night for sandwiches and we were briefly in the breakfast place at the same time this morning. I infer you were watching Arthur Scorpio’s place in connection with a missing persons inquiry. I was watching it in connection with trying to trace the source of a piece of stolen property. I think we should put our heads together, to figure out exactly what we both know. Just in case there’s more here than meets the eye. Could be useful for one of us, if not both. You can’t call me back because I don’t have a phone, so I’ll try you again at a later time. Thank you. Goodbye.”

He hung up.

He stepped out from the velvet lobby to the concrete sidewalk.

Arthur Scorpio’s black sedan stopped at the curb.

Right next to him, level with his hip.

The window buzzed down.

The front-door sentry said, “Get in the car.”