The Affair: A Reacher Novel

Mississippi. Maybe I’d come on down and take care of it myself.”
    I said nothing. He looked at me for a moment, and then a smile started on his face, and the smile turned into a laugh, which he tried very hard to suppress, but he couldn’t. It came out like a bark, like a sneeze, and he had to lean back and look up at the ceiling.
    I said, “What?”
    His gaze came back level. He was still smiling. He said, “I’m sorry. I was thinking about that phrase people use. You know, they say, that guy? He couldn’t even get arrested.”
    I said nothing.
    He said, “You look terrible. There are barbershops here, you know. You should go use one.”
    “I can’t,” I said. “I’m supposed to look like this.”
    Five days earlier my hair had been five days shorter, but apparently still long enough to attract attention. Leon Garber, who at that point was once again my commanding officer, summoned me to his office, and because his message read in part
without, repeat, without attending to any matters of personal grooming
I figured he wanted to strike while the iron was hot and dress me down right then, while the evidence was still in existence, right there on my head. And that was exactly how the meeting started out. He asked me, “Which army regulation covers a soldier’s personal appearance?”
    Which I thought was a pretty rich question, coming from him. Garber was without a doubt the scruffiest officer I had ever seen. He could take a brand new Class A coat from the quartermaster’s stores and an hour later it would look like he had fought two wars in it, then slept in it, then survived three bar fights in it.
    I said, “I can’t remember which regulation covers a soldier’s personal appearance.”
    He said, “Neither can I. But I seem to recall that whichever, the hair and the fingernail standards and the grooming policies are in chapter one, section eight. I can picture it all quite clearly, right there on the page. Can you remember what it says?”
    I said, “No.”
    “It tells us that hair grooming standards are necessary to maintain uniformity within a military population.”
    “Understood.”
    “It mandates those standards. Do you know what they are?”
    “I’ve been very busy,” I said. “I just got back from Korea.”
    “I heard Japan.”
    “That was a stopover on the way.”
    “How long?”
    “Twelve hours.”
    “Do they have barbers in Japan?”
    “I’m sure they do.”
    “Do Japanese barbers take more than twelve hours to cut a man’s hair?”
    “I’m sure they don’t.”
    “Chapter one, section eight, paragraph two, says the hair on the top of the head must be neatly groomed, and that the length and the bulk of the hair may not be excessive or present a ragged, unkempt, or extreme appearance. It says that instead, the hair must present a tapered appearance.”
    I said, “I’m not sure what that means.”
    “It says a tapered appearance is one where the outline of the soldier’s hair conforms to the shape of his head, curving inward to a natural termination point at the base of his neck.”
    I said, “I’ll get it taken care of.”
    “These are mandates, you understand. Not suggestions.”
    “OK,” I said.
    “Section two says that when the hair is combed, it
will not
fall over the ears or the eyebrows, and it
will not
touch the collar.”
    “OK,” I said again.
    “Would you not describe your current hairstyle as ragged, unkempt, or extreme?”
    “Compared to what?”
    “And how are you doing in relation to the thing with the comb and the ears and the eyebrows and the collar?”
    “I’ll get it taken care of,” I said again.
    Then Garber smiled, and the tone of the meeting changed completely.
    He asked, “How fast does your hair grow, anyway?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “A normal kind of speed, I suppose. Same as anyone else, probably. Why?”
    “We have a problem,” he said. “Down in Mississippi.”

Chapter
4
    Garber said the problem down in Mississippi concerned a twenty-seven-year-old woman named Janice May Chapman. She was a problem because she was dead. She had been unlawfully killed a block behind the main street of a town called Carter Crossing.
    “Was she one of ours?” I asked.
    “No,” Garber said. “She was a civilian.”
    “So how is she a problem?”
    “I’ll get to that,” Garber said. “But first you need the story. It’s the back of beyond down there. Northeastern corner of the state, over near the Alabama line, and