The Affair

9

Inside the hotel I found a small square lobby and an unattended reception desk. The floor was worn boards partially covered by a threadbare rug of Middle Eastern design. The desk was a counter made of hardwood polished to a high shine by years of wear and labor. There was a matrix of pigeonholes on the wall behind it. Four high, seven wide. Twenty-eight rooms. Twenty-seven of them had their keys hanging in place. None of the pigeonholes contained letters or notes or any other kind of communication.

There was a bell on the desk, a small brass thing going green around the edges. I hit it twice, and a polite ding ding echoed around for a spell, but it produced no results. None at all. No one came. There was a closed door next to the pigeonholes, and it stayed closed. A back office, I guessed. Empty, presumably. I saw no reason why a hotel owner would deliberately avoid doubling his occupancy rate.

I stood still for a moment and then checked a door on the left of the lobby. It opened to an unlit lounge that smelled of damp and dust and mildew. There were humped shapes in the dark that I took to be armchairs. No activity. No people. I stepped back to the desk and hit the bell again.

No response.

I called out, "Hello?"

No response.

So I gave up for the time being and went back out, across the shaky veranda, down the worn steps, and I stood in a shadow on the sidewalk under one of the busted lamps. There was nothing much to see. Across Main Street was a long row of low buildings. Stores, presumably. All of them were dark. Beyond them was blackness. The night air was clear and dry and faintly warm. March, in Mississippi. Meteorologically I could have been anywhere. I could hear the thrill of breeze in distant leaves, and tiny granular sounds, like moving dust, or like termites eating wood. I could hear an extractor fan in the wall of the diner next door. Beyond that, nothing. No human sounds. No voices. No revelry, no traffic, no music.

Tuesday night, near an army base.

Not typical.

I had eaten nothing since lunch in Memphis, so I headed for the diner. It was a narrow building, but deep, set end-on to Main Street. The kitchen entrance was probably on the block behind. Inside the front door was a pay phone on the wall and a register and a hostess station. Beyond that was a long straight aisle with tables for four on the left and tables for two on the right. Tables, not booths, with freestanding chairs. Like a cafe. The only customers in the place were a couple about twice my age. They were face to face at a table for four. The guy had a newspaper and the woman had a book. They were settled in, like they were happy to linger over their meal. The only staff on view was a waitress. She was close to the swing door in back that led to the kitchen. She saw me step in and she hustled the whole length of the aisle to greet me. She put me at a table for two, about halfway into the room. I sat facing the front, with my back to the kitchen. Not possible to watch both entrances at once, which would have been my preference.

"Something to drink?" the waitress asked me.

"Black coffee," I said. "Please."

She went away and came back again, with coffee in a mug, and a menu.

I said, "Quiet night."

She nodded, unhappy, probably worried about her tips.

She said, "They closed the base."

"Kelham?" I said. "They closed it?"

She nodded again. "They locked it down this afternoon. They’re all in there, eating army chow tonight."

"Does that happen a lot?"

"Never happened before."

"I’m sorry," I said. "What do you recommend?"

"For what?"

"To eat."

"Here? It’s all good."

"Cheeseburger," I said.

"Five minutes," she said. She went away and I took my coffee with me and headed back past the hostess station to the pay phone. I dug in my pocket and found three quarters from my lunch-time change, which were enough for a short conversation, which was the kind I liked. I dialed Garber’s office and a duty lieutenant put him on the line and he asked, "Are you there yet?"

I said, "Yes."

"Trip OK?"

"It was fine."

"Got a place to stay?"

"Don’t worry about me. I’ve got seventy-five cents and four minutes before I eat. I need to ask you something."

"Fire away."

"Who briefed you on this?"

Garber paused.

"I can’t tell you that," he said.

"Well, whoever it was, he’s kind of hazy about the details."

"That can happen."

"And Kelham is locked down."

"Munro did that, as soon as he got there."

"Why?"

"You know how it is. There’s a risk of bad feeling between the town and the base. It was a common-sense move."

"It was an admission of guilt."

"Well, maybe Munro knows something you don’t. Don’t worry about him. Your only job is to eavesdrop on the local cops."

"I’m on it. I rode in with one."

"Did he buy the civilian act?"

"He seemed to."

"Good. They’ll clam up if they know you’re connected."

"I need you to find out if anyone from Bravo Company owns a blue car."

"Why?"

"The cop said someone parked a blue car on the railroad track. The midnight train wrecked it. Could have been an attempt to hide evidence."

"He’d have burned it out, surely."

"Maybe it was the kind of evidence that burning wouldn’t conceal. Maybe a big dent in the fender or something."

"How would that relate to a woman getting carved up in an alley?"

"She wasn’t carved up. Her throat was cut. That was all. Deep and wide. One pass, probably. The cop I talked to said he saw bone."

Garber paused a beat.

He said, "That’s how Rangers are taught to do it."

I said nothing.

He asked, "But how would that relate to a car?"

"I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t relate. But let’s find out, OK?"

"There are two hundred guys in Bravo Company. Law of averages says there’s going to be about fifty blue cars."

"And all fifty of them should be parked on the base. Let’s find out if one isn’t."

"It was probably a civilian vehicle."

"Let’s hope it was. I’ll work that end. But either way, I need to know."

"This is Munro’s investigation," Garber said. "Not yours."

I said, "And we need to know if someone got a gravel rash. Hands, knees, and elbows, maybe. From the rape. The cop said Chapman had matching injuries."

"This is Munro’s investigation," Garber said again.

I didn’t answer that. I saw the waitress push in through the kitchen door. She was carrying a plate piled high with an enormous burger in a bun and a tangle of shoelace fries as big and untidy as a squirrel’s nest. I said, "I have to go, boss. I’ll call you tomorrow," and I hung up and carried my coffee back to my table. The waitress put my plate down with a degree of ceremony. The meal looked good and smelled good.

"Thanks," I said.

"Can I get you anything else?"

"You can tell me about the hotel," I said. "I need a room, but there was nobody home."

The waitress half-turned and I followed her gaze to the old couple settled in at their table for four. They were still reading. The waitress said, "They usually sit a spell in here, and then they go back. That would be the best time to catch them."

Then she went away and left me to it. I ate slowly and enjoyed every bite. The old couple sat still and read. The woman turned a page every couple of minutes. Much less often the guy made a big loud production out of snapping the spine of his paper and refolding it ready for the next section. He was studying it intently. He was practically reading the print off it.