The Affair: A Reacher Novel

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.”

Chapter
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.”
    “Tests would have proved it came from an animal.”
    “I know,” she said. “But how long would that have taken? I don’t even know where the nearest lab is. Atlanta, maybe. It could have taken two weeks or more. And I can’t afford to be under a cloud for two weeks or more. I literally can’t afford it. This is the only job I have. I don’t know where I’d get another one. And voters are weird. They always remember the suspicion, and they never remember the outcome.”
    I thought about my old pal Stan Lowrey, back on post, with his want ads. A brave new world, for all of us.
    “OK,” I said. “But it was a fairly dumb thing to do.”
    “I know it was. I panicked a little bit.”
    “Do you know other hunters? And other trestles?”
    “Some.”
    “Because I still think that’s how those women were killed. I don’t see how it could be done any other way.”
    “I agree. Which is why I panicked.”
    “So sooner or later we might need to get those Blackhawks in the air.”
    “Unless we find Reed Riley first and ask him some questions.”
    “Reed Riley is gone,” I said. “He’s probably army liaison at Thule Air Force Base by now.”
    “Which is where?”
    “Northern Greenland,” I said. “The top of the world. It’s certainly the Air Force’s most remote place. I was there once. I was on a C-5 that had a problem. We had to land there. It’s part of the distant early-warning system. No sunlight for four months of the year. They’ve got radar that can see a tennis serve three thousand miles away.”
    “Did you get their phone number?”
    I smiled. “We’re going to have to do it another way. I’ll see what comes out of the woodwork the day after tomorrow.”
    She said nothing in reply to that. We ate our pie slowly. We had time to kill. At that point the midnight train was probably just easing its way out of the yards in Biloxi.
    * * *
    Deveraux was still worried about