The Affair

Chapter 72

Deveraux didn’t speak at first. She just looked me over, top to bottom, head to toe, maybe checking me for damage, maybe adjusting to the sight of me in uniform. I was still in the BDUs I had put on that afternoon, after getting back from D.C. A whole new look.

I said, “Busy day?”

She said, “Real busy since ten o’clock this morning. They opened the gates and out they came. Like a flood.”

“Any trouble?”

“None of them would pass a field sobriety test on their way home, but apart from that everything’s cool. I’ve got Butler and Pellegrino out and about, just to show the flag. Just in case.”

“I saw them,” I said.

“So how did it go up there?”

“Inconclusive,” I said. “Very bad timing on my part, I’m afraid. Just one of those freak things. The guy I went to see died in an accident. So I got nothing done.”

“I figured,” she said. “I was getting regular updates from Frances Neagley, until things got busy here. From eight until ten this morning you were drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. But something must have happened during those hours. My guess would be around nine o’clock. Mail call, maybe. But whatever, somebody must have reached a conclusion about something, because an hour later it all let loose. It was back to business as usual here.”

I nodded.

“I agree,” I said. “I think new information was released this morning. Something definitive, I guess.”

“Do you know what it was?”

I said, “By the way, thank you for worrying. I was very touched.”

“Neagley was just as worried as I was,” she said. “Once I told her what you were doing, that is. She didn’t need much persuading.”

“In the end it was safe enough,” I said. “It got a little tense around the Pentagon. That was the worst of it. I hung around there for quite a time. I came in through the cemetery. Behind Henderson Hall. You know that place?”

“Of course I do. I was there a hundred times. They have a great PX. It feels like Saks Fifth Avenue.”

“I got talking with a guy there. About you and a one-star called James Dyer. This guy said Dyer knew you.”

“Dyer?” she said. “Really? I knew him, but I doubt if he knew me. If he did, then I’m flattered. He was a real big deal. Who was the guy you were talking to?”

“His name was Paul Evers.”

“Paul?” she said. “You’re kidding. We worked together for years. In fact we even dated once. One of my mistakes, I’m afraid. But how amazing that you bumped into him. It’s a small world, right?”

“Why was he a mistake? He seemed OK to me.”

“He was fine. He was a really nice guy. But we didn’t really click.”

“So you dumped him?”

“More or less. But it felt close to mutual. We both knew it wasn’t going to work. It was just a question of who was going to speak first. He wasn’t upset, anyway.”

“When was this?”

She paused to calculate.

“Five years ago,” she said. “Feels like yesterday. Doesn’t time fly?”

“Then he said something about a woman called Alice Bouton. His next girlfriend after you, apparently.”

“I don’t think I knew her. I don’t recall the name. Did Paul seem happy?”

“He mentioned something about car trouble.”

Deveraux smiled.

“Girls and cars,” she said. “Is that all guys ever talk about?”

I said, “Reopening Kelham means they’re sure the problem is on your side of the fence, you know. They wouldn’t have done it otherwise. It’s a Mississippi matter now. That will be the official line, from this point forward. It’s not one of us. It’s one of you. You got any thoughts on that?”

“I think the army should share its information,” she said. “If it’s good enough for them, it would be good enough for me too.”

“The army is moving on,” I said. “The army won’t be sharing anything.”

She paused a beat.

“Munro told me he got new orders,” she said. “I suppose you have, too.”

I nodded. “I came back to tie up a loose end. That’s all, really.”

“And then you’ll be moving on. To the next thing. That’s what I’m thinking about right now. I’ll think about Janice Chapman tomorrow.”

“And Rosemary McClatchy, and Shawna Lindsay.”

“And Bruce Lindsay, and his mother. I’ll do my best for all of them.”

I said nothing.

She asked, “Are you tired?”

I said, “Not very.”

“I have to go help Butler and Pellegrino. They’ve been working since dawn. And anyway, I want to be on the road when the last of the stragglers start to head home. They’re always the toughest guys, and the drunkest.”

“Will you be back by midnight?”

She shook her head.

“Probably not,” she said. “We’ll have to manage without the train tonight.”

I said nothing in reply to that, and she smiled once more, a little sadly, and then she got up and left.

The waitress finally got to me five minutes later and I ordered coffee. And pie, as an afterthought. She treated me a little differently than before. A little more formally. She worked near a base, and she knew what the black oak leaves on my collar meant. I asked her how her day had gone. She said it had gone very well, thank you.

“No trouble at all?” I asked.

“None,” she said.

“Even from that guy in back? The other major? I heard he could be a handful.”

She turned and looked at Munro. She said, “I’m sure he’s a perfect gentleman.”

“Would you ask him to join me? Get him some pie, too.”

She detoured via his table, and she delivered my invitation, which involved a lot of elaborate pointing, as if I was inconspicuous and hard to find in the crowd. Munro looked over quizzically, and then he shrugged and got up. Each of the four Ranger tables fell silent as he passed, one after the other. Munro was not popular with those guys. He had had them sitting on their thumbs for four solid days.

He sat down in Deveraux’s chair and I asked him, “How much have they told you?”

“Bare minimum,” he said. “Classified, need to know, eyes only, the whole nine yards.”

“No names?”

“No,” he said. “But I’m assuming that Sheriff Deveraux must have given them solid information that clears our guys. I mean, what else could have happened? But she hasn’t arrested anybody. I’ve been watching her all day.”

“What has she been doing?”

“Crowd control,” he said. “Watching for signs of friction. But it’s all good. No one is mad at her or the town. It’s me they’re gunning for.”

“When are you leaving?”

“First light,” he said. “I get a ride to Birmingham, Alabama, and then a bus to Atlanta, Georgia, and then I fly Delta back to Germany.”

“Did you know Reed Riley never left the base?”

“Yes,” he said.

“What do you make of that?”

“It puzzles me a little.”

“In what way?”

“Timing,” he said. “At first I thought it was a decoy move, like politics as usual, but then I got real. They wouldn’t burn a hundred gallons of Jet A on a decoy move, senator’s son or not. So he was still scheduled to leave when the Blackhawk departed Benning, but by the time it arrived at Kelham, the orders had changed. Which means some big piece of decisive information came in literally while the chopper was in the air. Which was two days ago, on Sunday, right after lunch. But they didn’t act on it in any other way until this morning, which is Tuesday.”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“I don’t know. I see no reason for a delay. It feels to me like they were evaluating the new data for a couple of days. Which is usually wise. Except in this instance it makes no sense at all. If the new data was strong enough to make a snap decision to keep Riley on the post Sunday afternoon, why wasn’t it strong enough to open the gates Sunday afternoon? It doesn’t add up. It’s as if they were ready to act privately on Sunday, but they weren’t ready to act publicly until this morning. In which case, what changed? What was the difference between Sunday and today?”

“Beats me,” I said. Which was disingenuous. Because there was really only one answer to that question. The only material difference between Sunday afternoon and Tuesday morning was that I had been in Carter Crossing on Sunday afternoon, and I had been eight hundred miles away on Tuesday morning.

And no one had expected me to come back again.

What that meant, I had no idea.