The Midnight Line

by Lee Child

  didn’t say much. I tried to introduce the subject. I said I was sorry the pie was too big for one. It was a natural opening. It gave him a chance to tell me he was planning to share it with his girlfriend. But he didn’t. He said he would wrap the second slice in aluminum foil and eat it in a couple days.”

  “What kind of pie was it?”

  “Strawberry,” the woman said. “They had some nice ones at the market. Where I was going when I passed him on the road.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Nothing. That was it. It was kind of awkward, just standing there, so I said, OK, I guess I’ll get going, and he said thanks again for the pie, and then he practically rushed me off his property.”

  “What was your conclusion?”

  “It was in the way he was standing. He was screening me off from the house. He was hiding something in there. Or someone. Then I got to wondering about when I saw them in the car. Maybe she was hiding her face from me, not him. Maybe he told her to. Like she was his secret.”

  “But you never found out for sure?”

  “I never saw him again. He was dead a month later. No one ever said anything about a widow or a partner or a girlfriend. Or a sex slave or a hostage. So in the end I figured I must have been wrong. Then I guess I forgot all about it. Time passes.”

  “How long had he lived there?”

  “Five years, maybe.”

  “Did any of the neighbors ever take a wild-ass guess about what he did for money?”

  “That would enter the realm of gossip.”

  “I guess it would, technically.”

  “We figured he already had plenty. We figured he was a rich guy from out of state, come to find himself. We get those, from time to time. Maybe they’re writing a novel.”

  At that moment three hundred miles away in Rapid City, South Dakota, the clerk behind the deli counter in the convenience store was finishing up making change for a BLT and a diet soda, and then picking up the phone, and dialing the police department.

  He said, “Excuse me, I think you have a woman detective working for you. An Oriental person. Or Japanese-American. Or Asian, or whatever it’s supposed to be now. I need to speak with her.”

  The call was transferred, and a voice said, “Property, Nakamura.”

  “This is the guy from the convenience store. On the corner by Arthur Scorpio’s laundromat. I got something I figure I need to tell you before you find out for yourself and get mad at me.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “Arthur Scorpio just came in.”

  “And?”

  “He bought another phone.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Five minutes.”

  “Which phone?”

  “First one off the left peg.”

  Also at that moment, Arthur Scorpio was dialing Billy in Wyoming again. Again there was no answer. Just voicemail.

  Scorpio said, “Billy, this is Arthur. I need to hear from you. You’re making me worried now. What’s with not answering your phone all the time? And you got that guy coming. Plus maybe another guy. We just got a message from Montana. They sent a rider down especially. They have a Fed up there asking questions. He just left Billings. We don’t know where he’s headed next. Eyes open, OK? And call me back. Don’t make me worried, Billy.”

  He clicked off and dropped the phone in the trash basket.

  Bramall’s phone dinged. Reacher figured it was a text message. He was getting to where he could tell the difference. The woman in the faded red dress got up and started to gather the empty lemonade glasses.

  Bramall read his message.

  Twice.

  He said, “Ma’am, the lemonade was delicious, but I’m afraid we really have to get going now.”

  Then he just stood up and hustled out the door. Reacher shrugged at the woman, palms up, as if in puzzlement. Another universal gesture. Yeah, I know, but I better go with my crazy friend. He followed Bramall outside, and across the dirt, to the car.

  He said, “What’s up?”

  Bramall said, “Mrs. Mackenzie is dissatisfied with progress so far, and informs me she’s going to Wyoming to search certain places near the old family homestead herself. Apparently she’s reconsidering her opinion her sister would never go back there.”

  “Doesn’t she know you’re only sixty miles away?”

  “No,” Bramall said. “I never tell clients where I am.”

  “Why not?”

  “I like to build up the mystery.”

  “You can take the boy out of the FBI.”

  “We need to get there first.”

  “When is she leaving Chicago?”

  “She’ll charter a plane. She has a card. We should go there now. We should have gone there first. But I was told Sanderson would never return. Now we’re saying maybe she did? Terrific. Maybe she’s been there all along. It’s a two-hour drive. Nothing for Porterfield to complain about.”

