The Affair: A Reacher Novel

She waved to the waitress and ordered French toast. The same as the day before.
    “I called Bruce Lindsay,” she said. “Shawna Lindsay’s little brother. Did you know they have a phone?”
    “Yes,” I said. “I’ve used it. Karla Dixon was returning a call I made from it.”
    “I’m heading over there this afternoon. I think you’re right. He has something to tell me.”
    Me. Not us.
    I said, “It was a fellow officer’s lame joke. That’s all.”
    She said, “I’m afraid there’s a problem with the fingerprints. From Janice Chapman’s house, I mean. My own fault, as a matter of fact.”
    “What kind of problem?”
    “Deputy Butler has a friend over there at the Jackson PD. From back when he took the course. I encourage him to get her to do our processing for us, on the quiet, to save ourselves the money. We don’t have the budget here. But Butler’s friend screwed up this time, and I can’t ask him to ask her to do it over. That would be a step too far.”
    “Screwed up how?”
    “She got her file numbers mixed. Chapman’s data went to a case about a woman called Audrey Shaw, and we got Audrey Shaw’s data. The wrong person entirely. Some kind of federal government worker. Which Chapman definitely wasn’t, because there’s no federal government work here, and Chapman didn’t work anyway. Unless Audrey Shaw was the previous owner of Chapman’s house, in which case it was Butler’s own screw-up, looking for prints in the wrong places, or yours, for letting him.”
    “No, Butler did a good job,” I said. “He looked in all the right places. Those prints weren’t from a previous owner, not unless she sneaked back in and used Chapman’s toothbrush in the middle of the night. So it’s just one of those things, I guess. Shit happens.”
    “Tell me again,” she said. “About that phone call.”
    “It was Major Karla Dixon of the 329th,” I said. “With information for me. That’s all.”
    “And the fiancée thing was a joke?”
    “Don’t tell me the Marines are better comedians, too.”
    “Is she good looking?”
    “Pretty nice.”
    “Was she ever your girlfriend?”
    “No.”
    Deveraux went quiet again. I could see a decision coming. It was almost there. And I was pretty sure it was going to turn out OK. But I didn’t find out. Not right then. Because before she could speak againthe stout woman from the department’s switchboard room crashed in through the diner door and stopped dead with one hand on the knob and one on the jamb. She was out of breath. She was panting. Her chest was heaving. She had run all the way. She called out, “There’s another one.”

Chapter
48
    Deputy Butler had been on his way to relieve Pellegrino for the middle watch at Fort Kelham’s gate, and a mile out he had happened to glance to his left, and he had seen a forlorn shape low down in the scrub perhaps a hundred yards north of the road. Five minutes after that he had been on the horn to HQ with the bad news, and ninety seconds after taking the message the dispatcher had made it to the diner. Deveraux and I were in her car twenty seconds after that, and she put her foot down hard and drove fast all the way, so we were on the scene less than ten minutes after Butler had first chanced to turn his head.
    Not that speed made any difference.
    We parked nose to tail behind Butler’s car and got out. We were on the main east–west road, two miles beyond the last of Carter Crossing itself, one mile short of Kelham, out in an open belt of scrubland, with the forest that bordered Kelham’s fence well ahead of us and the forest that flanked the railroad track well behind us. It was the middle of the day and the sky was clear and blue. The air was warm and the breeze was still.
    I could see what Butler had seen. It could have been a rock, or it could have been trash, but it wasn’t. It was small in the distance, dark, slightly humped, slightly elongated, pressed down, deflated. It was unmistakable. Judging its size was difficult, because judging the exactdistance was difficult. If it was eighty yards away, it was a small woman. If it was a hundred and twenty yards away, it was a large man.
    Deveraux said, “I hate this job.”
    Butler was standing out in the scrub, halfway between the dark shape and us. We set out walking toward him, and then we passed him without a word. I figured the overall distance was going to be close to dead-on a hundred yards, which made the shape neither a small