by Lee Child
“All over,” she said. “You can get to Colorado if you want. Who were you chasing? They must have been panicking, to come through here.”
“We think the driver was a woman.”
“OK.”
“She looked kind of small, and she was turning away. We didn’t see her face.”
The woman said nothing.
“There was a silvery color.”
“Oh my god.”
“The same as you saw before.”
“Here?”
“We followed the truck right in.”
“You’re going to give me nightmares.”
They left her there, and drove back down the driveway, to the dirt road, and the two-lane, and Laramie. The hospital was out by the university. Perhaps it was connected. The emergency room had seven patients waiting. Two of them could have been suffering from Billy’s absence. They looked shaky and damp. A likely diagnosis. The other five could have been students. All seven looked up, like people do in waiting rooms. They checked out the new arrivals.
Including Mackenzie.
No hint of recognition.
Nor was there at the desk. Mackenzie asked after a patient named Rose Sanderson, and a helpful woman checked a screen, and smiled an encouraging smile, and said they had seen no one with that name, while all the time looking Mackenzie straight in the eye, in an open and frank and perfectly compassionate way.
Without a hint of recognition.
Mackenzie stepped away from the desk and said, “OK, either she’s got friends willing to share, or she’s in town right now, trying to score.”
They drove to the corner of Third and Grand, and checked block by block for the combination they wanted, which was two bad bars and a decent place to eat, all within sight of each other. They needed a meal, but Mackenzie didn’t want to burn surveillance time. She wanted to watch while she ate, at least two plausible places. So they found a café across the street from two cowboy bars, both with neon beer signs behind unwashed windows. They figured there might be business transacted in such places. Cowboys liked pain pills, the same as anyone else. Maybe more so. Because of rodeo accidents, and roping injuries, and other random falls off horses.
The café was a new-age place, with all kinds of healing juices, and sandwiches Reacher figured had been put together by a blind man. All kinds of random ingredients. Huge seeds in the bread. Like sawdust mixed with ball bearings.
Bramall went to wash up, leaving Mackenzie and Reacher alone at the table. She took off her jacket, and turned left and right to hang it on the frame of her chair. She looked back at him. Pale flawless skin, perfect bones, delicate features. Green eyes, full of sorrow.
She said, “I apologize.”
He said, “For what?”
“When we first met. I said you were a weird obsessive, two soldiers short of a squad.”
“I think it was me who said that.”
“Only because you knew I was thinking it.”
“You had a good reason.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But now I’m glad you’re here.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“I should pay you what I pay Mr. Bramall. The same daily rate.”
“I don’t want to be paid,” Reacher said.
“You think virtue is its own reward?”
“I don’t know much about virtue. I just want to find out what happened. I can’t charge money for a private satisfaction.”
Bramall came back, and they ate, and they watched out the window.
They saw nothing.
Mackenzie paid.
Reacher said, “There’s another bar we could look at.”
“Like these?” Bramall said.
“A little better, maybe. There might be a guy we could talk to.”
He led them a block over, toward the railroad tracks, and two blocks down, to the bar with the bullet hole in the mirror. The same guy was at the same table, with the same kind of long-neck bottle. The helpful guy, or the busybody into everyone’s business, or the local expert full of specialist knowledge, or the mixture of all three. His table was only a two-top, so Mackenzie sat down across from him, and Bramall and Reacher stood behind her.
The guy said, “You’re the gentleman who asked me about Mule Crossing.”
“Correct,” Reacher said.
“Did you find it? Or did you blink and miss it?”
He was talking to Reacher, but he was looking at Mackenzie. Hard not to. The mass of hair, and the face, and the eyes, and the small slender form under the thin white blouse.
No hint of recognition.
“I found it,” Reacher said. “In fact I heard a story down there. A year and a half ago someone got eaten by a bear.”
The guy took a long pull on his bottle.
He wiped foam off his lip.
He said, “Seymour Porterfield.”
“You knew him?”
