The Affair_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [101]
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 walked the depth of their yard and heard the Blackhawk again, taking off from Kelham, far in the distance. A short visit for somebody, or a delivery, or a pickup. I saw it rise above the treetops, a distant speck, nose down, accelerating north.
I stepped over a wire fence at the end of the yard. Now I was in the bar’s lot. Still private, technically, but in principle bars welcome passersby rather than run them off. And the place was deserted, anyway. I looped past the building and made it out to the street unmolested.
And saw an army Humvee easing to a stop outside the McClatchy house.
Chapter
58
A Humvee is a very wide vehicle, and it was on a very narrow dirt road. It almost filled it, ditch to ditch. It was painted in standard green and black camouflage colors, and it was very clean. Maybe brand new.
I walked toward it and it came to a stop and the motor shut off. The driver’s door opened and a guy climbed down. He was in woodland-pattern BDUs and clean boots. Since before the start of my career, battledress uniform had been worn with subdued name tapes and badges of rank, and like everything else in the army the definition of subdued had been specified within an inch of its life, to the point where names and ranks were unreadable from more than three or four feet away. An officer-led initiative, for sure. Officers worried about snipers picking them off first. The result was I had no idea who had just gotten out of the Humvee. Could have been a private first class, could have been a two-star general. Three-stars and above don’t drive themselves. Not usually. Not on business. Not off duty either. They don’t do much of anything themselves.
But I had a clear premonition about who the guy was. An easy conclusion, actually. Who else was authorized to be out and about? He even looked like me. Same kind of height, same kind of build, similar coloring. It was like looking in a mirror, except he was five years my junior, and it showed in the way he moved. He was bouncing around with plenty of energy. An impartial judge would have said he looked young and overexuberant. The same judge would have said I looked old and overtired. Such was the contrast between us.
He watched me approach, curious about who I was, curious about a white man in a black neighborhood. I let him gawp until I was six feet away. My eyesight is as good as it ever was, and I can read subdued tapes from further than I should, especially on bright sunlit Mississippi afternoons.
His tapes said: Munro. U.S. Army.
He had little black oak leaves on his collar, to show he was a major. He had a field cap on his head, the same camouflage pattern as his blouse and his pants. He had fine lines around his eyes, which were about the only evidence he wasn’t born yesterday.
I had the advantage,