‘I’m coming with you,’ she said. ‘Scorpio has a place in the story.’
They trawled through Mackenzie’s bag and found the phone they had taken from the guard at the door. There was an old batch of text messages from three days before, ending with the guard telling Scorpio All good tonight including the new Billy. The current batch was not as happy, and it was very one-sided. Since a quarter past midnight Scorpio had been sending increasingly frequent and urgent demands for information. What is going on? Must hear back from you immediately.
Reacher said, ‘Tell him there was a delay. Tell him the guy will come over to the laundromat and explain in person as soon as he can. Write it so it sounds like him.’
Mackenzie did the texting. She seemed most at home with it.
Sanderson traded her last-round Ruger for Bramall’s three-round Colt.
Then she got back in the Durango with Reacher, and they drove away.
Gloria Nakamura saw the whole thing through the trees. In the end she had figured the Toyota was parked where it was for the same reason everyone else was parked where they were. Why give themselves an extra walk? The folks from the Toyota had wanted to hike the other way. Not towards the restrooms, but into the trees. Towards nothing, unless the maintenance depot was there. Which it had to be, or else who would want to hike in that direction? Circular logic, but it made sense to her.
She followed.
She stopped ten feet short.
She saw Bigfoot. She saw Terrence Bramall from Chicago. The private investigator. Who had taken her table in the breakfast place. Two times. She saw a pretty woman. She saw a second woman, horribly disfigured. Immediately she knew this was the owner of the ring. She sensed it. The ring she had worn herself, just briefly. West Point 2005. The black stone.
She watched. Bramall and the normal woman walked back through the trees. They passed twenty feet from her, but they didn’t notice. Then nothing happened for nearly an hour. Then vehicles started to show up, and finally the white panel van, New Jersey plates, fast and furious, just as she had predicted. Running wild, technically not there at all, erased from the record.
Then there was a gunshot, and the black Toyota showed up again, and drove in and drove out, and then a Dodge Durango, and then it all went quiet again, until about a dozen different guys crept out and started milling around.
They looked sheepish.
She stepped out of the trees, with her badge in one hand and her gun in the other.
They ran, hard and fast, in eleven different directions.
She called it in, but she knew it was hopeless. The highway belonged to the state troopers, not the PD’s traffic division, plus late at night any number of guys could run across all three lanes undetected, and then they could disappear beyond the shoulder to either the north or the south, into space so big it was effectively infinite.
They were gone.
She looked at the empty panel van, and the eight parked vehicles, and the old sedan outside, and then she walked back through the trees, and drove back to town. She wanted to see what Scorpio was doing.
Sanderson and Reacher took the four-lane south past Klinger’s restaurant. She was chewing steadily all the way. Not partying or bathing yet. She was maintaining. She was getting herself where she wanted to be, and she was keeping herself there. He thought the huge quantity they had gotten from the panel van had changed her. He guessed part of being an addict was always being anxious. The next buck, the next hit, the next day, the next hour. She was no longer anxious. She would not be anxious for a very long time. Maybe ever again, if it worked out with the sister. So was she still an addict? Not the same way. Now it was all upside. The highs, literally, and none of the lows.
He could see the highs were worth having. Her face was not expressive. It didn’t work that way. But her eyes were alive. And her body. She looked like she was having the best day of her life. Without a near-fatal dose. Once necessary, maybe, to obliterate how bad it was for the other twelve hours of the day. But not any more. Now she could take it easy. Maybe she would be OK.
Not his area of expertise.
He said, ‘The supe told me why you were on the road outside the small town.’
She said, ‘I told you.’
‘You told me you were representing the support operation. Representing is a real five-dollar word. Maybe you could use it, if you were asked to stand in by a senior officer. But you were already a major. We didn’t need a colonel to figure out how to haul ass up a hill. So there was no senior officer, which makes it a weird choice of word.’
She was quiet for a moment.
Then she said, ‘How did the supe know?’
‘A shrink wrote a paper.’
‘He saw it?’
‘He’s been looking for you.’
‘Bullshit.’
‘He’s calling in favours.’
‘For me?’
‘He said you felt betrayed.’
‘By the shrink.’
‘He meant by the situation.’
Again she was quiet.
She said, ‘I was in the hospital a long time, and I got to know a lot of people. Missing an arm or a leg. Believe me, no one had it easy. But I hated those guys. They wore shorts. They could make the best of it. I would have been OK with a leg. Even for doing a favour. I was overseas five times. Some shit was going to happen. Even an arm. But not my face. You saw how those guys looked at me.’
Reacher said nothing.
She said, ‘They wrote it down wrong. All they did was check a box. I never felt betrayed. Truth is I felt unlucky. Literally for the first time ever. At first I didn’t even know what it was. It was new to me. It was like getting a lifetime of bad luck all in one day. Every rotten thing. Of course the guy who asked me to go for him was out catching a disease. He had to be. It was inevitable. I’m surprised he wasn’t doing something worse.’
He said, ‘Now tell me Porterfield’s story.’
She ducked her head and looked up at the street signs.
She said, ‘Do you know where we are?’
He said, ‘We make a right up ahead. Then a left somewhere.’
‘I’m going to pull over.’
‘Why?’
‘To tell you the story. Before we get there.’
Nakamura eased to a stop on the cross street, and then rolled forward until her view was perfect. Scorpio’s back door was open. She could see the rim of light.
She turned the engine off.
She got out of the car, and walked halfway there. The Supreme Court said if she was reasonably sure a crime was afoot in a public place, then she could intervene without a warrant. But Scorpio’s back office was not a public place. The Court said therefore she would need evidence tantamount to an emergency. Gunshots or screams or cries for help.
The alley was silent.
She crept closer.
She heard Scorpio’s voice, talking low. A composed sentence. A monologue. He was leaving a message. He sounded worried. He wanted answers. The guard at the gate, no doubt. His man on the spot. Who couldn’t answer. Reacher had taken their phones. She had heard him, even in the trees. She had absolutely believed he would shoot them through the back of the knee.