“Because of Kelham?”

“This place is dying, Reacher. We need that base open, and fast.”

“Maybe I’ll make some headway in D.C.”

“I hope you do,” she said. “We should have lunch now.”

“That’s why I came in.”

Deveraux’s lunch staple was chicken pie. We ordered a matched pair and were halfway through eating them when the old couple from the hotel came in. The woman had a book, and the man had a newspaper. A routine pit stop, like dinner. Then the old guy saw me and detoured to our table. He told me my wife’s brother had just called. Something very urgent. I looked blank for a second. The old guy must have thought my wife came from a very large family. “Your brother-in-law Stanley,” he said.

“OK,” I said. “Thanks.”

The old guy shuffled off and I said, “Major Stan Lowrey. A friend of mine. He and I have been TDY at the same place for a couple of weeks.”

Deveraux smiled. “I think the verdict is in. Marines were better comedians.”

I started eating again, but she said, “You should call him back if it’s very urgent, don’t you think?”

I put my fork down.

“Probably,” I said. “But don’t eat my pie.”

I went back to the phone for the third time and dialed. Lowrey answered on the first ring and asked, “Are you sitting down?”

I said, “No, I’m standing up. I’m on a pay phone in a diner.”

“Well, hold on tight. I have a story for you. About a girl called Audrey.”

Chapter

55

I leaned on the wall next to the phone. Not because I was necessarily worried about falling down with shock or surprise. But because Lowrey’s stories were usually very long. He fancied himself a raconteur. And he liked background. And context. Deep background, and deep context. Normally he liked to trace everything back to a seminal point just before random swirls of gas from the chartless wastes of the universe happened to get together and form the earth itself.

He said, “Audrey is a very ancient name, apparently.”

The only way to knock Lowrey off his discursive stride was to get your retaliation in first. I said, “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.”

“How do you know shit like this? I had to look it up.”

“I know a guy whose mother is called Audrey. He told me.”

“My point is, it’s no longer a very common name.”

“It was number 173 on the hit parade at the last census. It’s slightly more popular in France, Belgium, and Canada. Mostly because of Audrey Hepburn.”

“You know this because of a guy’s mother?”

“His grandmother too, actually. They were both called Audrey.”

“So you got a double ration of knowledge?”

“It felt like a double ration of something.”

“Audrey Hepburn wasn’t from Europe.”

“Canada isn’t in Europe.”

“They speak French there. I’ve heard them.”

“Of course Audrey Hepburn was from Europe. English father, Dutch mother, born in Belgium. She had a U.K. passport.”

“Whatever, what I’m saying is, if you would ever let a guy get a word in edgewise, if you search for Audreys you don’t get too many hits.”

“So you found Audrey Shaw for me?”

“I think so.”

“That was fast.”

“I know a guy who works at a bank. Corporations have the best information.”

“Still fast.”

“Thank you. I’m a diligent worker. I’m going to be the most diligent unemployed guy in history.”

“So what do we know about Audrey Shaw?”

“She’s an American citizen,” Lowrey said.

“Is that all we know?”

“Caucasian female, born in Kansas City, Missouri, educated locally, went to college at Tulane in Louisiana. The Southern Ivy League. She was a liberal arts student and a party girl. Middling GPA. No health problems, which I imagine means slightly more than it says, for a party girl from Tulane. She graduated on schedule.”

“And?”

“After graduation she used family connections to get an intern’s job in D.C.”

“What kind of intern’s job?”

“Political. In a Senate office. Working for one of her home-state Missouri guys. Probably just carrying coffee, but she was called an assistant to an assistant executive director of something or other.”

“And?”

“She was beautiful, apparently. She made strong men weak at the knees. So guess what happened?”

“She got laid,” I said.

“She had an affair,” Lowrey said. “With a married man. All those late nights, all that glamour. The thrill of working out the fine print in trade deals with Bolivia. You know how it is. I don’t know how those people stand the excitement.”

“Who was the guy?”

“The senator himself,” Lowrey said. “The big dog. The record gets a little hazy from that point onward, because obviously the whole thing was covered up like crazy. But between the lines it was a torrid business. Between the sheets too, probably. A real big thing. People say she was in love.”

“Where are you getting this from, if the record is hazy?”

“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.”

“How long did the affair last?”

“Senators have to run for reelection every six years, so generally they spend the first four rolling around on the couch and the last two cleaning up their act. Young Ms. Shaw got the last two of the good years and then she was patted on the butt and sent on her way.”

“And where is she now?”

“This is where it gets interesting,” Lowrey said.

I pushed off the wall and looked over at Deveraux. She seemed OK. She was eating what was left of my pie. She was craning across the table and picking at it. Demolishing it, actually. In my ear Lowrey said, “I’ve got rumors and hard facts. The rumors come from the FBI and the hard facts come from the databases. Which do you want first?”

I settled back against the wall again.

“The rumors,” I said. “Always much more interesting.”

“OK, the rumors say young Ms. Shaw felt very unhappy about being discarded in the way she was. She felt used and cheap. Like a Kleenex. She felt like a hooker leaving a hotel suite. She began to look like the kind of intern that could cause serious trouble. That was the FBI’s opinion, anyway. They keep track of that stuff too, for different reasons.”

“So what happened?”

“In the end nothing happened. The parties must have reached some kind of mutual accommodation. Everything went quiet. The senator was duly reelected and Audrey Shaw was never heard from again.”

“Where is she now?”

“This is where you ask me what the hard facts say.”

“What do the hard facts say?”

“The hard facts say Audrey Shaw isn’t anywhere anymore. The databases are completely blank. No records of anything. No transactions, no taxes, no purchases, no cars or houses or boats or trailers, no snowmobiles, no loans or liens or warrants or judgments or arrests or convictions. It’s like she ceased to exist three years ago.”

“Three years ago?”

“Even the bank agrees.”

“How old was she then?”

“She was twenty-four then. She’d be twenty-seven now.”

“Did you check the other name for me? Janice May Chapman?”

“You just spoiled my surprise. You just ruined my story.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Chapman is the exact reverse. There’s nothing there more than three years old.”

“Correct.”

“They were the same person,” I said. “Shaw changed her identity. Part of the deal, presumably. A big bag of cash and a stack of new paperwork. Like a witness protection program. Maybe the real witness protection program. Those guys would help a senator out. It would give them an IOU to put in their back pocket.”