The Midnight Line by Lee Child

forefinger: Dear Mrs. Mackenzie, progress remains very satisfactory, and I hope to have definitive news very soon. Best wishes, T. Bramall .
    He pressed send.
    In Casper, Reacher had a choice. He could stick with I-25 and head south and east to Cheyenne, whereupon Laramie would be a short hop west again on I-80. Or he could go direct on a state road. Two fast sides of a triangle versus one slow side. The hitchhiker’s eternal dilemma.
    He chose the state road. He was sick of the highway. And he had plenty of time. There was no big hurry. The ring had been out of Wyoming for six weeks. No red-hot trail to follow. He walked west out of town, more than a mile, until the commercial lots left and right petered out into high desert scrub. A hundred yards later he found a head-high sign that said Laramie 152 miles . He set up next to it. He felt it told the story. He watched the horizon for oncoming traffic. There wasn’t much.
    Scorpio gave his sentries twenty bucks and a bottle of Tylenol each, and then sent them home. They went out the front, and he went in the back room. He sat down at a long counter loaded with humming equipment. He tore apart the bubble pack and took out his new phone. He dialed the activation number, and then he dialed a 307 number.
    Wyoming.
    Ring tone.
    No answer.
    A voice invited him to leave a message.
    He said, “Billy, this is Arthur. We got some weird shit going on. Nothing real serious. Just a strange piece of bad luck. Some guy showed up chasing a ring. He wasn’t a cop. He knew nothing at all. He was just a random passerby, interested in the wrong thing at the wrong time. Turned out he was kind of tough to get rid of, so in the end I gave him Sy Porterfield’s name. Which means sooner or later he’s likely to arrive in your neck of the woods. Don’t mess with him. Use a deer rifle from behind a tree. I’m not kidding about that. He’s like the Incredible Hulk. Don’t even let him see you. But get on it, OK? 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.”
    Then he added, “Your privileges are suspended till I hear back from you.”
    He clicked off and dropped the phone in the trash basket.

Chapter 12
    Reacher arrived in downtown Laramie at six o’clock in the evening, after 152 miles in the passenger seat of an ancient Ford Bronco, driven by a guy who made his living turning logs into sculptures with a chainsaw. He let Reacher out on the corner of Third Street and Grand Avenue, which the guy seemed to regard as some kind of an exact geographic center. Which it might have been. But it was quiet. Everything had closed at five, except the bars and the restaurants, and it was still early for them.
    Reacher turned a full circle and got his bearings. The railroad tracks lay to the west. The university was east. South was a straight shot to Colorado, and north was back toward Casper. He headed west for the tracks and stopped in at the first bar he liked the look of. It had a mirror on the wall with a bullet hole in it. As if some old desperado had come in mad about something. Maybe faked, maybe real. It was all the same to the mirror.
    The room was quiet and the crowd was thin, and the barman had time on his hands. Reacher asked him directions to Mule Crossing. The guy said he had never heard of it.
    â€œWhere are you looking for?” some other guy called out. He had foam on his lip, from a long hard pull on a long-neck bottle. Maybe a helpful guy, maybe a busybody into everyone’s business, maybe a local expert eager to show off his specialist knowledge.
    Or a mixture of all three.
    â€œMule Crossing,” Reacher said.
    â€œNothing there,” the guy said. “Except a firework store.”
    â€œI heard it was a small town.”
    â€œThis is a small town. Mule Crossing is a wide spot in the road. There was a post office, but it