  Sheriff Connelly had said a government agency would call him first, before entering on his territory. At least as a courtesy. Which is exactly what happened. He got back from his impromptu trip out to the old Porterfield place, and two minutes later his phone rang with a field agent from the federal DEA. The guy said he was heading south from Montana, and sooner or later was going to be passing through the county, nothing much in mind, maybe stopping in one or two places, but overall nothing for anyone to get concerned about. He said he didn’t require assistance or any other courtesies, but thank you very much for asking. Then he hung up.

  There was a big difference between crows flying and cars driving. To get across the Snowy Range, first they had to go back to the dirt road, and then back to Mule Crossing itself, and past the old post office and the bottle rocket store, and all the way back to Laramie, all in order to pick up a different westward route, which started with a left turn about four blocks north of the bar with the bullet hole in the mirror. Then the trip started all over again at zero. Still seventy miles to go. Reacher told Bramall to look on the bright side. More hours on the invoice. Bramall told a joke about about a lawyer who died and got to the pearly gates. Not fair, he said. I’m only forty-five. Saint Pete said no, we got a new system. Now we do it by billable hours. According to our records you’re 153.

  They passed a sign that said the road would close pretty soon for the winter. And then it started to rise, into the mountains, up over ten thousand feet, into thin and glittering air. The Toyota slowed a little, but it kept on going, winding through rocky gaps and around sparse copses of wind-stunted trees, across what already felt like the roof of the world. Then the road held level through a wide half-mile curve, and started to fall again, through the same type of gaps and around the same type of trees, and the Toyota started rolling faster and faster, under its own weight, with no gas at all.

  Thirty miles later the navigation screen showed a thin tracery of ranch roads, two on the north side, and two on the south. Beyond them was blank.

  “Is that it?” Reacher asked.

  “I think so,” Bramall said. “Apparently one of the ranches is bigger than the other three. That’s the old homestead. The others came later.”

  “Did the sisters inherit?”

  “No, the place was sold when they were in college. The parents moved out. New owners moved in. And so on. The same with the other three places, I’m sure.”

  “You think she’s squatting in one of them?”

  “I doubt a person who has to pawn her ring is paying rent.”

  “Why would they be empty?”

  “Rural real estate often is. Places shrivel and die. Especially when the neighborhood royalty moves out.”

  “Is that your description, or Mrs. Mackenzie’s?”

  “A little of both. Their father was a judge, which back then in a place like this made him the most important man in the county. Everything came through the courts eventually. Mrs. Mackenzie seems aware of that.”

  “Why did the parents move out?”
>
  “Mrs. Mackenzie had a hard time explaining. I’m sure we could speculate. I’m sure as kids they both had ponies. On a judge’s salary.”

  “I’m sure all Wyoming kids have ponies. There are more ponies than kids.”

  “It was a metaphor. For little arrangements that work great, until they don’t. Then sometimes you need to get out of town and start over.”

  “Is that how Mrs. Mackenzie remembers it?”

  “She was in college at the time. In the end she credits George W. Bush. She claims it was an entrepreneurial thing. The old man was moving from the public sector to the private.”

  “To do what exactly?”

  “No one knew exactly, except they noticed it stopped the day after the banks crashed.”

  “Where is the old boy now?”

  “Dead soon after.”

  “Mom?”

  “Also dead. But much more recently. Still raw.”

  “Hence the sudden worry about her semi-estranged twin.”

  “Exactly,” Bramall said. “Now her semi-estranged twin is all she’s got.”

  They had no way of knowing which of the tracks led to the largest ranch, because they all ran far out of sight into the invisible distance, so they tried to judge by width or construction or other hint of architectural grandeur. In the end they agreed one track was wider than the others. Possibly the surface was better. There were piles of rocks that might once have been ceremonial gateposts. Like the archaeological remains of a once-mighty palace.

  The Toyota turned in, and started climbing.

  Chapter 21

  The old homestead was both old and a homestead. It was a classic piece of western real estate, with wide tawny pastures, and dark green conifer trees, and outcrops of rock, and bubbling blue water in streams through the bottoms. Way in the distance were the Rocky Mountains, just hints in the mist. The main house was a spreading log construction with all kinds of extra wings built out. There were log barns and log garages. A lot of logs, Reacher thought, and all of them old-school, huge and heavy, hard as a rock, smoothed by axes and joined by pegs.

  Like an old-time travel poster on an airport wall.

  Except for a new-model rental sedan parked at an angle, and a woman standing next to it.

