The Affair: A Reacher Novel

the doors and the door handles. Nothing had been touched. No marks, no smears. There were misty spider webs everywhere, unbroken. There was vegetation of every kind, some of it thorned and brawny, some of it limp and delicate, all of it growing exactly where it wanted to, up stoops, across doorways, none of it pushed aside or cut back or otherwise disturbed.
    I stopped at the mouth of the driveway and parted the long grass around the mailbox with my hands. The mailbox was a standard Postal Service item, standard size, once painted gray, now no color at all, flecked with rust in fine lines where the curve of the sheet metal had stressed the enamel finish. It was set on a post that had started its service as a six-by-six, but was now wizened away to a twisted balk that retained only its core. There had been a name on the box, spelled out in stick-on letters printed on forward-leaning rectangles, in a style popular long ago. They had been peeled off, possibly as a last gesture when the home was abandoned, but they had left dry webs of adhesive residue behind, like fingerprints.
    There had been eight letters on the box.
    I jumped the ditch again and continued east. I passed two more houses, widely spaced, occupied, but in no kind of good condition. After the last one the road narrowed and its surface went pitted and lumpy. It burrowed into a wall of trees and ran on straight. The trees crowded in from the sides and left a thoroughfare barely a yard wide. I pressed on regardless, whipped and clawed by branches. Fifty paces later I came out the other side and found the railroad track right there in front of me, running left to right, blocking my path. At that location it was up on a raised earth berm about a yard high. The terrain in that part of Mississippi looked pretty flat to the human eye, butstraining locomotives see things differently. They want every dip filled in, and every peak shaved level.
    I scrambled up the yard of earth and crunched over the ballast stones and stood on a tie. To my right the track ran straight all the way south to the Gulf. To my left it ran straight north, all the way to wherever it went. I could see the road crossing far in the distance, and the old water tower. The rails either side of me were burnished bright by the passage of iron wheels. Ahead of me were more low trees and bushes, and beyond them was a field, and beyond the field were houses.
    I heard a helicopter, somewhere east and a little north. I scanned the horizon and saw a Blackhawk in the air, about three miles away. Heading for Kelham, I assumed. I listened to the
whap-whap-whap
of its rotor and the whine of its turbine, and I watched it maintain direction but lose height as it came in to land. Then I scrambled down the far side of the earth berm and headed onward through the next belt of trees.
    I hiked across the field that came next and stepped over a wire and found myself on a street I figured was parallel with Emmeline McClatchy’s. In fact I could see the back of the house with the beer signs in the windows. The ad-hoc bar. But between it and me were other houses, all surrounded by yards. Private property. In the yard dead ahead of me two guys were sitting in white plastic chairs. Old men. They were watching me. By the look of them they were taking a break from some kind of hard physical labor. I stopped at their fence line and asked, “Would you do me a favor?”
    They didn’t answer in words, but they cocked their chins up like they were listening. I said, “Would you let me walk through your yard? I need to get to the next street.”
    The guy on the left asked, “Why?” He had a fringe of white beard, but no mustache.
    I said, “I’m visiting with a person who lives there.”
    “Who?”
    “Emmeline McClatchy.”
    “You with the army?”
    I said, “Yes, I am.”
    “Then Emmeline doesn’t want a visit from you. Nor does anyone else around here.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because of Bruce Lindsay, most recently.”
    “Was he a friend of yours?”
    “He surely was.”
    “Bullshit,” I said. “He told me he had no friends. You all called him deformed and shunned him and made his life a misery. So don’t get up on your high horse now.”
    “You got some mouth on you, son.”
    “More than just a mouth.”
    “You going to shoot us too?”
    “I’m sorely tempted.”
    The old guy cracked a grin. “Come on through. But be nice to Emmeline. This thing with Bruce Lindsay shook her up all over again.”
    I