The Affair

I said, "We need to talk."

60

Deveraux looked up at me, a little alarmed. Something in my voice, maybe. She said, "Talk about what?"

I asked her, "Did you ever date a guy from the base?"

"What base? You mean Kelham?"

"Yes, Kelham."

"That’s kind of personal, isn’t it?"

"Did you?"

"Of course not. Are you crazy? Those guys are my biggest problem. You know how it is between a military population and local law enforcement. It would have been the worst kind of conflict of interest."

"Do you socialize with any of them?"

"No, for the same reason."

"Do you know any of them?"

"Barely," she said. "I’ve toured the base and met some of the senior officers, in a formal way. Which is to be expected. They’re trying to deal with the same kind of problems I am."

"OK," I said.

"Why are you asking?"

"Munro was at the McClatchy place. Rosemary McClatchy and Shawna Lindsay seem to have dated the same guy. Janice Chapman also, probably. Munro heard you had dated the guy too."

"That’s bullshit. I haven’t dated a guy in two years. Couldn’t you tell?"

I sat down.

"I had to ask," I said. "I’m sorry."

"Who was the guy?"

"I can’t tell you."

"You have to tell me. Don’t you think? McClatchy and Lindsay are my cases. Therefore it’s relevant information. And I have a right to know if some guy is taking my name in vain."

"Reed Riley," I said.

"Never heard of him," she said.

Then she said, "Wait a minute. Did you say Riley?"

I didn’t answer.

She said, "Oh my God. Carlton Riley’s son? He’s at Kelham? I had no idea."

I said nothing.

"Oh my God," she said again. "That explains a whole lot."

I said, "It was his car on the railroad track. And Emmeline McClatchy thinks he got Rosemary pregnant. I didn’t ask her. She came right out with it."

"I need to talk to him."

"You can’t. They just choppered him out of there."

"To where?"

"What’s the most remote army post in the world?"

"I don’t know."

"Neither do I. But a buck gets ten that’s where he’ll be tonight."

"Why would he say he dated me?"

"Ego," I said. "Maybe he wanted his pals to believe he had collected the whole set. The four most beautiful women in Carter Crossing. The Brannan brothers at the bar told me he was a big dog and always had arm candy."

"I’m not arm candy."

"Maybe not on the inside."

"His father probably knows the guy Janice Chapman had the affair with. They’re right there in the Senate together."

I said nothing.

She looked right at me.

She said, "Oh, no."

I said, "Oh, yes."

"The same woman? Father and son? That’s seriously messed up."

"Munro can’t prove it. Neither can we."

"We can infer it. This all is way too much hoopla for a theoretical worry about blowback in general."

"Maybe," I said. "Maybe not. Who knows how these people think?"

"Whatever, you can’t go to D.C. Not now. It’s far too dangerous. You’ll be walking around with the world’s biggest target on your back. Senate Liaison has got a lot invested in Carlton Riley. They won’t let you screw things up. Believe me, you’re nothing to them compared to a good relationship with the Armed Services Committee."

She said all that and then her phone rang and she picked up and listened for a minute. She covered the mouthpiece with her palm and said, "This is the Oxford PD asking about the dead journalist. I want to tell them the proven perpetrator was shot to death by police after resisting arrest, case closed."

I said, "Fine with me."

So she told them that, and then she had to call a whole long list of state departments and county authorities, so I wandered out of her office and she got so busy I didn’t talk to her again until dinner at nine o’clock.

At dinner we talked about her father’s house. She ordered her cheeseburger and I got a roast beef sandwich and I asked her, "What was it like growing up here?"

"It was weird," she said. "Obviously I didn’t have anything to compare it to, and we didn’t get television until I was ten, and we never went to the movies, but even so I sensed there had to be more out there. We all did. We all had island fever."

Then she asked where I grew up, so I went through as much of the long list as I could remember. Conceived in the Pacific, born in West Berlin when my father was assigned to the embassy there, a dozen different bases before elementary school, education all over the world, cuts and bruises picked up fighting in hot wet alleys in Manila healing days later in cold wet quarters in Belgium, near NATO headquarters, then running across the original assailants a month later in San Diego and resuming the conflict. Then eventually West Point, and a restless, always-moving career of my own, in some of the same places but in many new and different places too, in that the army’s global footprint was not identical to the Marine Corps’.

She asked, "What’s the longest you were ever in one spot?"

I said, "Less than six months, probably."

"What was your dad like?"

"He was quiet," I said. "He was a birdwatcher. But his job was to kill people as fast and efficiently as possible, and he was always aware of it."

"Was he good to you?"

"Yes, in an old-fashioned way. Was yours?"

She nodded. "Old-fashioned would be a good way to describe it. He thought I’d get married and he’d have to come all the way to Tupelo or Oxford to visit me."

"Where was your house?"

"South on Main Street until it curves, and then first on the left. A little dirt road. Fourth house on the right."

"Is it still there?"

"Just about."

"Didn’t it rent again?"

"No, my dad was sick for a spell before he died, and he let the place go. The bank that owned it wasn’t paying attention. It’s more or less a ruin now."

"All overgrown, with slime on the walls and a cracked foundation? A big old hedge in back? Eight letters on the mailbox?"

"How do you know all that?"

"I was there," I said. "I passed by on my way to the McClatchy place."

She didn’t answer.

I said, "I saw the deer trestle."

She didn’t answer.

I said, "And I saw the dirt in the trunk of your car. When you gave me the shotgun shells."

61

The waitress came by and picked up our empty plates and took our orders for pie. Then she went away again and Deveraux was left looking at me, a little crestfallen. A little embarrassed, I thought. She said, "I did a stupid thing."

I said, "What kind of stupid thing?"

"I hunt," she said. "Now and then. Just for fun. Deer, mostly. Just for something to do. I give the meat to the old folks, like Emmeline McClatchy. They don’t eat well otherwise. Pork, sometimes, if a neighbor is butchering a pig. If the neighbor thinks to share. But that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes the neighbors can’t afford to share."

"I remember," I said. "Emmeline had deer meat in the pot when we were there the first time. She offered us lunch. You declined."

She nodded. "No point in giving and then taking away. I got that deer a week ago. I couldn’t take it back to the hotel, obviously. So I used my dad’s place. I always have, since I came back here. That’s a good trestle. But then you came up with your theory about Janice Chapman. I didn’t know you very well at that point. I thought you might get on the phone to HQ. I had visions of Blackhawks in the air, finding every trestle in the county. So I sent you off to ID the wrecked car so you would be out of the way for an hour, and I went over and dug up the blood."