The Affair: A Reacher Novel

flying in for a visit.”
    “The senator? Today?”
    “ETA close to one o’clock this afternoon. Billed as an off-the-record celebration of what the guys are doing in Kosovo.”
    “How long will it last?”
    “You know what politicians are like. The old guy is supposed to watch some training crap in the afternoon, but dollars to doughnuts he’ll get a real hard-on and want to hang around all night drinking with the boys.”
    “OK,” I said. “I’ll figure something out.”
    “Anything else?”
    “Well, since you’ve got nothing to do except sit around all day, you could tell me a couple of things.”
    “What things?”
    The phone started beeping at me and I said, “Why don’t you call me back on the government’s dime?” I read out the number from the dial and hung up. I walked to my table to pay the breakfast check and by the time I got back to the phone it was ringing.
    “What things?” Munro said again.
    “Impressions, mainly. About Kelham. As in, is there a good reason for Alpha Company and Bravo Company to be based there?”
    “As opposed to where else?”
    “Anywhere else east of the Mississippi River.”
    “Kelham is pretty isolated,” Munro said. “Helps with the secrecy thing.”
    “That’s what they told me, too. But I don’t buy it. There are secrets on every base. They could keep the lid on this thing anywhere. Kosovo is not even interesting. Who would even listen? But they chose Kelham a year ago. Why did they do that? Have you seen anything about Kelham that would make it the only choice?”
    “No,” Munro said. “Not really. It’s adequate, no question. But not essential. I assume it was about sending four hundred extra wallets to a dying town.”
    “Exactly,” I said. “It was political.”
    “What isn’t?”
    “One more thing,” I said. “You’re clear about how Janice Chapman ended up in that alley, right?”
    “I hope so,” he said. “Based on what I saw last night, Chief Deveraux operates an exclusion zone in terms of Main Street itself. She makes sure all the action happens between the bars and the railroad track. Therefore both Main Street and the alley would have been deserted. Therefore the perp must have stopped on Main Street and carried the corpse in from that direction.”
    “How long would it have taken?”
    “Doesn’t matter. No one was there to see. Could have been a minute, could have been twenty.”
    “But why there? Why not somewhere else, ten miles away?”
    “The body was supposed to be found, I guess.”
    “Plenty of lonelier places it would still have been found. So why there?”
    “I don’t know,” Munro said. “Maybe the perp was constrained in some way. Maybe he had company, somewhere close by. Like the diner, or one of the bars. Maybe he had to duck out and take care of it real fast. Maybe he couldn’t be gone for long without somebody noticing. So maybe he had to trade safety for speed. Which would dictate a nearby location.”
    “Can you give me another day?” I said. “Can you be here tomorrow?”
    “No,” he said. “I’m going to get my butt kicked bad for being one day late. I can’t risk two.”
    “Pussy,” I said.
    He laughed. “Sorry, man, but if you don’t get it done today you’re on your own.”

Chapter
76
    Senator Carlton Riley’s impending visit kept the town very quiet. It was as if Kelham’s gates were locked again. I doubted that the leave order had been formally rescinded, but Rangers are good soldiers, and I was sure the base commander had dropped heavy hints about hundred-percent participation in the hoopla. I left the diner and found Main Street back to its previous torpor. My borrowed Buick was the only car parked on the block behind. It looked lonely and abandoned. I unlocked it and drove it around to the hotel and retrieved my toothbrush and settled my account at the desk. Then I got back behind the wheel and went exploring.
    I started opposite the vacant lot between the diner and the Sheriff’s Department. I headed south from there for two hundred yards, to where Main Street started to bend, driving fast but not stupid fast. I made the left into Deveraux’s childhood street, and hustled along to her old house, fourth on the right. Total elapsed time, forty-five seconds.
    I turned in over the dried mud puddle and drove down the overgrown driveway, past the tumbledown house, through the back yard, past the wild hedge, to the deer trestle. I swung left and backed up and popped the