The Affair: A Reacher Novel

Evers.”
    “Paul?” she said. “You’re kidding. We worked together for years. In fact we even dated once. One of my mistakes, I’m afraid. But how amazing that you bumped into him. It’s a small world, right?”
    “Why was he a mistake? He seemed OK to me.”
    “He was fine. He was a really nice guy. But we didn’t really click.”
    “So you dumped him?”
    “More or less. But it felt close to mutual. We both knew it wasn’t going to work. It was just a question of who was going to speak first. He wasn’t upset, anyway.”
    “When was this?”
    She paused to calculate.
    “Five years ago,” she said. “Feels like yesterday. Doesn’t time fly?”
    “Then he said something about a woman called Alice Bouton. His next girlfriend after you, apparently.”
    “I don’t think I knew her. I don’t recall the name. Did Paul seem happy?”
    “He mentioned something about car trouble.”
    Deveraux smiled.
    “Girls and cars,” she said. “Is that all guys ever talk about?”
    I said, “Reopening Kelham means they’re sure the problem is on your side of the fence, you know. They wouldn’t have done it otherwise. It’s a Mississippi matter now. That will be the official line, from this point forward. It’s not one of us. It’s one of you. You got any thoughts on that?”
    “I think the army should share its information,” she said. “If it’s good enough for them, it would be good enough for me too.”
    “The army is moving on,” I said. “The army won’t be sharing anything.”
    She paused a beat.
    “Munro told me he got new orders,” she said. “I suppose you have, too.”
    I nodded. “I came back to tie up a loose end. That’s all, really.”
    “And then you’ll be moving on. To the next thing. That’s what I’m thinking about right now. I’ll think about Janice Chapman tomorrow.”
    “And Rosemary McClatchy, and Shawna Lindsay.”
    “And Bruce Lindsay, and his mother. I’ll do my best for all of them.”
    I said nothing.
    She asked, “Are you tired?”
    I said, “Not very.”
    “I have to go help Butler and Pellegrino. They’ve been working since dawn. And anyway, I want to be on the road when the last of the stragglers start to head home. They’re always the toughest guys, and the drunkest.”
    “Will you be back by midnight?”
    She shook her head.
    “Probably not,” she said. “We’ll have to manage without the train tonight.”
    I said nothing in reply to that, and she smiled once more, a little sadly, and then she got up and left.
    The waitress finally got to me five minutes later and I ordered coffee. And pie, as an afterthought. She treated me a little differently than before. A little more formally. She worked near a base, and she knew what the black oak leaves on my collar meant. I asked her how her day had gone. She said it had gone very well, thank you.
    “No trouble at all?” I asked.
    “None,” she said.
    “Even from that guy in back? The other major? I heard he could be a handful.”
    She turned and looked at Munro. She said, “I’m sure he’s a perfect gentleman.”
    “Would you ask him to join me? Get him some pie, too.”
    She detoured via his table, and she delivered my invitation, which involved a lot of elaborate pointing, as if I was inconspicuous and hard to find in the crowd. Munro looked over quizzically, and then he shrugged and got up. Each of the four Ranger tables fell silent as he passed, one after the other. Munro was not popular with those guys. He had had them sitting on their thumbs for four solid days.
    He sat down in Deveraux’s chair and I asked him, “How much have they told you?”
    “Bare minimum,” he said. “Classified, need to know, eyes only, the whole nine yards.”
    “No names?”
    “No,” he said. “But I’m assuming that Sheriff Deveraux must have given them solid information that clears our guys. I mean, what else could have happened? But she hasn’t arrested anybody. I’ve been watching her all day.”
    “What has she been doing?”
    “Crowd control,” he said. “Watching for signs of friction. But it’s all good. No one is mad at her or the town. It’s me they’re gunning for.”
    “When are you leaving?”
    “First light,” he said. “I get a ride to Birmingham, Alabama, and then a bus to Atlanta, Georgia, and then I fly Delta back to Germany.”
    “Did you know Reed Riley never left the base?”
    “Yes,” he said.
    “What do you make of that?”
    “It puzzles me a