The Affair (23 page)

“Not a long-time resident, that you remember from being a kid? Maybe a third old biddy, like a matched set?”

“Why?”

“No reason. Not important. But whoever, they didn’t like mowing their lawn. So they dug it up and replaced it with something else.”

“With what?”

“Go take a look.”

She backtracked through the gap in the fence and walked halfway along the path and squatted down. She parted the weedy stalks and dug her fingertips into the surface underneath. She raked them back and forth and then she looked up at me and said, “Gravel.”

The previous owner had
tired of lawn care and opted for raked stones. Like a Japanese garden, maybe, or like the low-water-use yards conscientious Californians were starting to put in. Maybe there had been earthenware tubs here and there, full of cheerful flowers. Or maybe not. It was impossible to tell. But it was clear the gravel had not been a total success. Not a labor-saving cure-all. It had been laid thin. The subsoil had been full of weed roots. Regular applications of herbicide had been called for.

Janice May Chapman had not continued the herbicide applications. That was clear. No hosepipe in her garage. No watering can. Rural Mississippi. Agricultural land. Rain and sun. Those weeds had come boiling up like madmen. Some boyfriend had brought over a gasoline mower and hacked them back. Some nice guy with plenty of energy. The kind of guy who doesn’t like mess and disarray. A soldier, almost certainly. The kind of guy who does things for people, gets things neat, and then keeps them neat.

Deveraux asked, “So what are you saying? She was raped here?”

“Maybe she wasn’t raped at all.”

Deveraux said nothing.

“It’s possible she wasn’t,” I said. “Think about it. A sunny afternoon, total privacy. They’re sitting out back because they don’t want to sit on the front porch with the old biddies watching every move. They’re on the stoop, they’re feeling good, they get right to it.”

“On the lawn?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

She looked right at me and said, “Like you told the doctor, it would depend on who I was with.”

We spent the next
few minutes talking about injuries. I did the thing with my forearm again. I pressed it down and mashed it around. I simulated the throes of passion. I came up with plenty of green chlorophyll stains and a smear of dry stony mud. When I wiped off the dirt we both saw the same kind of small red marks we had seen on Janice May Chapman’s corpse. They were superficial and there was no broken skin, but we both agreed Chapman might have been at it longer, and harder, with more weight and force. “We need to go inside again,” I said.

We found Chapman’s laundry basket in the bathroom. It was a rectangular wicker thing, with a lid. Painted white. On top of the pile inside was a short sundress. It had cap sleeves and was printed with red and white pinstripes. It was rucked and creased at the waist. It had grass stains on the upper back. Next item down in the laundry pile was a hand towel. Then a white blouse.

“No underwear,” Deveraux said.

“Evidently,” I said.

“The rapist kept a souvenir.”

“She wasn’t wearing any. Her boyfriend was coming over.”

“It’s March.”

“What was the weather like that day?”

“It was warm,” Deveraux said. “And sunny. It was a nice day.”

“Rosemary McClatchy wasn’t raped,” I said. “Nor was Shawna Lindsay. Escalation is one thing. A complete change in MO is another.”

Deveraux didn’t answer that. She stepped out of the bathroom into the hallway. The center point of the little house. She looked all around. She asked, “What did I miss here? What should be here that isn’t?”

“Something more than three years old,” I said. “She moved here from somewhere else, and she should have brought things with her. At least a few things. Books, maybe. Or photographs. Maybe a favorite chair or something.”

“Twenty-four-year-olds aren’t very sentimental.”

“They keep some little thing.”

“What did you keep when you were twenty-four?”

“I’m different. You’re different.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying she showed up here three years ago out of the blue and brought nothing with her. She bought a house and a car and got a local driver’s license. She bought a houseful of new furniture. All for cash. She doesn’t have a rich daddy or his picture would be next to the TV in a silver frame. I want to know who she was.”

Chapter

38

I followed Deveraux from room to room while she checked
for herself. Paint on the walls, still fresh. Loveseat and armchair in the living room, still new. A recent television set. A fancy VHS player. Even the pots and pans and knives and forks in the kitchen showed no nicks or scratches from long-term use.

There were no clothes in the closet older than a couple of seasons. No old prom dress wrapped in plastic. No old cheerleader outfit. No photographs of family. No keepsakes. No old letters. No softball trophies, no jewelry box with a busted ballerina. No battered stuffed animals preserved from childhood years.

“Does it matter?” Deveraux said. “She was just a random victim, after all.”

“She’s a loose end,” I said. “I don’t like loose ends.”

“She was already here when I got back to town. I never thought about it. I mean, people come and go all the time. This is America.”

“Did you ever hear anything about her background?”

“Nothing.”

“No rumors or assumptions?”

“None at all.”

“Did she have a job?”

“No.”

“Accent?”

“The Midwest, maybe. Or just south of it. The heartland, anyway. I only spoke to her once.”

“Did you fingerprint the corpse?”

“No. Why would we? We knew who she was.”

“Did you know?”

“Too late now.”

I nodded. By now Chapman’s skin would be sloughing off her fingers like a soft old glove. It would be wrinkling and tearing like a wet paper bag. I asked, “Do you have a fingerprint kit in the car?”

She shook her head. “Butler does the fingerprinting here. The other deputy. He took a course with the Jackson PD.”

“You should get him here. He can take prints from the house.”

“They won’t all be hers.”

“Nine out of ten will be. He should start with the tampon box.”

