The Affair (Page 46)

"What kind of problem?"

"Deputy Butler has a friend over there at the Jackson PD. From back when he took the course. I encourage him to get her to do our processing for us, on the quiet, to save ourselves the money. We don’t have the budget here. But Butler’s friend screwed up this time, and I can’t ask him to ask her to do it over. That would be a step too far."

"Screwed up how?"

"She got her file numbers mixed. Chapman’s data went to a case about a woman called Audrey Shaw, and we got Audrey Shaw’s data. The wrong person entirely. Some kind of federal government worker. Which Chapman definitely wasn’t, because there’s no federal government work here, and Chapman didn’t work anyway. Unless Audrey Shaw was the previous owner of Chapman’s house, in which case it was Butler’s own screw-up, looking for prints in the wrong places, or yours, for letting him."

"No, Butler did a good job," I said. "He looked in all the right places. Those prints weren’t from a previous owner, not unless she sneaked back in and used Chapman’s toothbrush in the middle of the night. So it’s just one of those things, I guess. Shit happens."

"Tell me again," she said. "About that phone call."

"It was Major Karla Dixon of the 329th," I said. "With information for me. That’s all."

"And the fiancee thing was a joke?"

"Don’t tell me the Marines are better comedians, too."

"Is she good looking?"

"Pretty nice."

"Was she ever your girlfriend?"

"No."

Deveraux went quiet again. I could see a decision coming. It was almost there. And I was pretty sure it was going to turn out OK. But I didn’t find out. Not right then. Because before she could speak again the stout woman from the department’s switchboard room crashed in through the diner door and stopped dead with one hand on the knob and one on the jamb. She was out of breath. She was panting. Her chest was heaving. She had run all the way. She called out, "There’s another one."

48

Deputy Butler had been on his way to relieve Pellegrino for the middle watch at Fort Kelham’s gate, and a mile out he had happened to glance to his left, and he had seen a forlorn shape low down in the scrub perhaps a hundred yards north of the road. Five minutes after that he had been on the horn to HQ with the bad news, and ninety seconds after taking the message the dispatcher had made it to the diner. Deveraux and I were in her car twenty seconds after that, and she put her foot down hard and drove fast all the way, so we were on the scene less than ten minutes after Butler had first chanced to turn his head.

Not that speed made any difference.

We parked nose to tail behind Butler’s car and got out. We were on the main east – west road, two miles beyond the last of Carter Crossing itself, one mile short of Kelham, out in an open belt of scrubland, with the forest that bordered Kelham’s fence well ahead of us and the forest that flanked the railroad track well behind us. It was the middle of the day and the sky was clear and blue. The air was warm and the breeze was still.

I could see what Butler had seen. It could have been a rock, or it could have been trash, but it wasn’t. It was small in the distance, dark, slightly humped, slightly elongated, pressed down, deflated. It was unmistakable. Judging its size was difficult, because judging the exact distance was difficult. If it was eighty yards away, it was a small woman. If it was a hundred and twenty yards away, it was a large man.

Deveraux said, "I hate this job."

Butler was standing out in the scrub, halfway between the dark shape and us. We set out walking toward him, and then we passed him without a word. I figured the overall distance was going to be close to dead-on a hundred yards, which made the shape neither a small woman nor a large man. It was going to be something in between. A tall woman, or a short man.

Or a teenager, maybe.

Then I recognized the distorted proportions.

And I started to run.

At twenty yards out I was sure. At ten yards out I was certain. At ten feet out I had absolute visual confirmation. No possible doubt. It was Bruce Lindsay. The ugly boy. Sixteen years old. Shawna Lindsay’s little brother. He was on his front. His feet were apart. His hands were down by his sides. His giant head was turned toward me. His mouth was open. His deep-set eyes were dark and dead.

We followed no kind of crime-scene protocol. Deveraux and I trampled the area and touched the corpse. We rolled it over and found an entry wound on the left side of the rib cage, up high, close to the armpit. No exit wound. The bullet had come in, shattered the heart, shattered the spine, and had deflected and tumbled and was still in there somewhere.

I knelt up and scanned the horizon. If the kid had been walking east, he had been shot from the north, almost certainly by a rifleman who had exited Kelham’s fence line woods and had been patrolling the open belt of scrub. The quarantine zone.

Deveraux said, "I talked to him this morning. Just a few hours ago. We had an appointment at his house. So why was he here?"

Which was a question I didn’t want to answer. Not even to myself. I said, "He had a secret to keep, I guess. About Shawna. He knew you’d get it out of him. So he decided to be somewhere else this afternoon."

"Where? Where was he going?"

"Kelham," I said.

"This is open country. If he was heading for Kelham he would have been on the road."

"He was shy about strangers seeing him. Because of the way he looked. I bet he never walked on the roads."

"If he was shy with strangers, why would he risk going to Kelham? There must be a dozen strangers in the guardhouse alone."

I said, "He went because I told him it would be OK. I told him soldiers would be different. I told him he’d be welcome there."

"Welcome there for what? They don’t offer guided tours."

The kid was wearing canvas pants, a little like mine, and a plain sweatshirt in navy blue, with a dark warm-up jacket over it. The jacket had fallen open when we rolled him. I saw folded paper in the inside pocket.

I said, "Take a look at that."

Deveraux slid the paper out of the pocket. It looked like an official document, heavy stock, folded three times. It looked old, and I was sure it was. About sixteen years old, almost certainly. Deveraux unfolded it and scanned it and said, "It’s his birth certificate."

I nodded and took it from her. The State of Mississippi, a male child, family name Lindsay, given name Bruce, born in Carter Crossing. Born eighteen years ago, apparently. It might have withstood a hasty glance, but not further scrutiny. The alteration was not skillful, but it had been patient. Two digits had been carefully rubbed away, and then two others had been drawn in to replace them. The ink matched well, and the style matched well. Only the breached surface of the paper gave it away, but that was enough. It stood out. It drew the eye.

"My fault," I said. "My fault entirely."

"How?"

Go straight to Kelham, I had said. There are recruiters on every post. As soon as you’ve got something in your hand that proves you’re eighteen years old, they’ll let you in and never let you out again.

The kid had taken it literally. I had meant he would have to wait. But he had gone ahead and made himself eighteen years old, right there and then. He had manufactured something to have in his hand. Probably at the same kitchen table where I had sat and talked and drank iced tea. I pictured him, head down, concentrating, tongue between his teeth, maybe wetting the paper with a drop of water, scraping the old numbers off with the tip of a dinner knife, blotting the damp patch, waiting for it to dry, finding the right pen, calculating, practicing, and then drawing in the new numbers. The numbers that would get him through Kelham’s gate. The numbers that would get him accepted.