The Affair (Jack Reacher, #16)

by Lee Child

Janice May Chapman. She was a problem

Garber told me his top pick for the Kelham job wasn’t me. It was a newly minted MP major named Duncan Munro.

Smart, conscientious people hate making mistakes. Not just because of ego. Because mistakes of a certain type have the kind of consequences that people with consciences don’t like to live with.

They

“Well, good luck, chief,” Merriam said. “I hope this one turns out better than the last two.

Two other murders. Don’t forget ghat

“And that dog won’t hunt,” Deveraux said. “You stumble into someone and get raped, and then within the next four hours you stumble into someone else completely different and get your throat cut? That’s a really bad day, isn’t it? That’s the worst day ever. It’s too coincidental. No, it was the same guy. But he had himself an all-day session. He took hours. He had plans and equipment. He had access to her clothes. He made her change. This was all highly premeditated.”

Frances Neagley, First Sergeant, United States Army.

First Sargeant

“What kind of car did Reed have?” “He had a 1957 Chevy Bel Air two-door hardtop. Not really a classic. It was kind of beat up.” “What color was it?” The kid said, “It was blue.

Remember this. Foreshadowing

“A white guy could have taken her there.” “Unlikely. He’d have stuck out like a sore thumb. He’d have been risking a hundred witnesses.” “Shawna Lindsay’s body was found there. I talked to her kid brother.” “Where else would it be found? It’s a vacant lot. That’s where bodies get dumped.” “Was she killed there?” “I don’t think so. There was no blood.” “At the scene or inside her?” “Neither one.” “What do you make of that?” “Same guy.” “And?” “Addiction to risk,” she said. “June, November, March, the bottom of the socioeconomic scale, then the middle, then the top. By Carter County standards, that is. He started safe and got progressively riskier. No one cares about poor black girls. Chapman was the first really visible victim.

“Talking to a man with a gun is a risk. Asking questions isn

What????

That’s my point. We should have seen certain things, but we didn’t. Because certain things were missing.” “What things?” she asked. “Later,” I said, because by that point I had seen something else.

Because certain country gun stores are near military bases, and therefore some of them have something special for sale under the counter. All it takes is someone on the inside, and believe me, there is always someone on the inside. A steady stream of M16s and Berettas and worse is written off every year as lost or damaged or otherwise unusable, whereupon it is destroyed, except it isn’t. It’s hustled out the back door in the dead of night and an hour later it’s under the counter at the gun shop.

Interesting factoid

but they come so thick and fast that eventually you realize an avalanche is made up of small things. Snowflakes, right? Things don’t get much smaller than that. Suddenly you realize that small things are big things.

Nice quote

“Audrey was an Anglo-Saxon name. It’s a diminutive of Aethelthryt or Etheldreda. It means noble strength. There was a Saint Audrey in the seventh century. She’s the patron saint of throat complaints.

A little Hx

“The FBI,” Lowrey said. “Plenty of them still talk to me. And you better believe they keep track of things like this. For leverage. You notice how the FBI budget never goes down? They know too many things about too many politicians for that to ever happen.

“Great minds think alike,” Munro said. “Or fools never differ.

Cute

“How do you know all that?” “I was there,” I said. “I passed by on my way to the McClatchy place.” She didn’t answer. I said, “I saw the deer trestle.” She didn’t answer. I said, “And I saw the dirt in the trunk of your car. When you gave me the shotgun shells.”

Interesting facts

sun pm

“No sidearm is carried with Class A uniform. You’ll find that in the regulations.

He was a warrior. I wasn’t. I was a brawler. He lived for the tactical victory. I lived to piss on the other guy’s grave. Not the same thing. Not the same

2 Working styles

If in doubt, throw the elbow.

Strategy

March. 18

Elizabeth Deveraux and Paul Evers were dating, and then they weren’t, and then Paul Evers and Alice Bouton were dating, and then Paul’s car got trashed, and then Alice got dishonorably discharged after a financial

So they put discreet and coded signs here and there, marking the way to and from every major installation in the nation.

Note this and check

Their efforts intensified after the Interstate system was begun. The Interstate system was formally named for President Eisenhower, for a very good reason. Eisenhower had been Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War Two, and his biggest problem had not been Germans. It had been getting men and matériel from point A to point B across lousy and unmarked roads. He was determined his successors should not face similar problems should land war ever come to America. Hence the Interstate system. Not for vacations.

spent five minutes fighting my way to the bar, on a random route left and right through the crowd, checking faces as I went, some up close, some from afar, but I didn’t see Reed Riley. The Brannan brothers were hard at work, dealing beer in bottles, taking money, making change, dumping wet dollar bills into their tip jar, passing and repassing each other in their cramped space with moves like dancers. One of them saw me and did the busy-barman thing with his chin and his eyes

Emmeline McClatchy’s parlor? Martin Luther King? He said all that needs to happen for evil to prevail is that good men do nothing.” “I’m a military cop, not a good man.” “He also said the day we see the truth and cease to speak is the day we begin to die.” “That stuff is way above my pay grade.” “He also said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice

Cool quotes

“Janice Chapman was white. Finally you had one people were going to take seriously. And she was