“She won’t be on file anywhere. Why would she be? She was a kid. She didn’t serve and she wasn’t a cop.”

I said, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

Deveraux used the radio
in her car out in the middle of the turnaround. She had chess pieces to move. Pellegrino had to replace Butler at Kelham’s gate. She came back in and said, “Twenty minutes. I have to get back. I have work to do. You wait here. But don’t worry. Butler should do it right. He’s a reasonably smart guy.”

“Smarter than Pellegrino?”

“Everyone is smarter than Pellegrino. My car is smarter than Pellegrino.”

I asked, “Will you have dinner with me?”

She said, “I have to work pretty late.”

“How late?”

“Nine o’clock, maybe.”

“Nine would be fine.”

“Are you paying?”

“Absolutely.”

She paused a beat.

“Like a date?” she asked.

“We might as well,” I said. “There’s only one restaurant in town. We’d probably end up eating together anyway.”

“OK,” she said. “Dinner. Nine o’clock. Thank you.”

Then she said, “Don’t shave, OK?”

I said, “Why not?”

She said, “You look good like that.”

And then she left.

I waited on Janice
May Chapman’s front porch, in one of her rocking chairs. Both old ladies watched me from across the street. Deputy Butler showed up just inside his allotted twenty minutes. He was in a car like Pellegrino’s. He left it where Deveraux had left hers, and unfolded himself from the seat, and stepped around to the trunk. He was a tall guy, and well put together, somewhere in his middle thirties. He had long hair for a cop, and a square, solid face. First glance, he wouldn’t be the easiest guy in the world to manage. But maybe not impossible.

He took a black plastic box out of his trunk and walked up Chapman’s driveway toward me. I got out of my chair and held out my hand. Always better to be polite. I said, “Jack Reacher. I’m pleased to meet you.”

He said, “Geezer Butler.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“You play bass guitar?”

“Like I haven’t heard that one before.”

“Was your dad a Black Sabbath fan?”

“My mom too.”

“Are you?”

He nodded. “I’ve got all their records.”

I led him inside. He stood in the hallway, looking around. I said, “The challenge here is to get her prints and no one else’s.”

“To avoid confusion?” he said.

No
, I thought.
To avoid a Bravo Company guy lighting up the system. Better safe than sorry
.

I said, “Yes, to avoid confusion.”

“The chief said I should start in the bathroom.”

“Good plan,” I said. “Toothbrush, toothpaste, tampon box, personal things like that. Things that were boxed up or wrapped in cellophane in the store. No one else will have touched them.”

I hung back so as not to crowd him, but I watched him pretty carefully. He was extremely competent. He took twenty minutes and got twenty good prints, all small neat ovals, all obviously a woman’s. We agreed that was an adequate sample, and he packed up his gear and gave me a ride back to town.

I got out of
Butler’s car outside the Sheriff’s Department and walked south to the hotel, where I stood on the sidewalk and wrestled with a dilemma. I felt I should go buy a new shirt, but I didn’t want Deveraux to feel that dinner was supposed to be more than just dinner. Or in reality I did want her to feel dinner could be more than just dinner, but I didn’t want her to see me wanting it. I didn’t want her to feel pushed into anything, and I didn’t want to appear overeager.

But in the end I decided a shirt was just a shirt, so I hiked across to the other side of Main Street and looked at the stores. Most of them were about to close. It was after five o’clock. I found a men’s outfitters three enterprises south of where I started. It didn’t look promising. In the window was a jacket made from some kind of synthetic denim. It glittered and shone in the lights. It looked like it had been knitted out of atomic waste. But the only other shopping choice was the pharmacy, and I didn’t want to show up at dinner wearing a dollar T. So I went in and looked around.

There was plenty more stuff pieced together from dubious fabrics, but there was plenty of plainer stuff too. There was an old guy behind the counter who seemed happy to let me poke around. He had a tape measure draped around his neck. Like a badge of office. Like a doctor wears a stethoscope. He didn’t say anything, but he seemed to understand I was looking for shirts and he either frowned and tutted or beamed and nodded as I moved around from pile to pile, as if I was playing a parlor game, getting warmer and colder in my search.

Eventually I found a white button-down made of heavy cotton. The collar was an eighteen and the sleeves were thirty-seven inches long, which was about my size. I hauled my choice to the counter and asked, “Would this be OK for a job in an office?”

The old guy said, “Yes, sir, it would.”

“Would it impress a person at dinner?”

“I think you’d want something finer, sir. Maybe a pinpoint.”

“So it’s not what you’d call formal?”

“No, sir. Not by a long chalk.”

“OK, I’ll take it.”

It cost me less than the pink shirt from the PX. The old guy wrapped it in brown paper and taped it up into a little parcel. I carried it back across the street. I planned to dump it in my room. I made it into the hotel lobby just in time to see the owner setting off up the stairs in a big hurry. He turned when he heard the door, and he saw it was me and he stopped. He was out of breath. He said, “Your uncle is on the phone again.”

Chapter

39

I took the call alone in the back office, as before. Garber
was tentative from the get-go, which made me uneasy. His first question was, “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “You?”

“How’s it going down there?”

“Bad,” I said.

“With the sheriff?”

“No, she’s OK.”

“Elizabeth Deveraux, right? We’re having her checked out.”

“How?”

“We’re having a quiet word with the Marine Corps.”

“Why?”

“Maybe we can get you something you can use against her. You might need leverage at some point.”