The Midnight Line by Lee Child Read Free Book Online Page A

casual stop, and lean across with a smile.
    In the end it took forty minutes. At eight-thirty exactly a Dodge crew cab pulled over. The driver put on a generous but apologetic expression and said he was going only as far as downtown. Reacher said that was great. He said he needed the part with the cheap motels. The guy said he would be passing by that general area, about two streets over, and would be happy to point the way.
    The cheap part of downtown was dark. Daylight was long gone. There were lights on some street corners, and some of them worked, but not enough. Reacher got out of the Dodge and walked a long block west, mostly by feel, with visibility about a yard, and then another block just the same, and then he turned left and as promised he found two side-by-side motels, on a strip that also featured a diner and a gas station and a tire shop, which likely meant it was a popular route in and out of town. The right-hand motel had a tall lit-up sign, with come-on offers stacked up vertically, like logs in a pile: Free Breakfast, Free Cable, Free Wi-Fi, Free Upgrades .
    The left-hand motel had: Free Everything .
    Which Reacher doubted. Not the actual accommodation itself, surely. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. There was an old lady at the desk. She was slender and refined. She had blue hair, spun as fine as cotton candy. She was maybe eighty. Maybe she was the original owner, from way back long ago. Reacher asked his question, and she smiled and said no, he had to pay for his room, but everything else was included. She said it with a half-amused look in her eye, up and then down, and he sensed she meant Free Everything partly as a response to her neighbor’s boasting, whether good humored or teasing or edgy all in the eye of the beholder, but also partly she meant it as a despairing lament that these days, whatever you did, there was always someone in the world prepared to do it cheaper. Where could she go after free?
    Reacher paid for a room.
    He asked her, “Where could I wash my clothes around here?”
    â€œWhat clothes?” she said. “You don’t have a bag.”
    â€œTheoretically. Suppose I got a bag.”
    â€œYou would go to a laundromat.”
    â€œHow many do you have?”
    â€œHow many do you need?”
    â€œSome might be better than others.”
    â€œAre you worried about bedbugs? You shouldn’t be. That’s what laundromats are for. Turn the dryer on high, and you kill them stone dead. That’s what I do here. With the sheets.”
    â€œGood to know,” Reacher said. “How many laundromats are there in Rapid City? I’m curious, is all. I like to know things.”
    She thought about it and almost answered, but then she stopped herself, too naturally meticulous to rely on memory alone. She wanted corroboration. She took a thin Yellow Pages from a drawer. She checked under L, and again under C, for coin-operated.
    â€œThree,” she said.
    â€œDo you know the owners?”
    Again she thought about it, at first looking skeptical, as if the question was odd and such acquaintances unlikely, but then her face changed, as if she was recalling old trade associations, and local business campaigns, and rubber chicken, and cocktail parties.
    She said, “Actually I do know two of the three.”
    â€œWhat are their names?”
    â€œDoes it matter?”
    â€œI’m looking for a man named Arthur Scorpio.”
    â€œHe’s the third of the three,” she said. “I don’t know him at all.”
    â€œBut you know the name.”
    â€œThis is a small town. We gossip.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œHe’s not well spoken of.”
    â€œIn what way?”
    â€œJust gossip. I shouldn’t repeat it. But a friend with a great-nephew in the police department says they have a file on Mr. Scorpio three inches thick.”
    â€œHe buys and sells stolen property,” Reacher said. “That’s the story I