The Affair: A Reacher Novel

worried.”
    “I already tried,” Neagley said. “From the scheduler’s phone. While you were giving Frazer all that theoretical shit. I was going to tell her you were nearly home and dry. But she didn’t answer. A whole Sheriff’s Department, and no one picked up.”
    “Perhaps they’re busy.”
    “Perhaps they are. Because there’s something else you need to know. I checked a rumor from the sergeants’ network. The ground crew at Benning says the Blackhawk that came in from Kelham on Sunday was empty. Apart from the pilots, of course. No passenger, is what they meant. Reed Riley didn’t go anywhere. He’s still on the post.”

Chapter
68
    I took Neagley’s advice and relaxed through the rest of the ride. It took a lot less than three hours. The Buick was much faster than a bus. And Neagley pushed it much harder than a bus driver would. I was back on post by three-thirty. I had been gone exactly twenty-four hours.
    I went straight to my quarters and took off the fancy Class As and cleaned my teeth and took a shower. Then I put on BDUs with a T-shirt and went to see what Garber wanted.
    Garber wanted to show me a confidential file from the Marine Corps. That was the purpose of his summons. But first came a short question-and-answer session. It didn’t go well. It was very unsatisfactory. I asked the questions, and he refused to answer them.
    And he refused to make eye contact.
    I asked, “Who did they arrest in Mississippi?”
    He said, “Read the file.”
    “I would like to know.”
    “Read the file first.”
    “Do they have a good case or is it bullshit?”
    “Read the file.”
    “Was it the same guy for all three women?”
    “Read the file first.”
    “Civilian, right?”
    “Read the damn file, Reacher.”
    He wouldn’t let me take the file away. It had to remain under his personal control at all times. Under his eye throughout, technically, but he didn’t follow the letter of the law on that point. He stepped out of his office and closed the door quietly and left me alone with it.
    It was about a quarter of an inch thick, cased in a jacket that was a different shade of khaki than the army uses. Better quality, too. It was smooth and crisp, only a little scraped and scuffed by the passage of time. It had red chevrons on all four edges, presumably denoting some elevated level of secrecy. It had a white stick-on label with a USMC file number printed on it, and a date five years in the past.
    It had a second label with a name printed on it.
    DEVERAUX, E
.
    Her name was followed by her rank, which was CWO5, and her service number, and her date of birth, which was fairly close to mine. Near the bottom edge of the jacket was a third stick-on, slightly misaligned, taken from a long roll of preprinted tape. I guessed it was supposed to say
Do Not Open Unless Authorized
but it had been cut at the wrong interval so that in reality it said
Open Unless Authorized Do Not
. Bureaucracy can be full of accidental humor.
    But the contents of the file were not funny.
    The contents started with her photograph. It was in color, and maybe a little more than five years old. Her hair was buzzed very short, like she had told me. Probably a number two clipper, grown out a week or so, like a soft dark halo. Like moss. She looked very beautiful. Very small and delicate. The short hair made her eyes enormous. She looked full of life, full of vigor, in control, in command. Some kind of a mental and physical plateau. Late twenties, early thirties. I remembered them well.
    I laid the photograph face down on my left and looked at the first sheet of printed words. They were typewritten. An IBM machine, I guessed, with the golf ball. Common in 1992. And there were stillplenty around in 1997. Computer word processing was happening, but like everything else in the military it was happening slowly and cautiously, with a great deal of doubt and suspicion.
    I started reading. Immediately it was clear that the file was a summary of an investigation conducted by a USMC Brigadier General from their Provost Marshal’s office, which oversaw their MP business. The one-star’s name was James Dyer. A very senior man, for what appeared to be nothing more than a personnel issue. A personal dispute, in fact, between two Marine MPs of equal rank. Or, technically, a dispute between one Marine MP and two others, for a total of three. On one side of the issue were a woman named Alice Bouton and a man named Paul Evers, and on the other