Lee Child - The Affair

Case closed.

Sidebar over.

Next up was General Dyer’s interpretation of the three-way turmoil. It was painstaking. It was prefaced with a cast-iron guarantee that all conclusions were amply supported by data. Conversations had been had, interviews had been conducted, information had been gathered, witnesses had been consulted, and then everything had been cross-referenced and cross-checked, and anything supported by fewer than two independent sources had been omitted. A full court press, in other words. You could take it to the bank. The guarantee ended with a long emphasized paragraph. I could picture the IBM machine bucking and rocking on the desk as the golf ball slammed back and forth, supplying the furious underline. The paragraph confirmed Dyer’s belief that everything about to be described was courtroom-ready, should further action be deemed necessary or desirable.

I turned the page and started in on the analysis. Dyer wrote in a plain style, and did not inject himself into the narrative. Given the preceding page, any reader would understand that the content might not be one-hundred-percent forensically proven fact, but that equally it was very far from scuttlebutt or rumor. It was solid information. It was known as much as anything was knowable. Hence Dyer never wrote I believe or I think or It seems likely . He just told the story.

Which went like this: Elizabeth Deveraux had been seriously pissed when Paul Evers dumped her for Alice Bouton. She had felt slighted, disregarded, disrespected, and insulted. She was a woman scorned, and her subsequent behavior seemed determined to prove the cliché true in every respect. She victimized the new couple by bad-mouthing them everywhere she could, and by manipulating workloads whenever she could, to stop them getting down time together.

Then she drove Paul Evers’s car off a bridge.

Evers’s car was nothing special, but it represented a significant investment on his part, and it was essential to his social life, given that no one wants to stay on post all the time. Deveraux had retained a key for it, and late one night had driven it away and steered it carefully beyond a bridge abutment and let it roll over a thirty-foot drop into a concrete flood sluice. The impact had almost totaled the car, and heavy rain later that night had finished the job.

Then Deveraux had turned her attention to Alice Bouton.

She had started by breaking her arm.

General Dyer’s two-independent-sources rule meant that the circumstances were not precisely described, because the attack had not been witnessed, but Bouton claimed Deveraux had been the assailant, and Deveraux had never denied it. The medical facts were beyond dispute. Bouton’s left elbow had been dislocated and both bones in her left forearm had been snapped. She had been in a hard cast for six long weeks.

And Deveraux had spent those six long weeks pursuing the theft allegation with demonic intensity. Except that pursuing was the wrong word, initially, because at the outset there was nothing to pursue. No one knew anything had been stolen. Deveraux had first inventoried the evidence lockers and audited the paperwork. Only then had she discovered the discrepancy. And then she had made the allegation. And then she had pursued it, like an obsession, with the ultimate result being as described in General Dyer’s sidebar. The court martial, and the guilty verdict.

There was a huge uproar in the Marine MP community, of course, but Bouton’s guilty verdict had insulated Deveraux from any kind of formal criticism. What would have looked like a vendetta had the verdict been different was left looking like a good piece of police work entirely in keeping with the Marine Corps’ sense of ethics and honor. But it was a fine line. General Dyer had been in no doubt that the case involved major elements of personal retribution.

And, unusually for such reports, he had attempted to explain why.

Again, he confirmed that conversations had been had, and interviews had been conducted, and information had been gathered, and witnesses had been consulted. The participants in these new discussions had included friends and enemies, acquaintances and associates, and doctors and psychiatrists.

The salient factor was held by all to be Alice Bouton’s unusual physical beauty.

All were agreed that Bouton had been an exceptionally good looking woman. Words quoted included gorgeous, stunning, spectacular, heart-breaking, knockout , and incredible .

All the same words applied equally to Deveraux too, of course. All were agreed on that point also. No question. The psychiatrists had concluded that therein lay the explanation. General Dyer had translated their clinical language for the casual reader. He said Deveraux couldn’t take the competition. She couldn’t stand not to be clearly and definitively the most beautiful woman on the post. So she had taken steps to make sure she was.

I read the whole thingone more time, front to back, and then I butted all the pages neatly together and closed the jacket on them, and Garber came back into the room.

The first thing Garber said was, “We just heard from thePentagon. John James Frazer was found dead in his office.”

I said, “Dead how?”

“Looks like a freak accident. Apparently he fell and hit his head on the desk. His staff got back from lunch and found him on the floor. He was doing something with a picture of Carlton Riley.”

“That’s bad.”

“Why?”

“This is not a great time to lose our Senate Liaison.”

“Did you read the file?”

I said, “Yes, I did.”

“Then you know we don’t need to worry about the Senate anymore. Whoever replaces Frazer will have plenty of time to learn the job before the next thing comes along.”

“Is that going to be the official line?”

“It’s the truth. She was a Marine, Reacher. Sixteen years in. She knew all about cutting throats. She knew how to do it, and she knew how to pretend she didn’t. And the car alone proves it. Right there, what more is there to say? She wrecks Paul Evers’s car, and she wrecks Reed Riley’s. Same MO. Same exact reason. Except this time she’s only one of four beautiful women. And Munro says Riley dates her and then dumps her for the other three in succession. So this time she’s three times as mad. This time she goes beyond breaking arms. This time she has her own private deer trestle behind an empty house.”

“Is that going to be the official line?”

“It’s what happened.”

“So what next?”

“It’s purely a Mississippi matter now. We have no dog in the fight, and we have no way of knowing what will happen. Most likely nothing will happen. My guess is she won’t arrest herself, and she won’t give the State Police any reason to either.”

“So we’re going to walk away?”

“All three of them were civilians. They’re nothing to do with us.”

“So the mission is terminated?”

“As of this morning.”

“Is Kelham open again?”

“As of this morning.”

“She denies dating Riley, you know.”

“She would, wouldn’t she?”

“Do we know anything about General Dyer?”

“He died two years ago after a long and exemplary career. He never put a foot wrong. The man was stainless.”

“OK,” I said. “I’ll take steps.”

“Toward what?”

“Toward wrapping up my involvement.”

“Your involvement is already wrapped up. As of this morning.”

“I have private property to recover.”

“You left something there?”

“I thought I was heading right back.”

“What did you leave?”

“My toothbrush.”