The Affair: A Reacher Novel

five weeks in one condition, and then four or five weeks in the other.
    Bravo Company, in Kosovo.
    Bravo Company, at home.
    Not good.
    I asked, “Did she have a boyfriend?”
    She had several, they said, with prim delight. Sometimes all at once. Practically a parade. They listed sequential glimpsed sightings, all of polite young men with short hair, all in what they called dungaree pants, all in what they called undershirts, some in what they called motorcycle coats.
    Jeans, T-shirts, leather jackets.
    Soldiers, obviously, off duty.
    Not good.
    I asked, “Was there anyone in particular? Anyone special?”
    They conferred again and agreed a period of relative stability had commenced three or perhaps four months earlier. The parade of suitors had slowed, first to a trickle, and then it had stopped altogether and been replaced by the attentions of a lone man, once again described as polite, young, short-haired, but always inappropriately dressed on the many occasions they had seen him. Jeans, T-shirts, leather jackets. In their day, a gentleman called on his belle in a suit and a tie.
    I asked, “What did they do together?”
    They went out, the ladies said. Sometimes in the afternoons, but most often in the evenings. Probably to bars. There was very little in the way of alternative entertainment in that corner of the state. The nearest picture house was in a town called Corinth. There had been a vaudeville theater in Tupelo, but it had closed many years ago. Thecouple tended to come back late, sometimes after midnight, after the train had passed. Sometimes the suitor would stay an hour or two, but to their certain knowledge he had never spent the night.
    I asked, “When was the last time you saw her?”
    The day before she died, they said. She had left her house at seven o’clock in the evening. The same suitor had come calling for her, right at the top of the hour, quite formally.
    “What was Janice wearing that night?” I asked.
    A yellow dress, they said, knee length but low cut.
    “Did her friend show up in his own car?” I asked.
    Yes, they said, he did.
    “What kind of a car was it?”
    It was a blue car, they said.

Chapter
36
    We left both ladies on one porch and crossed the street to take a closer look at Chapman’s house. It was very much the same as the neighbors’ places. It was classic tract housing, built fast in uniform batches for returning military and their new baby boom families right after the end of World War Two. Then each individual example had grown slightly different from all the others over the passing years, the same way identical triplets might evolve differently with age. Chapman’s choice had ended up modest and unassuming, but pleasant. Someone had put neat gingerbread trim all over it, and the front door had been replaced.
    We stood on the porch and I looked in a window and saw a small square living room, full of furniture that looked pretty new. There was a loveseat and an armchair and a small television set on a low chest of drawers. There was a VHS player and some tapes next to it. The living room door was open and I could see part of a narrow hallway beyond. I shifted position and craned my neck for a better look.
    “Go inside if you want,” Deveraux said, behind me.
    “Really?”
    “The door is unlocked. It was unlocked when we got here.”
    “Is that usual?”
    “Not unusual. We never found her key.”
    “Not in her pocketbook?”
    “She didn’t have a pocketbook with her. She seems to have left it in the kitchen.”
    “Is
that
usual?”
    “She didn’t smoke,” Deveraux said. “She certainly didn’t pay for drinks. Why would she need a pocketbook?”
    “Makeup?” I said.
    “Twenty-seven-year-olds don’t powder their noses halfway through the evening. Not like they used to. Not anymore.”
    I opened the front door and stepped inside the house. It was neat and clean, but the air was still and heavy. The floors and the rugs and the paint and the furniture was all fresh, but not brand new. There was an eat-in kitchen across the hall from the living room, with two bedrooms behind, and presumably a bathroom.
    “Nice place,” I said. “You could buy it. It would be better than the Toussaint’s hotel.”
    Deveraux said, “With those old biddies across the street, watching me all the time? I’d go crazy inside a week.”
    I smiled. She had a point.
    She said, “I wouldn’t buy it even without the biddies. I wouldn’t want to live like this. Not at