The Affair

He said, “But what am I sticking around for? Right now I’m just hiding out in my room. I’m not very popular here, you know.”

“You didn’t join the army to be popular.”

“What do you need?”

“I need to know Reed Riley’s movements today.”

“Why?”

“I want to ask him a question.”

“That could be difficult. As far as I know he’s going to be pretty much tied up all day. You might be able to grab him over lunch. If he gets time for lunch, that is. And if he does, it will be very early.”

“No, I need him to come to me. In town.”

“You don’t understand. The mood has changed here. Bravo Company is out from under the cloud. Riley’s father is flying in for a visit.”

“The senator? Today?”

“ETA close to one o’clock this afternoon. Billed as an off-the-record celebration of what the guys are doing in Kosovo.”

“How long will it last?”

“You know what politicians are like. The old guy is supposed to watch some training crap in the afternoon, but dollars to doughnuts he’ll get a real hard-on and want to hang around all night drinking with the boys.”

“OK,” I said. “I’ll figure something out.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, since you’ve got nothing to do except sit around all day, you could tell me a couple of things.”

“What things?”

The phone started beeping at me and I said, “Why don’t you call me back on the government’s dime?” I read out the number from the dial and hung up. I walked to my table to pay the breakfast check and by the time I got back to the phone it was ringing.

“What things?” Munro said again.

“Impressions, mainly. About Kelham. As in, is there a good reason for Alpha Company and Bravo Company to be based there?”

“As opposed to where else?”

“Anywhere else east of the Mississippi River.”

“Kelham is pretty isolated,” Munro said. “Helps with the secrecy thing.”

“That’s what they told me, too. But I don’t buy it. There are secrets on every base. They could keep the lid on this thing anywhere. Kosovo is not even interesting. Who would even listen? But they chose Kelham a year ago. Why did they do that? Have you seen anything about Kelham that would make it the only choice?”

“No,” Munro said. “Not really. It’s adequate, no question. But not essential. I assume it was about sending four hundred extra wallets to a dying town.”

“Exactly,” I said. “It was political.”

“What isn’t?”

“One more thing,” I said. “You’re clear about how Janice Chapman ended up in that alley, right?”

“I hope so,” he said. “Based on what I saw last night, Chief Deveraux operates an exclusion zone in terms of Main Street itself. She makes sure all the action happens between the bars and the railroad track. Therefore both Main Street and the alley would have been deserted. Therefore the perp must have stopped on Main Street and carried the corpse in from that direction.”

“How long would it have taken?”

“Doesn’t matter. No one was there to see. Could have been a minute, could have been twenty.”

“But why there? Why not somewhere else, ten miles away?”

“The body was supposed to be found, I guess.”

“Plenty of lonelier places it would still have been found. So why there?”

“I don’t know,” Munro said. “Maybe the perp was constrained in some way. Maybe he had company, somewhere close by. Like the diner, or one of the bars. Maybe he had to duck out and take care of it real fast. Maybe he couldn’t be gone for long without somebody noticing. So maybe he had to trade safety for speed. Which would dictate a nearby location.”

“Can you give me another day?” I said. “Can you be here tomorrow?”

“No,” he said. “I’m going to get my butt kicked bad for being one day late. I can’t risk two.”

“Pussy,” I said.

He laughed. “Sorry, man, but if you don’t get it done today you’re on your own.”

Chapter

76

Senator Carlton Riley’s impending visit kept the town very quiet. It was as if Kelham’s gates were locked again. I doubted that the leave order had been formally rescinded, but Rangers are good soldiers, and I was sure the base commander had dropped heavy hints about hundred-percent participation in the hoopla. I left the diner and found Main Street back to its previous torpor. My borrowed Buick was the only car parked on the block behind. It looked lonely and abandoned. I unlocked it and drove it around to the hotel and retrieved my toothbrush and settled my account at the desk. Then I got back behind the wheel and went exploring.

I started opposite the vacant lot between the diner and the Sheriff’s Department. I headed south from there for two hundred yards, to where Main Street started to bend, driving fast but not stupid fast. I made the left into Deveraux’s childhood street, and hustled along to her old house, fourth on the right. Total elapsed time, forty-five seconds.

I turned in over the dried mud puddle and drove down the overgrown driveway, past the tumbledown house, through the back yard, past the wild hedge, to the deer trestle. I swung left and backed up and popped the trunk and got out.

Total elapsed time, a minute and fifteen seconds.

There were trees to my left and trees to my right and trees ahead of me. A lonely spot, even in the bright daylight. I mimed supporting a body’s weight, cutting the wrist straps, cutting the ankle ties, carrying the body to the car, lowering it into the trunk. I fiddled around four more times, taking off imaginary pads and straps and belts and scarves from two wrists and two ankles. I stepped back to the trestle and picked up an imaginary bucket of blood and heaved it over to the car and wedged it in the trunk alongside the body.

I closed the trunk lid and got back in the driver’s seat.

Total elapsed time, three minutes and ten seconds.

I backed up and turned and drove the length of the driveway again and headed back to Main Street. I drove the same two hundred yards I had driven before and stopped on the curb between the hardware store and the pharmacy. Right at the mouth of the alley.

Total elapsed time, four minutes and twenty-five seconds.

Plus one minute to put the blood in the alley.

Plus another minute to put Janice May Chapman in the alley.

Plus fifteen seconds to get back where I started.

Total elapsed time, six minutes and forty seconds.

Touch and go.

Maybe long enough to stick in someone’s mind, in a social situation, or maybe not.

I rewound the clock in my head to four minutes and twenty-five seconds and drove on north and then east, to the railroad crossing. I came to a stop right on top of it. New total, four minutes and fifty-five seconds. Plus a minute to carry Rosemary McClatchy to the ditch, and thirty seconds to get back to the car, and twenty seconds to get back where I started.

Total elapsed time, six minutes and forty-five seconds.

Fractionally longer, but in the same ballpark.

I didn’t drive up to where Shawna Lindsay had been dumped, on the pile of gravel. No point. That destination was in a whole different category. That was a twenty-minute excursion, right there. It was the sole exception to the hurry-up rule. Therefore it had been undertaken under different circumstances. No company. No social situation. Plenty of time to thread cautiously along dark dirt roads between ditches, turning right, turning left, doing the deed, and then coming back again, just as slow, just as cautious.

But what was interesting about Shawna Lindsay’s resting place was the car that carried her there. What kind of car could get through that neighborhood twice, without attracting notice or comment? What kind of car was entitled to be there at that time of night?