The Affair: A Reacher Novel

personal. Maybe five or six of them pass the crazy test. Which means there are five or six different chains of command terminating in five or six very senior officers somewhere. Any one of them could feel threatened in some way bad enough to pull a stunt like this. And any one of them would be quite capable of doing it. You don’t get to be a very senior officer in this man’s army by being a sweet guy.”
    “Who are the five or six?”
    “I wouldn’t have the faintest idea. That’s not my world. From where they are, I’m just a grunt. I’m indistinguishable from a private first class.”
    “But you’re going to nail him.”
    “Of course I’m going to nail him.”
    “When?”
    “Day after tomorrow, I hope. I have to go to D.C. Just for a night, maybe.”
    “Why?”
    “I got on a line I knew to be tapped and said I knew a name. So now I have to go hang out up there and walk the walk and see what comes out of the woodwork.”
    “You made yourself the bait in a trap?”
    “It’s like a theory of relativity. Same difference if I go to them or they come to me.”
    “Especially when you don’t even know who they are, let alone which one of them is guilty.”
    I said nothing.
    She said, “I agree. It’s time to shake something loose. If you want to know if the stove is hot, sometimes the only way to find out is to touch it.”
    “You must have been a pretty good cop.”
    “I still am a pretty good cop.”
    “So when did your light go out? With the Marines, I mean. When did you stop enjoying it?”
    “About where you are now,” she said. “For years you’ve laughed off the small things, but they come so thick and fast that eventually you realize an avalanche is made up of small things. Snowflakes, right? Things don’t get much smaller than that. Suddenly you realize that small things
are
big things.”
    “No single specific thing?”
    “No, I got through fine. I never had any trouble.”
    “What, all sixteen years?”
    “I had some minor speed bumps here and there. I dated the wrong guy once or twice. But nothing worth talking about. I made it to CWO5, after all, which is as high as it goes for some of us.”
    “You did well.”
    “Not bad for a country girl from Carter Crossing.”
    “Not bad at all.”
    She asked, “When are you leaving?”
    “Tomorrow morning, I guess. It will take me all day to get there.”
    “I’ll have Pellegrino drive you to Memphis.”
    “No need,” I said.
    “Agree for my sake,” she said. “I like to get Pellegrino out of thecounty as often as possible. Let him wreck his car and kill a pedestrian in some other jurisdiction.”
    “Has he done that here?”
    “We don’t have pedestrians here. This is a very quiet town. Quieter than ever right now.”
    “Because of Kelham?”
    “This place is dying, Reacher. We need that base open, and fast.”
    “Maybe I’ll make some headway in D.C.”
    “I hope you do,” she said. “We should have lunch now.”
    “That’s why I came in.”
    Deveraux’s lunch staple was chicken pie. We ordered a matched pair and were halfway through eating them when the old couple from the hotel came in. The woman had a book, and the man had a newspaper. A routine pit stop, like dinner. Then the old guy saw me and detoured to our table. He told me my wife’s brother had just called. Something very urgent. I looked blank for a second. The old guy must have thought my wife came from a very large family. “Your brother-in-law Stanley,” he said.
    “OK,” I said. “Thanks.”
    The old guy shuffled off and I said, “Major Stan Lowrey. A friend of mine. He and I have been TDY at the same place for a couple of weeks.”
    Deveraux smiled. “I think the verdict is in. Marines were better comedians.”
    I started eating again, but she said, “You should call him back if it’s very urgent, don’t you think?”
    I put my fork down.
    “Probably,” I said. “But don’t eat my pie.”
    I went back to the phone for the third time and dialed. Lowrey answered on the first ring and asked, “Are you sitting down?”
    I said, “No, I’m standing up. I’m on a pay phone in a diner.”
    “Well, hold on tight. I have a story for you. About a girl called Audrey.”

Chapter
55
    I leaned on the wall next to the phone. Not because I was necessarily worried about falling down with shock or surprise. But because Lowrey’s stories were usually very long. He fancied himself a raconteur. And he liked background. And context. Deep