The Affair: A Reacher Novel

months ago. She was also black. Also young. Also spectacular.
Truly
spectacular. She had been photographed outside, in a yard, in the shade, with late-afternoon light coming off a white clapboard wall and bathing her in its glow. She had a short natural hairstyle and a white blouse with three buttons undone. She had liquid eyes and a shy smile. She had magnificent cheekbones. I just stared. If some white-coated lab guy had fed an IBM supercomputer with all we had ever known about beauty, from Cleopatra to the present day, the circuits would have hummed for an hour and then printed this exact image.
    I moved my mug and laid all three pictures side by side on the table.
They’ve all got something in common
, Neagley had said. They were all roughly the same age. Two or three years might have covered them all. But Chapman was white, and the other two were black. Chapman was at least economically comfortable, judging by her dress and her jewelry, and the first black woman looked less so, and thesecond looked close to marginal, in a rural way, judging by her clothes and her unadorned neck and ears, and by the yard she was sitting in.
    Three lives, lived in close geographic proximity, but separated by vast gulfs. They may never have met or spoken. They may never have even laid eyes on each other. They had absolutely nothing in common.
    Except that all three were amazingly beautiful.

Chapter
23
    I repacked the file and tucked it in the back of my pants under my shirt. I paid my bill and left a tip and walked out to the street. I figured I would walk up to the Sheriff’s Department. I figured it was time for some reconnaissance. Time for an initial foray. Time for an exploratory penetration. A toe in the water. Not a democracy, but it was a public building. And I had a legitimate reason to be there. I had lost property to return. I figured if Deveraux was out, I could leave the file with the desk clerk. And if Deveraux was in, I could play it by ear.
    She was in.
    Her old Caprice was in the lot, slotted neatly in the parking bay closest to the door. A privilege of rank, presumably. Office cultures all work the same way. I walked past it and hauled open a heavy glass door and found myself in a dowdy, beat-up lobby. Plastic tile on the floor, scarred paint on the walls, and an inquiry desk facing me, with an old guy behind it. He had no hair and a toothless, caved-in face, and he was wearing a suit vest with no coat, like an old-time newspaperman. As soon as he saw me he picked up a phone and hit a button and said, “He’s here.” He listened to a reply and then he pointed with the phone, using it like a baton, stretching its cord, and he said, “End of the corridor on the right. She’s expecting you.”
    I walked the corridor and got a glimpse through a half-closed doorof a stout woman at a telephone switchboard, and then I arrived at Deveraux’s billet. Her door was open. I knocked on it once as a courtesy and went in.
    It was a plain square space in no better condition than the lobby. Same tile, same battered paint, same grime. It was full of stuff bought cheap at the end of the last geological era. Desk, chairs, file cabinets, all plain and municipal and well out of date. There were grip-and-grin pictures on the wall, of an old guy in uniform that I took to be Deveraux’s father, the previous incumbent. There was a stand-up hat rack with an old cardigan sweater on one of the pegs. It had hung there so long it looked crusted and rigid with age.
    At first glance, not a wonderful room.
    But it had Deveraux in it. I had pictures of three stunning women digging into my back, but she held her own with any of them. She was right up there. Maybe she even beat them all.
A very beautiful woman
, Neagley had said, and I was glad my subjectivity had been confirmed by someone else’s objectivity. She looked small in the desk chair, slender in the shoulders, lithe and relaxed. As usual, she was smiling.
    She asked, “Did you ID the car for me?”
    I didn’t answer that question, and her phone rang. She picked it up and listened for a moment, and then she said, “OK, but it’s still a felony assault. Keep it on the front burner, OK?” Then she put the phone down and said, “Pellegrino,” by way of explanation.
    I said, “Busy day?”
    “Two guys were beaten up this morning by someone they swear was a soldier from Kelham. But the army says the base is still closed. I don’t know what’s going on. The doctor is working