“My buddy’s friend was the guy who fixed his roof when it leaked. Which was about every winter, because it was built all wrong. So I heard things. I know about the land from way back. Those were railroad acres, even though the track was nowhere near. Some old scam, more than a hundred years ago. Every once in a while some rich guy back east would inherit a deed, and come on out and build a cabin. In Porterfield’s case it was his father. He built a modern style, which I guess is why the roof was leaking. Then later he died and Porterfield got the title in his will. I guess he decided he liked the simple life, because he moved in full time.”
“What did he do for a living?”
“He was on the phone all the time, and he drove around a lot. Doing what, no one seemed to know exactly. Maybe a hobby. He had all his daddy’s money. Some kind of old fortune back east. Maybe ironworks, hence the railroad connection.”
“What kind of a guy was he?”
“He was a college boy and a former Marine. But the old-money kind of both.”
“How was his health?”
The guy paused a beat.
He said, “Weird you should ask that.”
“Why?”
“His health looked fine from the outside. You could have put him on a movie poster. But he had economy packs of surgical dressings in his house, and also his medicine cabinet was jammed with pills.”
“Your buddy’s friend would check a thing like that?”
“You know, in passing.”
“Was there ever any trouble there? Any strangers showing up unannounced? Any kind of weird shit going on?”
The guy shook his head.
“No strangers,” he said. “No trouble, either. And nothing weird, until the secret girlfriend showed up.”
Chapter 29
The guy with the long-neck bottle said, “I guess it was the start of the winter before the last one. Porterfield’s roof was leaking bad again. My buddy’s friend was out there all the time. Sometimes he would get a look in through a window. He started seeing her stuff. More and more of it. But he never saw her. If he had to do inside work, sometimes she wasn’t there, and if she was, she would hide in the bedroom. He was sure of it.”
“She wasn’t always there?” Reacher said.
“Neither was he sometimes. She must have had a place of her own. I guess they were back and forth.”
“But when she was there, she didn’t hide her stuff,” Reacher said.
“No, it was right out in the open.”
“Any chance of confusion? Maybe it was all Porterfield’s stuff.”
The guy shook his head. He said, “I don’t think so, especially the nightwear. And you can tell by the look of a place. Men and women make a mess two different ways. This was both ways at once, let me tell you, right there. Two of everything. Two people. Two plates in the sink, two books by the sofa, both sides of the bed with a dent.”
“Clearly your buddy’s friend undertook an extensive investigation.”
“A roof covers the whole house, man. Supposed to, anyway.”
“But your buddy’s friend never
actually met her.”
“Which is why he called her the secret girlfriend.”
“Never saw her coming and going, or out on the road?”
“Never.”
“Did Porterfield ever say anything about her?”
The guy drained his bottle and set it down on the table.
He said, “He never denied it. He never came right out and said some weird thing like hey, by the way, I don’t have a girlfriend. But equally he never said, by the way, my girlfriend is taking a nap, so don’t go in the bedroom. All he ever said was don’t go in. Period. He never said why. All in all my buddy’s friend said being there was a weird experience. Like Porterfield was hiding her away, and denying her existence, so no one would ever come looking for her. Except that made no sense, because her stuff was everywhere. I think a man with bad intentions would have taken better precautions.”
Reacher said, “Did you believe the story about the bear?”
“The sheriff did,” the guy said. “That’s about all that matters.”
“You got doubts?”
“I wasn’t there. But everyone had the same private reaction. It was automatic. Once or twice in your life you find yourself wondering what you would do, if there truly was a guy who had to go. Or you wonder what you would do if something got way out of hand, and someone ended up dead, when he wasn’t supposed to. Either way, you would dump him in the high woods. Exactly the kind of place where Porterfield was found. It’s a total no brainer. Maybe you would smear him with honey. Or nick another couple of veins, to keep the smell fresh. Maybe you would get lucky with the big animals, and maybe you wouldn’t, but either way you don’t need them. You got hundreds of other species already lining up and licking their lips. So what I’m saying is, I promise you every guy who heard the news about Porterfield was thinking hell yeah, that’s how I would do it. I know I was.”
“You think the sheriff was really?”
“Privately, sure.”
“But publicly he called it an accident.”
“No proof,” the guy said. “That’s the whole beauty of it.”
“Did Porterfield have enemies?”
