The Affair: A Reacher Novel

“Reacher?”
    I said, “Deveraux?”
    The figure on my left said, “And Munro.”
    I said, “What the hell are you two doing here?”
    They converged on me, and I tried to push them away from the car. I said, “Why are you here?”
    Deveraux said, “Did you really think I was going to let him keep me in the diner?”
    “I wish he had,” I said. “I didn’t want either of you to hear anything about this.”
    “You made Riley open the windows. You wanted us to hear.”
    “No, I wanted fresh air. I didn’t know you were there.”
    “Why shouldn’t we hear?”
    “I didn’t want you to know what they were saying about you. And I wanted Munro to go back to Germany with a clear conscience.”
    Munro said, “My conscience is always clear.”
    “But it’s easier to play dumb if you really don’t know the answer.”
    “I never had a problem playing dumb. Some folks think I am.”
    Deveraux said, “I’m glad I heard what they were saying about me.”
    Eleven thirty-one. The train was twenty-nine miles south of us. We walked away, on the ties, between the rails, leaving the flat green staff car and its passengers behind us. We walked past the old water tower and made it to the crossing. We turned west. Forty yards away Deveraux’s cruiser was parked on the shoulder. Munro wouldn’t get in. He said he would walk on down to Brannan’s bar, where he had left a car he had borrowed. He said he needed to get back to Kelham as soon as possible, to square things away with the captured mortarmen, and then to hit the sack ahead of his early start the next morning. We shook hands quite formally, and I thanked him most sincerely for his help, and then he moved away and within ten paces he was lost to sight in the dark.
    Deveraux drove me back to Main Street and parked outside the hotel. Eleven thirty-six in the evening. The train was twenty-four miles away.
    I said, “I checked out of my room.”
    She said, “I still have mine.”
    “I need to make a phone call first.”
    We used the office behind the reception counter. I put a dollar bill on the desk and dialed Garber’s office. Maybe the tap was still in place, and maybe it wasn’t. It made no difference to me. I got a lieutenant on the line. He said he was the senior person on duty. He said in fact he was the only person on duty. Night crew. I asked him if he had paper and pencil handy. He said yes to both. I told him to stand by to take dictation. I told him to mark the finished product urgent and to leave it front and center on Garber’s desk, for immediate attention first thing in the morning.
    “Ready?” I asked him.
    He said he was.
    I said, “A tragedy occurred late last night in sleepy Carter Crossing, Mississippi, when a car carrying United States Senator Carlton Riley was struck by a passing train. The car was being driven by the senator’s son, U.S. Army Captain Reed Riley, who was based at nearby Fort Kelham, Mississippi. Senator Riley, of Missouri, was chairman of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, and Captain Riley, described by the army as a rising star, was in command of an infantry unit regularly deployed on missions of great sensitivity. Both men died instantly in the accident. Carter County Sheriff Elizabeth Deveraux confirmed that local drivers regularly attempt to beat the train across the road junction, in order to avoid a long and inconvenient delay, and it is believed that Captain Riley, recently posted to the area and adventurous in spirit, simply mistimed his approach to the crossing.”
    I paused.
    “Got that,” the lieutenant said, in my ear.
    “Second paragraph,” I said. “The senator and his son were returning to Fort Kelham after helping the nearby town celebrate Sheriff Deveraux’s successful resolution of a local homicide investigation. The killing spree had lasted nine months and the five victims included three local women in their twenties, a local teenage boy, and a journalist from nearby Oxford, Mississippi. The male perpetrator, responsible for all five deaths, is described as a militia member and a white supremacist from neighboring Tennessee, and was shot to death earlier in the week, in a wooded area close to Fort Kelham, by local police, while resisting arrest.”
    “Got that,” the lieutenant said again.
    “Start typing,” I said, and hung up.
    Eleven forty-two in the evening. The train was eighteen miles away.
    Room seventeen was as plain as room twenty-one had been. Deveraux had made no