The Midnight Line (Jack Reacher #22)

‘Don’t worry. Let’s make another assumption. Let’s say the convenience store guy gets his satisfaction a different way than you. Maybe he fills the pegs left, right, left, right. Perhaps he likes that better.’

‘Then numbers four and seven couldn’t be together on the same peg.’

‘So let’s make another assumption, based on the fact that you have the smallest hands in the world, and the convenience store guy is reasonably dexterous, working as he does with knives and what-not, so perhaps he hung them two at a time.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That would put three and four on the right, immediately behind seven and eight. If I bought seven and four, then Scorpio bought eight. His phone number is one higher than mine.’

‘And listen to what my buddy at the phone company found,’ her friend said. He shuffled his mouse and his screen lit up. He clicked on an email, and then on an audio file, and jagged green bandwidth spiked on the screen, and Scorpio said, ‘Billy, this is Arthur. We got some weird shit going on.’

Reacher got a ride from two kids pulling out of a gas station on the southern edge of town. A boy and a girl. Grad students, probably, or undergrads with great ID. They said they were headed to Fort Collins, across the state line. Shopping, they said, but not for what. Their car was a tidy little sedan. Unlikely to attract a trooper’s attention. Safe enough, for the return leg of their journey.

They said they knew the bottle rocket billboard. And sure enough, after forty minutes on a gentle two-lane road, there it was, on the right shoulder, caught square in the high beams. It was bright yellow, half urgent, and half quaint. The students pulled over, and Reacher got out. The students drove away, and Reacher stood alone in the silence. The firework store itself was dark and closed up tight. Beyond it fifty yards south was a ramshackle building with a light in a small square upstairs window. The flea market, presumably. The former post office.

Reacher walked towards it.

Nakamura carried her laptop to her lieutenant’s office, and played him the voice mail. Use a deer rifle from behind a tree. Your privileges are suspended till I hear back from you.

‘He’s ordering a homicide,’ she said.

Her lieutenant said, ‘His lawyer will say talk is cheap. And he’ll point out we don’t have a warrant. Not for the new number.’

Nakamura said nothing.

Her lieutenant said, ‘Anything else?’

‘Scorpio mentioned privileges. I don’t know what that means.’

‘A business relationship of some kind, I suppose. Discount, priority, or access.’

‘To what? Soap powder?’

‘Surveillance should tell us.’

‘We’ve never seen anything that looks like privileged access to something. Never. Nothing goes in or out.’

‘Billy might not agree. Whoever Billy is.’

‘Bigfoot is going to walk right into trouble. We should call someone.’

Her lieutenant said, ‘Play the voice mail again.’

She did. He’s got to go, because he’s a random loose end. Easier for you to deal with out there than it would be for me here. So get it done.

‘He’s ordering a homicide,’ she said again.

Her lieutenant said, ‘Can we ID Billy from his phone number?’

Nakamura shook her head. ‘Another drugstore burner.’

‘Where is Mule Crossing exactly?’

‘In a county measuring seven thousand square miles. Which is run by a sheriff’s department likely no bigger than two men and a dog.’

‘You think we should play the Good Samaritan?’

‘I think we have a duty.’

‘OK, call them in the morning. Fingers crossed the men answer, not the dog. Tell them the story. Ask them if they know a guy named Billy, with a deer rifle and a tree.’

The ramshackle building looked like a post office. Something about the shape, and the size. It was plain and bureaucratic, but also prideful. As if it was saying the mails could be carried anywhere, even into empty and inhospitable regions. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. All that good stuff. But not any more. A car passed by on the road and in the wash of its lights Reacher saw less-faded wood where twenty years before stern metal letters had been prised out of the siding: United States Post Office, Mule Crossing, Wyo. Below that was a replacement message, hand-painted in gaudy multicoloured foot-high letters: Flea Market.

The market itself had a sign in the window saying it was closed. It was dark inside. The door was locked. No knocker, no bell. Reacher walked back to where he could see the lit-up window. Below it in the end wall of the building was a door, with a shallow stoop, which had a boot scraper on one side and a garbage can on the other. All very domestic. The entrance to the residence, presumably. To the foot of a staircase direct to the second floor. Where the lit window was. Living above the store, literally.

There was no doorbell.

Reacher knocked, hard and loud. Then waited. No response. He knocked again, harder and louder. He heard a voice.

It roared, ‘What?’

A man, not young, not delighted at being disturbed.

‘I want to talk to you,’ Reacher called back.

‘What?’

‘I need to ask you a question.’

‘What?’

Reacher said nothing. He just waited. He knew the guy would come down. He had been an MP for thirteen years. He had knocked on a lot of doors.

The guy came down. He opened the door. He was a white man, maybe seventy years old, tall but stooping, with not much flesh over a solid frame.

He said, ‘What?’

Reacher said, ‘I was told only five or six people live here. I’m looking for one of them. Which makes it about an eighteen per cent chance that person is you.’

‘Who are you looking for?’

‘Tell me your name first.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if you’re the guy, you’ll deny it. You’ll pretend you’re someone else and send me on a wild goose chase.’

‘You think I would do that?’

‘If you’re the guy,’ Reacher said again. ‘It’s been known to happen.’

‘You a cop?’

‘Once upon a time. In the army.’

The guy went quiet.

He said, ‘My son was in the army.’

‘What branch?’

‘Rangers. He was killed in Afghanistan.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Not as much as I am. So remind me again, how may I help the army tonight?’

‘I’m not here for the army,’ Reacher said. ‘I’ve been out a long time. This is a purely private matter. Purely personal. I’m looking for a man I was told was from Mule Crossing, Wyoming.’

‘But you won’t tell me his name till I tell you mine. Because if I’m him, I’ll lie about it. Have I got that straight?’

‘Hope for the best, plan for the worst.’

‘If I was the sort of guy other guys came looking for, wouldn’t I lie anyway?’

Reacher nodded.

He said, ‘This whole thing would go better if I saw ID.’

‘You got some nerve, you know that?’

‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’