The Affair: A Reacher Novel

interesting.”
    “OK, the rumors say young Ms. Shaw felt very unhappy aboutbeing discarded in the way she was. She felt used and cheap. Like a Kleenex. She felt like a hooker leaving a hotel suite. She began to look like the kind of intern that could cause serious trouble. That was the FBI’s opinion, anyway. They keep track of that stuff too, for different reasons.”
    “So what happened?”
    “In the end nothing happened. The parties must have reached some kind of mutual accommodation. Everything went quiet. The senator was duly reelected and Audrey Shaw was never heard from again.”
    “Where is she now?”
    “This is where you ask me what the hard facts say.”
    “What do the hard facts say?”
    “The hard facts say Audrey Shaw isn’t anywhere anymore. The databases are completely blank. No records of anything. No transactions, no taxes, no purchases, no cars or houses or boats or trailers, no snowmobiles, no loans or liens or warrants or judgments or arrests or convictions. It’s like she ceased to exist three years ago.”
    “Three years ago?”
    “Even the bank agrees.”
    “How old was she then?”
    “She was twenty-four then. She’d be twenty-seven now.”
    “Did you check the other name for me? Janice May Chapman?”
    “You just spoiled my surprise. You just ruined my story.”
    “Let me guess,” I said. “Chapman is the exact reverse. There’s nothing there more than three years old.”
    “Correct.”
    “They were the same person,” I said. “Shaw changed her identity. Part of the deal, presumably. A big bag of cash and a stack of new paperwork. Like a witness protection program. Maybe the real witness protection program. Those guys would help a senator out. It would give them an IOU to put in their back pocket.”
    “And now she’s dead. End of story. Anything else?”
    “Of course there’s something else,” I said. There was one last question. Big and obvious. But I hardly needed to ask it. I was sure I knew the answer. I felt it coming right at me, hissing through the air like anincoming mortar round. Like an artillery shell, aimed and ranged and fused for an air burst right next to my head.
    I asked, “Who was the senator?”
    “Carlton Riley,” Lowrey said. “Mr. Riley of Missouri. The man himself. The chairman of the Armed Services Committee.”

Chapter
56
    I got back to the table just as the waitress was putting down two slices of peach pie and two cups of coffee. Deveraux started eating immediately. She was a whole chicken pie ahead of me, and she was still hungry. I gave her a lightly edited recap of Lowrey’s information. Everything, really, except for the words
Missouri, Carlton
, and
Riley
.
    She asked, “What made you give him Audrey Shaw’s name in the first place?”
    “Flip of a coin,” I said. “A fifty-fifty chance. Either Butler’s buddy screwed up her case numbers or she didn’t. I didn’t want to assume one way or the other.”
    “Does this stuff help us?”
    Small words, but big concepts.
Help
, and
us
. It didn’t help me. Not with Janice May Chapman, anyway. With Rosemary McClatchy and Shawna Lindsay, I wasn’t so sure anymore. Lowrey’s news cast a strange new light on them. But Lowrey’s news helped Deveraux, that was for damn sure. With Chapman, at least. It decreased the chances about a billionfold that her local population was involved with her in any way at all. Because it increased the chances about a billionfold that mine was.
    I said, “It might help us. It might narrow things down a little. Imean, if a senator has a problem, which of the five or six chains of command is going to react?”
    “Senate Liaison,” she said.
    “That’s where I’m going. The day after tomorrow.”
    “How did you know?”
    “I didn’t.”
    “You must have.”
    “It was just a random choice. I needed a reason to be there, that’s all.”
    “Wait,” she said. “This makes no sense. Why would the army get involved if a senator had a problem with a girl? That’s a civilian matter. I mean, Senate Liaison doesn’t get involved every time a politician loses his car keys. There would have to be a military connection. And there’s no military connection between a civilian senator and his civilian ex-girlfriend, no matter where she lives.”
    I didn’t answer.
    She looked at me. “Are you saying there
is
a connection?”
    I said, “I’m not saying anything. Literally. Watch my lips. They aren’t moving.”
    “There can’t be a