She paused a beat.
‘I would party at first,’ she said. ‘Big time. No more rationing. No more cutting patches. I would bathe in the stuff.’
‘Dangerous.’
‘God, I hope so. It’s a world you don’t understand until you’re in it. There is no feeling better than tiptoeing all the way up to the gates of death. All the way up to the big black door, and then knocking on it. It’s a whole different zone. If I hear a news story about some other user dying, due to some batch of something showing up unexpectedly strong, I’m not feeling sorry for the guy. I’m thinking, where can I get some of that good stuff? Not because I want to kill myself. Far from it. I want the exact opposite. I want to live for ever, so I can get high every day. I’m sorry, Reacher. I’m not the person I was. I mutated. You should have found someone else’s ring.’
‘What next, after you’re done partying?’
‘Eventually I guess I would have to tone it down. Probably get the IV, if I can have it at home.’
‘You think you can tone it down?’
She nodded, inside her hood. ‘I love it like crazy, but there’s enough of the old me still in there. I know that. I made it through West Point and nine years in the infantry. I could make it through this. As long as I knew I didn’t have to quit entirely. As long as I knew the promise was always there. Maybe Saturday night, if I was good all week. I think I could get myself to that level.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then I’ll hide out in my sister’s house until I’m a hundred years old. By which time we’ll all be ugly and I won’t stand out so much. Until then let’s not be Pollyanna. There won’t be any then-what going on. I don’t see how it could.’
‘You could get a job.’
‘You must have missed that memo.’
He smiled.
‘I work now and then,’ he said. ‘Labouring, or nightclub bouncer. One time I dug a swimming pool in Key West, Florida. By hand. I bet it’s still there.’
‘The psychiatrists came to see me in the hospital. There was a new school of thought, about confronting issues head-on. No false comfort. I was an O-4, don’t forget. All grown up. I was supposed to be able to take it. They showed me the data. Employees with facial disfigurements upset customers and coworkers so badly that virtually a hundred per cent of them end up working alone in a back office.’
‘OK, don’t get a job.’
‘Then we had long conversations about how much our personalities are tied up with our faces. About subliminal cues and nuances. Something very fundamental. Later I realized the head-on stuff went only so far. Now they were being subtle. They were dropping hints. They were telling me my romantic life was over.’
‘Porterfield didn’t agree.’
‘He was different.’
‘Was he blind?’
‘He had problems of his own.’
Behind them the door opened, and Mackenzie came out on the porch, followed by Bramall. Mackenzie looked like she had something to say, but Bramall’s cell phone rang. He took it out and checked the screen.
He said, ‘It’s Special Agent Noble, from his office in Denver.’
He looked at Rose.
Then he looked at Reacher.
Asking for something.
Reacher said, ‘You want me to be the bad guy?’
He took the phone. He hit the green button. He put the phone to his ear.
He said, ‘Hello?’
THIRTY-NINE
NOBLE ASKED WHY Reacher was answering Bramall’s phone, and Reacher gave him a vague reply, about Bramall taking a walk, maybe out of range, therefore leaving his phone behind.
Noble said, ‘Mrs Mackenzie hired Bramall, right? For actual money.’
Reacher said, ‘Yes.’
‘But not you.’
‘No.’
‘Then it’s better I talk to you anyway. Can Mrs Mackenzie hear what you’re saying right now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Move away.’
Reacher held the phone up toward the ravine, and mimed heading that way for better reception. When he got there he stood on a rock, and said, ‘What’s going on?’
In his ear Noble said, ‘I think you found the sister.’
‘Why?’
‘Are you saying you didn’t?’
‘I’m asking how you think we could have.’
‘How hard could it be? She was in there somewhere.’
‘It’s a very large area.’
‘That’s a description,’ Noble said. ‘Not a denial.’
‘Finding an entrenched individual in an unlimited acreage of forested land peppered with abandoned cabins is virtually impossible.’
‘That’s also a description.’
‘I can do this all day long,’ Reacher said. ‘I was in the army.’
Noble said, ‘I need Rose Sanderson.’
‘Why?’
‘For information. I need to close a file.’
‘You have Billy for that.’
‘Billy is why I need Sanderson now. I think Billy is lying to me. He’s boasting. Either for fun, to tempt me into wasting time chasing rainbows, or just for the sake of his ego. Some dealers love to lie about how they can get the good stuff. It makes them look cool. They’re the man, and so on. But before I can close the file I need corroborating testimony from a customer. Just in case. It’s a cover-your-ass thing.’
‘What did Billy tell you?’
‘That he was still selling what he always sold. Domestic oxycodone and fentanyl, branded and packaged inside the United States.’
‘Obviously that’s a boast,’ Reacher said. ‘You told us it’s impossible.’
‘It is impossible. I can prove it. Literally everything is barcoded every step of the way. Literally every pill. We have access to their data. There is zero leakage now.’
‘So he’s boasting.’
‘Except he knows things he shouldn’t. There have been packaging changes. He knows the new promotional message on the inside of the hospital pack. No one ever sees that.’
‘So he’s not boasting.’
‘Of course he’s boasting. They track every conveyor belt, and every package, and every carton as it goes out the door, and they have GPS on the trucks, and they match the orders with the payments received, and if there’s a mismatch anywhere all kind of red lights start flashing. Which isn’t happening. Nothing is going astray.’
‘So which is it? Boasting or not?’
‘I would like to put my mind at rest. Either way I need to ask Rose Sanderson exactly what she was buying.’
‘Why not go up the chain? Surely a wholesaler’s testimony would carry more weight than a customer’s.’
‘I don’t know these people. It’s an opaque network.’
‘Won’t Billy name names?’
‘So far he’s playing the good soldier. I only got what I got by tricking it out of him sideways. I would need to start a whole new investigation. I don’t have time. We can do it quicker this way. We don’t need much. We’re only closing a file. All she has to say is Billy is a lying asshole and he was selling regular Mexican powder all along.’
Up at the house Sanderson and her sister and Bramall were still on the porch. They were talking a lot. Some kind of a big discussion.
Reacher said, ‘OK, if I ever get the opportunity, I’ll be sure to tell her what you need.’
Noble said, ‘Where are you now?’
‘It’s a very large area.’
‘Are you at her place?’