“He was a rich guy from back east. I’m sure they all have enemies.”
“What happened to the woman?”
“Rumor was she stuck around. No one knew exactly where. No one knew who they were looking for, because no one knew what she looked like in the first place.”
“What happened to Porterfield’s roof?”
“The sheriff told my buddy’s friend to fix it good, once and for all. So he put new metal over the bad part. Which is what he had wanted to do all along, except Porterfield would never let him, because it wasn’t that way in the architect’s drawing.”
They bought the guy another bottle of his favorite beer, and left him there. They walked back to the Toyota, which was parked across the street from the new-age café, on the far curb about halfway between the two bars, with their beer signs and their dirty windows. By that point the street lights were on. The sky was dark. The café was closed. There was noise in the bars, but their doors were shut.
There were three guys fanned out around the Toyota. Out in the street, casting shadows, as if ready to repel a hostile attack. They were all wiry, but also tall. They all had big blunt hands. They were all wearing denim and boots, one of them lizard.
Bramall stopped in the shadows.
Reacher and Mackenzie stopped behind him.
Mackenzie said, “Who are they?”
“Cowboys,” Reacher said. “Weaned on beef jerky and fried rattlesnake.”
“What do they want?”
“My guess is to scare us off. This kind of choreography usually involves that kind of thing.”
“Scare us off what? What are we doing?”
“We’re poking around. We’re asking questions about a woman who may be involved in some kind of unsavory local business. We’re making them nervous.”
“What do we do?”
“I need to consult with my senior partner about who goes first.”
Bramall said, “Do you have a preference?”
“I think we should all go together. Maybe me one step ahead. But I want you to see their faces.”
“Why?”
“If I lose you can give the cops a description, from my hospital bedside.”
“Lose what?” Mackenzie said. “I’m sure all they want to do is talk to us. I’m sure they’ll be aggressive and unpleasant and so on, but I don’t see how it necessarily becomes a fight. Unless we choose to make it one.”
“Where do you live?”
“Lake Forest, Illinois.”
“OK.”
“What does that mean?”
“This is already a fight. You can tell by the way they’re standing. It’s win or go home.”
“Did Scorpio send them?”
“That would be a logical assumption,” Reacher said. “Technically the unsavory local business is his. All the way up to Montana, apparently. But it’s also the opposite of logical. If Scorpio can whistle up three good-looking cowboys at the drop of a hat, why would he have told a half-assed punk like Billy to shoot me from behind a tree? He would have told these guys instead. Maybe this is some kind of distant local subcommittee. Some kind of spontaneous democracy, that Scorpio knows nothing about.”
“You worried about them?” Bramall said. “You mentioned losing.”
“Cowboys are the worst,” Reacher said. “Not much I can do to them, that a horse already hasn’t.”
He stepped out of the shadows and walked ahead through the evening gloom. His heels were loud on the concrete. Behind him Bramall and Mackenzie caught up and closed the gap. They stepped off the sidewalk and crossed the street at an angle. They headed straight for the car.
The three guys moved, flowing outward to meet them, bunching up, one guy ahead and two behind, like a mirror image. Reacher was wrestling with the brawler’s eternal dilemma, which was why not just take out the point man immediately? A surprise head-butt. Don’t even stop walking.
Often the smart play.
But not always.
Reacher stopped and the cowboys stopped and they ended up about eight feet apart. That close Reacher thought they looked like three useful characters. Two could have been in their early forties, and the third could have been ten years younger. He was the point man. He had the lizard boots.
“Let me guess,” Reacher said. “You’re here to give us a message. That’s fine. Everyone has the right to be heard. We’ll give you thirty seconds. Start now, if you like. Speak clearly. Translate any local words or phrases.”
The guy with the lizard boots said, “The message is go back where you came from. Ain’t nothing for you here.”
Reacher shook his head.
“That can’t be right,” he said. “Are you sure you heard the message correctly? Generally speaking, folks out here like to welcome a stranger.”
The guy said, “I got the message right.”
Nothing more.
Reacher said, “Tell me when we get to the part where you say you’ll kick our ass if we don’t get going.”
