The guy stood still for a second, deciding, and then he shook his head and smiled and hauled a wallet out of his back pants pocket. He flipped it open and held it out. There was a Wyoming driver’s licence behind a scratched plastic window. The photograph was right. The address was right. The name was John Ryan Headley.
Reacher said, ‘Thank you, Mr Headley. My name is Reacher. I’m pleased to meet you.’
The guy clapped his wallet shut and put it back in his pocket.
He said, ‘Am I the man you’re looking for, Mr Reacher?’
‘No,’ Reacher said.
‘I thought not. Why would anyone look for me?’
‘I’m looking for a guy named Seymour Porterfield. Apparently people call him Sy.’
‘You’re a little late for Sy, I’m afraid.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘Since when?’
‘About eighteen months ago, I guess. Around the start of spring last year.’
‘Someone told me he was seen in South Dakota six weeks ago.’
‘Then someone was lying to you. There’s no doubt about it. It was a big sensation. He was found in the hills, mostly eaten up. Killed by a bear, they thought. Maybe waking up after hibernation. They’re hungry then. Other folks thought a mountain lion. His guts were all ripped out, which is what mountain lions do. Then the ravens came, and the crows, and the raccoons. He was scattered all over the place. They made the ID with his teeth. And the keys in his pocket. April, I think. April last year.’
‘How old was he?’
‘He could have been forty.’
‘What did he do for a living?’
‘Come on in,’ Headley said. ‘I’ve got coffee brewing.’
Reacher followed him up a narrow stair, to a long A-shaped attic that had been panelled with pine boards, and boxed off into separate rooms. There was an aluminium percolator thumping away on the stove. All the furniture was small. No sofas. The staircase was too narrow and the turns too tight to get them in. Headley poured two cups and handed one over. The coffee was thick and inky and smelled a little scorched.
‘What did Porterfield do for a living?’ Reacher asked again.
‘No one knew for sure,’ Headley said. ‘But he always had money in his pocket. Not a whole lot, but a little more than made any kind of sense.’
‘Where did he live?’
‘He had a log house up in the hills,’ Headley said. ‘Twenty miles away, maybe, on one of the old ranches. All by himself. He was pretty much a loner.’
‘West of here?’
Headley nodded. ‘Follow the dirt road. I guess his place is empty now.’
‘Who else lives out in that direction?’
‘Not sure. I see folks driving by. I don’t necessarily know who they are. This ain’t the post office any more.’
‘Were you here when it was?’
‘Man and boy.’
‘How many folks do you see driving by?’
‘Could be ten or twenty total.’
‘I was told four or five.’
‘Who pay their taxes and sign their names. But there are plenty of abandoned places. Plenty of unofficial residents.’
Reacher said, ‘You know a woman, also ex-army, very small, name of Serena Sanderson?’
Headley said, ‘No.’
‘You sure?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Maybe she got married. You know any kind of a Serena?’
‘No.’
‘What about Rose? Maybe she goes by her middle name.’
‘No.’
‘OK,’ Reacher said.
‘What is this about exactly?’
Reacher took the ring out of his pocket. The gold filigree, the black stone, the tiny size. West Point 2005. He said, ‘This is hers. I want to return it. I was told Sy Porterfield sold it in Rapid City six weeks ago.’
‘He didn’t.’
‘Evidently.’
‘What’s the big deal?’
‘Would your boy have given up his Ranger tab?’
‘Not after what he went through to get it.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I can’t help you,’ Headley said. ‘Except I can promise you Sy Porterfield didn’t sell that ring in Rapid City six weeks ago, on account of getting ate up by a bear or a mountain lion more than a year before in another state entirely.’
‘So someone else sold it.’
‘From here?’
‘Possibly. Fifty-fifty maybe. Mule Crossing was mentioned. Either true or false.’
‘I see folks drive by. I don’t know who they are.’
‘Who would?’
Headley squirmed around in his chair, as if gazing west through the wall, as if picturing the dirt road rolling away into the darkness. He turned back and said, ‘The guy who runs the snowplough in the winter lives in the first place on the left. About two miles in. I guess he knows who lives where, from seeing their tyre tracks, and maybe towing them out from time to time.’
‘Two real miles in, or two Wyoming miles?’
‘It’s about a five minute drive.’
Which even on a dirt road could be more than two real miles. At an average speed of thirty, it would be two and a half. At forty, it would be more than three. And then back again.
‘You got a car?’ Reacher asked.
‘I got a truck.’
‘Can I borrow it?’
‘No, you can’t.’
‘OK,’ Reacher said. ‘What’s the guy’s name, with the snowplough?’
‘I don’t know his second name. Not sure I ever heard it. But I know his first name is Billy.’
THIRTEEN
REACHER LET HIMSELF out and walked down to where the dirt road met the two-lane. In the pitch dark there was nothing to see. No lights in the distance. Underfoot the surface felt like sand and fine gravel. Not hard to walk on. Except for the darkness. There was no clue at all as to direction, or curves, or turns, or camber, or gradient, or anything. He would be like a blind man, staggering slowly, blundering into fences, falling into ditches. Two miles was too far, in the gloom of night. He would have been a severe disappointment as a mail carrier.
He turned around. He crossed the two-lane and waited on the shoulder going north. Back to Laramie. Too soon to get the same students coming home again. But there would be others. Earlier birds, or regular folk coming back from shopping or a blue-plate special. He waited. The first two cars blew by without slowing, five minutes apart. The third stopped. It was a battered sedan with the hubcaps missing. The driver was a guy about forty, wearing a denim jacket. He said he was going to Laramie. Reacher asked him what he knew about motels in town. The guy said there were three types of place. Chain hotels south of the highway, or the same thing near the university, where people stayed for the football games, or dumpy mom-and-pop fleapits on the main drag north of the centre. All Reacher wanted was a bed and a pay phone, so he said the guy should let him out wherever was the most convenient. Which turned out to be the chains south of the highway. They were right there, on a service road parallel with the two-lane, across a grassy strip.
He paid for a room, and found a phone in an alcove off the lobby. He dug in his pocket and took out Nakamura’s business card. Those are my numbers. Office and cell. Call me if you need to talk. Scorpio is a dangerous man.
He dialled her cell.
She answered.
He said, ‘This is Reacher.’
She said, ‘Are you OK?’
She sounded worried.
‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘Where are you?’
‘Laramie, Wyoming.’
‘Don’t go to Mule Crossing.’
‘I just did.’