The Affair: A Reacher Novel

the 110th?”
    “Temporarily. Home base right now is the 396th MP. The Criminal Investigation Division.”
    “How many years in?”
    “Thirteen. Plus West Point.”
    “I’m honored. Maybe I
should
salute. Who did they send to Kelham?”
    “A guy called Munro. Same rank as me.”
    “That’s confusing,” she said.
    I said, “Are you making progress?”
    She said, “You don’t give up, do you?”
    “Giving up was not in the mission statement. You know how it is.”
    “OK, I’ll trade,” she said. “One answer for one answer. And then you ship back out. You hit the road at first light. In fact I’ll get Pellegrino to drive you back to where he picked you up. Do we have a deal?”
    What choice did I have? I said, “We have a deal.”
    “No,” she said. “We’re not making progress. Absolutely none at all.”
    “OK,” I said. “Thanks. Your turn.”
    “Obviously it would give me an insight to know if you’re the ace, or if the guy they sent to Kelham is the ace. I mean, in terms of the army’s current thinking. About the balance of probabilities here. As in, do they think the problem is inside the gates or outside? So, are you the big dog? Or is the other guy?”
    “Honest answer?”
    “That’s what I would expect from the son of a fellow Marine.”
    “The honest answer is I don’t know,” I said.

Chapter
13
    Elizabeth Deveraux paid for her burger and my pie and coffee, which I thought was generous, so I left the tip, which made the waitress smile again. We stepped out to the sidewalk together and stood for a moment next to the old Caprice. The moon had gotten brighter. A thin layer of high cloud had moved away. There were stars out.
    I said, “Can I ask you another question?”
    Deveraux was immediately guarded. She said, “About what?”
    “Hair,” I said. “Ours is supposed to conform to the shape of our heads. Tapered, they call it. Curving inward to a natural termination point at the base of the neck. What about yours?”
    “I wore a buzz cut for fifteen years,” she said. “I started growing it out when I knew I was going to quit.”
    I looked at her in the moonlight and the spill from the diner window. I pictured her with a buzz cut. She must have looked sensational. I said, “Good to know. Thanks.”
    She said, “I had no chance, right from the beginning. The regulation for women in the Corps required what they called a non-eccentric style. Your hair could touch your collar, but it couldn’t fall below the bottom edge. You were allowed to pin it up, but then I couldn’t get my hat on.”
    “Sacrifices,” I said.
    “It was worth it,” she said. “I loved being a Marine.”
    “You still are,” I said. “Once a Marine, always a Marine.”
    “Is that what your daddy said?”
    “He never got the chance. He died in harness.”
    She asked, “Is your mom still alive?”
    “She died a few years later.”
    “Mine died when I was in boot camp. Cancer.”
    “Really? Mine too. Cancer, I mean. Not boot camp.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Not your fault,” I said, automatically. “She was in Paris.”
    “So was I. Parris Island, anyway. Did she emigrate?”
    “She was French.”
    “Do you speak French?”
    I said,
“Un peu, mais doucement.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “A little, and slowly.”
    She nodded and put her hand on the Caprice’s door. I took the hint and said, “OK, goodnight, Chief Deveraux. It was a pleasure meeting you.”
    She just smiled.
    I turned left and walked down toward the hotel. I heard the big Chevy motor start up, and I heard the tires start to roll, and then the car passed me, going slow, and then it pulled a wide U-turn across the width of the street and stopped again, just ahead of me, facing me, at the curb right next to the Toussaint’s hotel. I walked on and got there just as Deveraux opened her door and got out again. Naturally I assumed she had something more to say to me, so I stopped walking and waited politely.
    “I live here,” she said. “Goodnight.”
    She had already gone upstairs before I got into the lobby. The old guy I had seen in the diner was behind the reception counter. He was open for business. I could tell he was disconcerted by my lack of luggage, but cash money is cash money, and he took eighteen dollars of mine and in return he gave me the key to room twenty-one. He toldme it was on the second floor, at the front of the building, overlooking the street, which he said was quieter than the back, which