The Affair

She was sipping coffee. She didn’t have her food yet. She smiled and said, "Good morning."

Her tone was warm. She seemed happy to see me.

I said, "Yes, good morning."

She said, "Have you come to say goodbye? That’s very polite and very formal."

I said nothing in reply to that. She did her thing with her foot again, under the table, and kicked the facing chair out. I sat down. She asked, "Did you sleep well?"

I said, "Fine."

"The train didn’t wake you at midnight? It takes some getting used to."

"I was still up," I said.

"Doing what?"

"This and that," I said.

"Inside or out?"

"Out," I said.

"You found the crime scene?"

I nodded.

She nodded in turn.

"And you found two things of note," she said. "So you thought you’d stop by and make sure I appreciated their significance before you got on your way. That’s very public-spirited of you."

The waitress came by and put a heaping plate of French toast on the table. Then she turned to me and I ordered the same thing, with coffee. Deveraux waited until she was gone, and asked, "Or was it entirely private-spirited? Is this your one last attempt to protect the army before you go?"

"I’m not going," I said.

She smiled again. "Are you going to give me your civil rights speech now? Free country, and all that bullshit?"

"Something like that."

She paused a beat.

"I’m all for civil rights," she said. "And certainly there’s room at the inn, as they say. So sure, by all means, please stay. Enjoy yourself. There are trails to hike, and there are things to hunt, and there are sights to see. Knock yourself out. Do whatever you want to. Just don’t get between me and my investigation."

I asked her, "How do you explain the two things?"

"Do I need to? To you?"

"Two heads are better than one."

"I can’t trust you," she said. "You’re here to steer me wrong, if you have to."

"No, I’m here to warn the army if things start to look bad. Which I will, if I have to. But we’re a long way from any kind of a conclusion here. We’ve barely even started. It’s too early to steer anybody anywhere, even if I was going to. Which I’m not."

"We?" she said. "We’re a long way from a conclusion? What is this, a democracy?"

"OK, you," I said.

"Yes," she said. "Me."

At that point the waitress came back with my meal. And my coffee. I sniffed the steam and took a long first sip. A little ritual. Nothing better than just-made coffee, early in the morning. Across the table from me Deveraux continued eating. She was cleaning her plate. A metabolism like a nuclear plant.

She said, "OK, time out. Convince me. Put your cards on the table. Tell me about the first thing, and spin it so it looks bad for the army. Which it does, by the way, spin or no spin."

I looked straight at her. "Have you been on the base?"

"All over it."

"I haven’t. Therefore apparently you know what I’m only guessing."

She nodded. "So bear that in mind. Tread carefully. Don’t blow smoke."

I said, "Janice May Chapman was not raped in that alley."

"Because?"

"Because Pellegrino reported gravel abrasions on the corpse. And there’s no gravel in that alley. Nor anywhere else that I could see. It’s all dirt or blacktop or smooth paving stones for miles around."

"The railroad track has gravel," she said.

A test. She wanted me to jump all over it.

"Not really gravel," I said. "The railroad track has larger stones. Ballast, they call it, in a rail bed. Pieces of granite, bigger than a pebble, smaller than a fist. The injuries would look completely different. They wouldn’t look like gravel rash."

"The roads are gravel."

Another test.

"Bound with tar and rolled," I said. "Not the same at all."

"So?"

The final test.

Spin it so it looks bad for the army.

"Kelham is for the elite," I said. "It’s a finishing school for the 75th, which is special ops support. It’s a big place. They must have all kinds of simulated terrain. Sand, to simulate the desert. Concrete, like the frozen steppes. Fake villages, all that kind of shit. I’m sure they have plenty of gravel there, for one reason or another."

Deveraux nodded again. "They have a running track made of gravel. For endurance training. Ten laps is like ten hours on a road surface. Plus low-scoring individuals get to rake it smooth every morning. As a punishment. Two birds with one stone."

I said nothing.

Deveraux said, "She was raped on the base."

I said, "Not impossible."

Deveraux said, "You’re an honest man, Reacher. The son of a Marine."

"Marines have got nothing to do with it. I’m a commissioned officer in the United States Army. We have standards too."

I started to eat my breakfast just as she finished hers. She said, "The second thing is more problematical, though. I can’t make it fit."

"Really?" I said. "Isn’t it basically the same as the first thing?"

She looked at me, blankly.

She said, "I don’t see how."

I stopped eating and looked back at her.

I said, "Talk me through it."

"It’s a simple question," she said. "How did she get there? She left her car at home, and she didn’t walk. For one thing, she was wearing four-inch heels, and for another thing, no one walks anywhere anymore. But she wasn’t picked up from home either. Her neighbors are the worst busybodies in the world, and both of them swear no one came calling on her. And I believe them. And no one saw her arrive in town with a soldier. Or with a civilian, for that matter. Or even on her own. And trust me, those barkeeps watch the traffic. All of them. It’s a habit. They want to know if they can afford to eat tomorrow. So she just materialized in that alley, unexplained."

I was quiet for a second.

Then I said, "That wasn’t my second thing."

"Wasn’t it?"

"Your two things and my two things are not the same two things. Which means there are three things in total."

"So what’s your second thing?"

I said, "She wasn’t killed in that alley, either."

17

I finished my breakfast before I spoke again. French toast, maple syrup, coffee. Protein, fiber, carbohydrates. And caffeine. All the essential food groups, except nicotine, but I had already quit by then. I put my silverware down and said, "There’s really only one obvious way to cut a woman’s throat. You stand behind her and use one hand in her hair to pull her head back. Or you hook your fingers in her eye sockets, or if you’re sure your hands are steady you could use your palm under her chin. But whichever, you expose her throat and you put some tension in the ligaments and the blood vessels. Then you get busy with the blade. You’re taught to expect major resistance to the cut, because there’s some pretty tough stuff in there. And you’re taught to start an inch earlier and finish an inch later than you think is really necessary. Just to be absolutely sure."

Deveraux said, "I’m assuming that’s exactly what happened in the alley. But suddenly, I hope. So it was over before she realized it was happening at all."

I said, "It didn’t happen in the alley. It can’t have."

"Why not?"

"One of the side benefits of doing it from behind is you don’t get covered in blood. And there’s a lot of blood. You’re talking about carotids and jugulars, and a young healthy person suddenly agitated and struggling, maybe even fighting. Her blood pressure must have been spiking sky high."