‘Never,’ she said for the fourth time. ‘What’s going on?’
‘The real reason we’re here is we followed a truck. It was kind of escaping. It drove up your driveway and out again on one of your trails. We don’t know which one.’
The woman looked all around.
She said, ‘It escaped through here?’
‘You ever had that kind of a thing happen before?’
‘Never,’ the woman said again. ‘How could it happen? How would anyone know where my trails go anyway?’
West Point, Reacher thought. Back when reading maps was a lifesaving skill.
He said, ‘Where do your trails go, in fact?’
‘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 colour.’
‘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, towards 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.’
TWENTY-NINE