The Affair: A Reacher Novel

Literally impossible. So there’s evidence out there, just waiting for you.”
    “I can’t search the base. They won’t let me. It’s a jurisdiction thing.”
    “You don’t know for sure it happened on the base.”
    “She was raped on the base.”
    “It’s not impossible she was raped on the base. That’s not quite the same thing.”
    “I can’t search five hundred square miles of Mississippi, either.”
    “So zoom in on the perpetrator. Narrow it down.”
    “How?”
    “No woman can bleed out twice,” I said. “Her throat was cut in some unknown location, blood sprayed everywhere, she died, and that’s all she wrote. Then she was dumped in the alley. But whose blood was she lying in? Not her own, because she’d left it all back in the unknown location.”
    “Oh, God,” Deveraux said. “Don’t tell me the guy collected it and brought it with him.”
    “Possible,” I said. “But a little unlikely. It would be tricky to cut someone’s throat while simultaneously dancing around with a bucket, trying to catch the spray.”
    “There could have been two guys.”
    “Possible,” I said again. “But still unlikely. It’s like a fire hose, flipping all around. Here, there, and everywhere. The second guy would be lucky to gather a pint.”
    “So what are you saying? Whose blood was it?”
    “An animal’s, possibly. Maybe a deer. Freshly slaughtered, but not quite fresh enough. There was some time lag. That blood was already congealing. A gallon of liquid blood would have spread much farther than that pile of sand. A little goes a long way, where blood is concerned.”
    “A hunter?”
    “That’s my guess.”
    “Based on not very much. You didn’t see the blood. You didn’t test it. It could have been fake blood from a joke store. Or it
could
have been hers. Someone might have figured out a way to collect it. Just because you can’t see a way doesn’t mean a way doesn’t exist. Or they could have bled her out first and then cut her throat afterward.”
    “Still a hunter,” I said.
    “Why?”
    “There’s more,” I said. “It continues to get worse.”

Chapter
18
    At that point the old lady I had seen in the diner stuck her head in the door. The hotel’s co-owner. She asked if she could bring us anything. Elizabeth Deveraux shook her head. I asked for coffee. The old lady said sorry, she didn’t have any. She said I could get it to go from the diner, if I really needed it. I wondered what exactly she was offering, therefore, if anything. But I didn’t ask. The old lady left again, and Deveraux said, “Why are you fixated on hunters?”
    “Pellegrino told me she was all dressed up for a night out, as neat as a pin, just lying there on her back in a pool of blood. Those were his words. Is that a fair summary?”
    Deveraux nodded. “That’s exactly what I saw. Pellegrino is an idiot, but a reliable one.”
    “That’s more proof she wasn’t killed there. She would have fallen forward on her face, not on her back.”
    “Yes, I missed that too. Don’t rub it in.”
    “What was she wearing?”
    “A dark blue sheath dress with a low white collar. Underwear and pantyhose. Dark blue shoes with spike heels.”
    “Clothes in disarray?”
    “No. They looked neat as a pin. Like Pellegrino told you.”
    “So she wasn’t put into those clothes postmortem. You can alwaystell. Clothes never go on a corpse just right. Especially not pantyhose. So she was still dressed when she was killed.”
    “I accept that.”
    “Was there blood on the white collar? At the front?”
    Deveraux closed her eyes, presumably to recall the scene. She said, “No, it was immaculate.”
    “Was there blood anywhere on her front?”
    “No.”
    “OK,” I said. “So her throat was cut in an unknown location, while she was dressed in those clothes. But she had gotten no blood on her, until she was dumped on her back in a pool that was separately transported. Tell me how that isn’t a hunter.”
    “Tell me how it is. If you can. You can help the army all you want, but you don’t have to believe your own bullshit.”
    “I’m not helping the army. Soldiers can be hunters too. Many of them are.”
    “Why is it a hunter at all?”
    “Tell me how you cut a woman’s throat without getting a drop of blood on her front.”
    “I don’t know how.”
    “You string her up on a deer trestle. That’s how. By her ankles. Upside down. You tie her hands behind her. You haul her arms up until her back is