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I picked up the car key and put it in ot comfortable on the tilted bench I said, "Captain, you lied to your ht?"

Riley&039;s father said, "What possible basis do you have for interrogating us?"

"Forty-nine ets here"

"Are you rumpy, that&039;s all"

He said, "Son, don&039;t say a word to this man"

I said, "Captain, answer my question"

Riley said, "Yes, I lied about Deveraux"

"Why?"

"Coy," he said "My men like to look up to me"

I said, "Senator, ere Alpha Co to Kelhauy huffed and puffed for ato 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&039;s pocket"

"Not because of Audrey Shaw? Not because you thought your boy deserved a little gift to celebrate his new command?"

"That&039;s ridiculous"

"But it happened"

"Purely a coincidence"

"Bullshit"

"OK, it was a side benefit I thought it nitude 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 et 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 remeain like a stupid old ainst a new electric fence He stared forward and breathed hard His son didn&039;ta little shit from me, at least Mainly the part nine millimeters wide Thirty-five hundredths of an inch, in real er than a 25 That&039;s how

The old man took another breath

He said, "That irl 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&039;t live forever"

"Do they all die in their sleep?"

"They were Kosovan women and it happened in Kosovo It&039;s a local ht now A local person has been identified The ar tonight You should have been there Success is so to be happy about I wish more people understood that"

I said, "Captain, how old are you?"

Riley said, "I&039;ht"

I said, "Senator, hoould 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&039;d have to be an idiot"

I said, "That was their first mistake"

"What?"

"You heard me"

"What do you randfather?"

"Way back"

"So did I He was randdad But of course he was also lots of other kids&039; granddad too There were about ten of us, I think Four separate fah I knew"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"It&039;s the sa with Senate Liaison There&039;s us, and there&039;s the brass in Washington, and there&039;s you Like a grandfather Except you&039;re the Marine Corps&039; grandfather too And they have their own Senate Liaison They&039;re probably a lot better than ours They&039;re probably willing to do whatever it takes So you turned to them for help But they made a number of mistakes"

"I read the report There were no mistakes"

"Five years in the same rank? Deveraux is not the kind of person who spends five years in the same rank Like you said, you&039;d have to be an idiot And Deveraux is not an idiot My guess is she was a CWO3 five years ago My guess is she got two promotions since then But your Marine Corps boys went ahead and wrote CWO5 on a file that was supposed to be five years old They used an old picture but they didn&039;t back off her terminal rank Which was a mistake They were in too much of a rush"

"What rush?"

"Janice Chap to take seriously And she was linked to you There was no ti about?"

"This whole thing was about too much rush You worked like crazy, and teased us about access to give yourself ot it done just after lunch on Sunday The file was coh while the chopper was in the air So it went back empty But then you waited until Tuesday before you released it for public scrutiny I had a rather egotistical explanation for that I thought it was because I was here on Sunday but not on Tuesday But that wasn&039;t the reason You needed two days to make it look old That was the reason You had to scrape it up and scuff it around"

"Are you saying that file was a forgery?"

"I know, you&039;re shocked Maybe you&039;ve known for nine months, or six, or maybe just a week or so, but we all kno"

"Knohat?" Reed Riley said

I turned toward hi to him I said, "Maybe Rosemary McClatchy was insecure because her beauty was all she had, so ot the idea for the vengeful wonant anyway, and you&039;d already checked out the local sheriff, because that&039;s what an ambitious company commander does, and it was easier for you than most, because of your connections, so you knew about her father and the empty house, and you&039;re a sick bastard, so you took poor pregnant Rosemary McClatchy there and you butchered her"

No response

"And you liked it," I said

No response

"So you did it again And you got better at it Nothem in the ditch by the railroad track You were ready for so more appropriate Maybe Shawna Lindsay also had delusions ofin a little house together, so you duh that neighborhood anyti, out on the prowl, in his old blue car Part of the scenery"

He said, "I broke up with Shaeeks before she died How do you explain that?"

"You ask theht?"

No answer

I said, "And you put Janice Chapirl And ht Third tiuys you were hitting the head, and you snuck out and did it in the same time you need to take a leak Six uess Which is not plausible Not for Deveraux That&039;s where the alternative theory starts to falter Did nobody think about how she&039;s built? She couldn&039;t lift a full-grooman off a deer trestle She couldn&039;t carry a corpse to a car"

Senator Riley said, "The file is genuine"

I said, "It started out with its feet on the ground Soht up a neat little story The jealous wo four hundred dollars It was quite subtle Conclusions would be drawn by the reader But then someone chickened out They didn&039;t want subtle anyht 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&039;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&039;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, ould she tell us if we asked her about her broken arenuine, 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&039;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 knohat it says?"

I said, "No, I haven&039;t looked at it I don&039;t need to know Either way I&039;ve got enough to nail you"

He hesitated