The Affair: A Reacher Novel

foundation walls had been built out of cinder blocks, and four vertical wooden posts had been raised at the corners. But that was all. Building materials werescattered around the rest of the lot in untidy piles. There were surplus cinder blocks, there were bricks, there was a pile of sand, there was a stack of bagged cement, gone all smooth and rigid with dew and rain.
    There was also a pile of gravel.
    I turned and looked at it as we drove past. Maybe two yards of it, the small sharp gray kind they mix with sand and cement to make into concrete. The pile had spread and wandered into a low hump about the size of a double bed, all weedy at the edges. It had pockmarks and divots in its top surface, as if kids had walked on it.
    I didn’t say anything. Deveraux’s mind was already made up. She drove on and turned left into a broader street. Bigger houses, bigger yards. Picket fences, not hurricane wire. Cement paths to the doors, not beaten earth. She slowed and then eased to a stop outside a place twice the size of the shack we had just left. A decent one-story house. Expensive, if it had been in California. But shabby. The paint was peeling and the gutters were broken-backed. The roof was asphalt and some of the tiles had slipped. There was a boy in the yard, maybe sixteen years old. He was standing still and doing nothing. Just watching us.
    Deveraux said, “This is the other one. Shawna Lindsay was her name. That’s her baby brother right there, staring at us.”
    The baby brother was no oil painting. He had lucked out with the genetic lottery. That was for damn sure. He was nothing like his sister. Nothing at all. He had fallen out of the ugly tree, and hit every branch. He had a head like a bowling ball, and eyes like the finger holes, and about as close together.
    I asked, “Are we going in?”
    Deveraux shook her head. “Shawna’s mom told me not to come back until I could tell her who slit her first-born’s throat. Those were her words. And I can’t blame her for them. Losing a child is a terrible thing. Especially for people like this. Not that they thought their girls would grow up to be models and buy them a house in Beverly Hills. But to have something truly special meant a lot to them. You know, after having nothing else, ever.”
    The boy was still staring. Quiet, baleful, and patient.
    “So let’s go,” I said. “I need to use the phone.”

Chapter
28
    Deveraux let me use the phone in her office. Not a democracy , not yet, but we were getting there. She found the number Munro had left for her, and she dialed it for me, and she told whoever answered that Sheriff Elizabeth Deveraux was on the line for Major Duncan Munro. Then she handed the receiver to me and vacated her chair and the room.
    I sat down behind her desk with nothing but dead air in my ear and the remnant of her body heat on my back. I waited. The silence hissed at me. The army did not play hold music. Not back in 1997. Then a minute later there was a plastic click and clatter as a handset was scooped up off a desk, and a voice said, “Sheriff Deveraux? This is Major Munro. How are you?”
    The voice was hard, and brisk, and hyper-competent, but it had an undertone of good cheer in it. But then, I figured anyone would be happy to get a call from Elizabeth Deveraux.
    I said, “Munro?”
    He said, “I’m sorry, I was expecting Elizabeth Deveraux.”
    “Well, sadly you didn’t get her,” I said. “My name is Reacher. I’m using the sheriff’s phone right now. I’m with the 396th, currently TDY with the 110th. We’re of equal rank.”
    Munro said, “Jack Reacher? I’ve heard of you, of course. How can I help you?”
    “Did Garber tell you he was sending an undercover guy to town?”
    “No, but I guessed he would. That would be you, right? Tasked to snoop on the locals? Which must be going pretty well, seeing as you’re calling from the sheriff’s phone. Which must be fun, in a way. People here say she’s a real looker. Although they also say she’s a lesbian. You got an opinion on any of that?”
    “That stuff is none of your business, Munro.”
    “Call me Duncan, OK?”
    “No, thanks. I’ll call you Munro.”
    “Sure. How can I help you?”
    “We’ve got shit happening out here. There was a guy shot to death this morning, close to your fence, northwestern quadrant. Unknown assailant, but probably a military round, and definitely a half-assed attempt to patch the fatal wound with a GI field