The Affair: A Reacher Novel

heartland, anyway. I only spoke to her once.”
    “Did you fingerprint the corpse?”
    “No. Why would we? We knew who she was.”
    “Did you know?”
    “Too late now.”
    I nodded. By now Chapman’s skin would be sloughing off her fingers like a soft old glove. It would be wrinkling and tearing like a wet paper bag. I asked, “Do you have a fingerprint kit in the car?”
    She shook her head. “Butler does the fingerprinting here. The other deputy. He took a course with the Jackson PD.”
    “You should get him here. He can take prints from the house.”
    “They won’t all be hers.”
    “Nine out of ten will be. He should start with the tampon box.”
    “She won’t be on file anywhere. Why would she be? She was a kid. She didn’t serve and she wasn’t a cop.”
    I said, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
    Deveraux used the radio in her car out in the middle of the turnaround. She had chess pieces to move. Pellegrino had to replace Butler at Kelham’s gate. She came back in and said, “Twenty minutes. I have to get back. I have work to do. You wait here. But don’t worry. Butler should do it right. He’s a reasonably smart guy.”
    “Smarter than Pellegrino?”
    “Everyone is smarter than Pellegrino. My car is smarter than Pellegrino.”
    I asked, “Will you have dinner with me?”
    She said, “I have to work pretty late.”
    “How late?”
    “Nine o’clock, maybe.”
    “Nine would be fine.”
    “Are you paying?”
    “Absolutely.”
    She paused a beat.
    “Like a date?” she asked.
    “We might as well,” I said. “There’s only one restaurant in town. We’d probably end up eating together anyway.”
    “OK,” she said. “Dinner. Nine o’clock. Thank you.”
    Then she said, “Don’t shave, OK?”
    I said, “Why not?”
    She said, “You look good like that.”
    And then she left.
    I waited on Janice May Chapman’s front porch, in one of her rocking chairs. Both old ladies watched me from across the street. Deputy Butler showed up just inside his allotted twenty minutes. He was in a car like Pellegrino’s. He left it where Deveraux had left hers, and unfolded himself from the seat, and stepped around to the trunk. He was a tall guy, and well put together, somewhere in his middle thirties. He had long hair for a cop, and a square, solid face. First glance, he wouldn’t be the easiest guy in the world to manage. But maybe not impossible.
    He took a black plastic box out of his trunk and walked up Chapman’s driveway toward me. I got out of my chair and held out my hand. Always better to be polite. I said, “Jack Reacher. I’m pleased to meet you.”
    He said, “Geezer Butler.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes, really.”
    “You play bass guitar?”
    “Like I haven’t heard that one before.”
    “Was your dad a Black Sabbath fan?”
    “My mom too.”
    “Are you?”
    He nodded. “I’ve got all their records.”
    I led him inside. He stood in the hallway, looking around. I said, “The challenge here is to get her prints and no one else’s.”
    “To avoid confusion?” he said.
    No
, I thought.
To avoid a Bravo Company guy lighting up the system. Better safe than sorry
.
    I said, “Yes, to avoid confusion.”
    “The chief said I should start in the bathroom.”
    “Good plan,” I said. “Toothbrush, toothpaste, tampon box, personal things like that. Things that were boxed up or wrapped in cellophane in the store. No one else will have touched them.”
    I hung back so as not to crowd him, but I watched him pretty carefully. He was extremely competent. He took twenty minutes and got twenty good prints, all small neat ovals, all obviously a woman’s. We agreed that was an adequate sample, and he packed up his gear and gave me a ride back to town.
    I got out of Butler’s car outside the Sheriff’s Department and walked south to the hotel, where I stood on the sidewalk and wrestled with a dilemma. I felt I should go buy a new shirt, but I didn’t want Deveraux to feel that dinner was supposed to be more than just dinner. Or in reality I did want her to feel dinner could be more than just dinner, but I didn’t want her to see me wanting it. I didn’t want her to feel pushed into anything, and I didn’t want to appear overeager.
    But in the end I decided a shirt was just a shirt, so I hiked across to the other side of Main Street and looked at the stores. Most of them were about to close. It was after five o’clock. I found a men’s outfitters three enterprises