  The sedan was a handsome item with a Chevrolet grille, basic red, with barcodes in all the back windows. The woman was small and slender. Maybe five-two and a hundred pounds. She was wearing boots, and boot-cut blue jeans, and a gauzy white shirt under an open leather jacket. She had a purse on her shoulder. She had long thick hair, heaped and wild and tangled, most of it pale red, some of it bleached by the sun. Her face was like a picture in a book. Pale flawless skin, perfect bones, delicate features. Green eyes, frank and open. A red mouth, confident, in control, almost smiling. Radiant. Composed. She had to be thirty-something. But she looked brand new.

  Like a movie star.

  “Shit,” Bramall said. “That’s Mrs. Mackenzie.”

  The twin sister. An exact replica. Army minimum for women was four-ten and ninety-one pounds. Sanderson would have gotten in comfortably. But everything else would have been twice as hard. From that point onward. Especially with the face. It was drop-dead spectacular.

  Bramall got out of the car. He took a couple of steps, and stopped. So did she. Then Reacher got out. He heard Bramall say, “Mrs. Mackenzie, I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”

  She said, “One of those things. The text didn’t send till we landed. You thought I was leaving Chicago. Actually I was leaving the Hertz office in Laramie.”

  “I was close by.”

  “Of course you were. For which I apologize most sincerely. Fact and logic brought you to Wyoming, but I wouldn’t let you get all the way here. I told you it was impossible she would come back.”

  “What changed?”

  “You should introduce me to your friend.”

  Reacher stepped up and said his name and shook her hand. It felt like a dove’s wing in a gorilla’s paw.

  “What changed?” Bramall said again.

  “Now I’m afraid nothing has changed,” Mackenzie said. “This place is empty. I think I made a mistake. I wasted a day. I apologize.”

  “Why would she come back here?”

  “Suddenly I thought familiarity might be important to her. I try to think like her. We had some good times here. Eighteen years of stability. Since then she’s had none. I thought it might be something she’s craving.”

  Reacher looked up at the house.

  He asked, “How long has it been empty?”

  She said, “I think it’s just someone’s summer house now.”

  “It’s still summer.”

  “They must have skipped this year.”

  “Do you remember who bought it?”

  Mackenzie shook her head. “I’m not sure we ever knew. I was away in school, and Rose was at West Point.”

  “You call her Rose?”

  “We insisted. Jane and Rose.”

  “How did you feel when you found out your folks had sold the place?”

  “May I know the root of your interest in my family’s affairs?”

  So Reacher ran through the story one more time, from the bus out of Milwaukee all the way to the there and then across the Snowy Range. But some kind of instinct made him smooth it out as he went. He stayed strictly on the poignant pawned-ring track, and didn’t mention either Scorpio or Billy, or speculate about anyone’s specific occupation. He ended with the meager trove of evidence from Sy Porterfield’s hall closet, and his living room sofa, and his master bathroom, and his laundry room.

  Mackenzie was quiet a beat.

  Then she said, “What size were the boots?”

  “Six,” Reacher said.

  “OK.”

  He looked at her hair. Heaped, wild, tangled. Untamed was the word. Must take forever to wash.

  An exact replica.

  He said, “Show me your comb.”

  She paused again.

  Then she said, “Yes, I see.”

  She dug in her bag and came out with a pink plastic comb. All the teeth were widely spaced. Not half and half, like a regular comb.

  Reacher said, “Have you always used that brand?”

  “It’s the only kind that works.”

  “It’s the same.”

  “The boots fit too.”

  He took the ring from his pocket and balanced it on his palm. She picked it up, carefully, between delicate fingers.

  West Point 2005.

  The gold filigree, the black stone, the tiny size.

  She read the engraving.

  She selected a finger and pulled off a designer bauble as thick and gold as a false tooth. In its place she slipped her sister’s trophy. Fourth finger, right hand. It sat there like it should. The perfect fit. The perfect size. Prominent, like it should be, and proud, like it should be, but not as big as a carnival prize. Reacher pictured the same hand, but maybe worn down a bit leaner, with a darker tan, and a couple of nicks and cuts healed white.

  He pictured the same face, the same way.

  Mackenzie said, “You mentioned that you bought the ring.”

  “Correct,” Reacher said.

  “May I buy it back from you?”