The Affair_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [150]
Senator Riley said, “The file is genuine.”
I said, “It started out with its feet on the ground. Someone thought up a neat little story. The jealous woman, the broken arm. The missing four hundred dollars. It was quite subtle. Conclusions would be drawn by the reader. But then someone chickened out. They didn’t want subtle anymore. They wanted a flashing red light. So you retyped the whole thing to include a car. Then you got on the phone and told your son to go put his own car on the train track.”
“That’s crazy.”
“There was no other reason behind the stuff with the car. The car was senseless. It served no other purpose. Other than to nail the lid shut on Deveraux as soon as anyone opened that file.”
“That file is genuine.”
“They went too far with the dead people. James Dyer, maybe. We could buy that. He was a senior officer. Health maybe not the best. But Paul Evers? Too convenient. As if you were scared of people asking questions. Dead people can’t answer. Which brings us to Alice Bouton. Is she going to be dead too? Or is she going to be still alive? In which case, what would she tell us if we asked her about her broken arm?”
“The file is completely genuine, Reacher.”
“Can you read, senator? If so, read this for me.” I slid the folded diner check from my pocket and tossed it in his lap.
He said, “I’m not allowed to move.”
I said, “You can pick it up.”
He picked it up. It shook in his hand. He looked at the back. He looked at the front. He turned it right way up. He took a breath. He asked, “Have you read it? Do you know what it says?”
I said, “No, I haven’t looked at it. I don’t need to know. Either way I’ve got enough to nail you.”
He hesitated.
I said, “But don’t fake anything. I’ll read it right after you, just to check.”
He took a breath.
He read out, “Per United States Marine Corps Personnel Command.”
He stopped.
He said, “I need to know this is not classified material.”
“Does it matter?”
“You’re not cleared for classified material. Neither is my son.”
“It’s not classified material,” I said. “Keep reading.”
He said, “Per United States Marine Corps Personnel Command there was no Marine named Alice Bouton.”
I smiled.
“They invented her,” I said. “She didn’t exist. Very sloppy work. It makes me wonder if I was wrong. Maybe you watered down the subtlety in two separate stages. And maybe the car came first. Maybe it was Alice Bouton you wrote in at the last minute. Without enough time to steal a real identity.”
The old guy said, “The army had to be protected. You must understand that.”
“The army’s loss is the Marine Corps’ gain. And you’re their granddaddy too. So professionally you didn’t give a damn. It was your son you were protecting.”
“It could have been anyone in his unit. We’d do this for anyone at all.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “This was a fantastic amount of corruption. This was exceptional. This was unprecedented. This was about the two of you, and no one else.”
No answer.
I said, “By the way, it’s me who’s protecting the army.”
I didn’t want to shoot them, obviously. Not that there would be much left for the pathologist to examine, but a cautious man takes no unnecessary risks. So I dropped the gun on the seat beside me and came forward with my right hand open, and I got it flat on the back of the senator’s head, and I heaved it forward and bounced it off the dashboard rail. Pretty hard. The human arm can pitch a baseball at a hundred miles an hour, so it might get close to thirty with a human head. And the seat belt people tell us that an untethered impact at thirty miles an hour can kill you. Not that I needed the senator dead. I just needed him out of action for a minute and a half.
I moved my right hand over and got it under Reed Riley’s chin. His hands came down off his head to tear at my wrist and I replaced them with my own left hand, open, jamming down hard on the top of his head. Push and pull, up and down, left hand and right hand, like a vise. I was crushing his head. Then I slid my right hand up over his chiseled