The Affair_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [148]
The senator said, “I have no idea.”
“But your boy should. We spent a lot of time and money training him.”
“I don’t remember,” Riley said.
“Close to thirteen hundred feet per second,” I said. “And your spinal cords are about three feet from me. Therefore about two-thousandths of a second after either one of you moves a single muscle, you’re either dead or crippled. Get it?”
No response.
I said, “I need an answer.”
“We get it,” Riley said.
His father said, “What do you want?”
“Confirmation,” I said. “I want to be sure I have this thing straight.”
Chapter
87
I picked up the car key and put it in my pocket. I spread my left leg wide and braced my foot and got comfortable on the tilted bench. I said, “Captain, you lied to your men about dating Sheriff Deveraux, am I right?”
Riley’s father said, “What possible basis do you have for interrogating us?”
“Forty-nine minutes,” I said. “Then the train gets here.”
“Are you mad?”
“A little grumpy, that’s all.”
He said, “Son, don’t say a word to this man.”
I said, “Captain, answer my question.”
Riley said, “Yes, I lied about Deveraux.”
“Why?”
“Command strategy,” he said. “My men like to look up to me.”
I said, “Senator, why were Alpha Company and Bravo Company moved from Benning to Kelham?”
The old guy huffed and puffed for a minute, trying to convince himself to hold fast, but in the end he said, “It was politically convenient. Mississippi always has its hand out. Or in someone else’s pocket.”
“Not because of Audrey Shaw? Not because you thought your boy deserved a little gift to celebrate his new command?”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“But it happened.”
“Purely a coincidence.”
“Bullshit.”
“OK, it was a side benefit. I thought it might be fun. But nothing more. Decisions of that magnitude are not based on trivialities.”
I said, “Captain, tell me about Rosemary McClatchy.”
Riley said, “We dated, we broke up.”
“Was she pregnant?”
“If she was, she never said anything to me about it.”
“Did she want to get married?”
“Come on, major, you know any one of them would marry any one of us.”
“What was she like?”
“Insecure,” he said. “She drove me nuts.”
“How did you feel when she was killed?”
“Bad,” he said. “It was a bad thing to happen.”
“Now tell me about Shawna Lindsay.”
But at that point the senator decided they had taken all the shit they were going to take from me. He twisted around to dress me down, and then he remembered he was not supposed to move, and so he bounced back again like a stupid old mare against a new electric fence. He stared forward and breathed hard. His son didn’t move. So they were taking a little shit from me, at least. Mainly the part nine millimeters wide. Thirty-five hundredths of an inch, in real money. A little smaller than a .38, a lot bigger than a .25. That’s how much shit they were taking.
The old man took another breath.
He said, “That matter has been resolved, I believe. The Lindsay girl. And the other one.”
I said, “Captain, tell me about the dead women in Kosovo.”
His father said, “There are no dead women in Kosovo.”
I said, “Seriously? What, they live forever?”
“Obviously they don’t live forever.”
“Do they all die in their sleep?”
“They were Kosovan women and it happened in Kosovo. It’s a local matter. Just like this is a local matter, right here, right now. A local person has been identified. The army is not under a cloud. That’s what we were celebrating tonight. You should have been there. Success is something to be happy about. I wish more people understood that.”
I said, “Captain, how old are you?”
Riley said, “I’m twenty-eight.”
I said, “Senator, how would you feel if your son was still a captain at thirty-three?”
The old guy said, “I would be very unhappy.”
“Why?”
“It would represent failure. No one stays five years at the same rank. You’d have to be an idiot.”
I said, “That was their first mistake.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”