The Affair: A Reacher Novel

impression, seeing as you’re here for the first time. But we had a woman murdered.”
    “Really?” I said.
    “Two days ago,” he said.
    “Murdered how?”
    And it turned out that Garber’s information was inaccurate again. Janice May Chapman had not been mutilated. Her throat had been cut, that was all. And delivery of a fatal wound was not the same thing as mutilation. Not the same thing at all. Not even close.
    Pellegrino said, “Ear to ear. Real deep. One big slice. Not pretty.”
    I said, “You saw it, I guess.”
    “Up close and personal. I could see the bones inside her neck. She was all bled out. Like a lake. It was real bad. A good looking woman, real pretty, all dressed up for a night out, neat as a pin, just lying there on her back in a pool of blood. Not right at all.”
    I said nothing, out of respect for something Pellegrino’s tone seemed to demand.
    He said, “She was raped, too. The doctor found that out when he got her clothes off and got her on the slab. Unless you could say she’d been into it enough at some point to throw herself down and scratch up her ass on the gravel. Which I don’t think she would be.”
    “You knew her?”
    “We saw her around.”
    I asked, “Who did it?”
    He said, “We don’t know. A guy off the base, probably. That’s what we think.”
    “Why?”
    “Because those are who she spent her time with.”
    I asked, “If your detective is out sick, who is working the case?”
    Pellegrino said, “The chief.”
    “Does he have much experience with homicides?”
    “She,” Pellegrino said. “The chief is a woman.”
    “Really?”
    “It’s an elected position. She got the votes.” There was a little resignation in his voice. The kind of tone a guy uses when his team loses a big game.
It is what it is
.
    “Did you run for the job?” I asked.
    “We all did,” he said. “Except the detective. He was already bad with his kidneys.”
    I said nothing. The car rocked and swayed. Pellegrino’s tires sounded worn and soft. They set up a dull baritone roar on the blacktop. Up ahead the evening gloom had gone completely. Pellegrino’s headlights lit the way fifty yards in front. Beyond that was nothing but darkness. The road was straight, like a tunnel through the trees. The trees were twisted and opportunistic, like weeds competing for light and air and minerals, like they had seeded themselves a hundred years ago on abandoned arable land. They flashed past in the light spill, like they were frozen in motion. I saw a tin sign on the shoulder, lopsided and faded and pocked with rusty coin-sized spots where the enamel had flaked loose. It advertised a hotel called Toussaint’s. It promisedthe convenience of a Main Street location, and rooms of the highest quality.
    Pellegrino said, “She got elected because of her name.”
    “The sheriff?”
    “That’s who we were talking about.”
    “Why? What’s her name?”
    “Elizabeth Deveraux,” he said.
    “Nice name,” I said. “But no better than Pellegrino, for instance.”
    “Her daddy was sheriff before her. He was a well-liked man, in certain quarters. We think some folks voted out of loyalty. Or maybe they thought they were voting for the old guy himself. Maybe they didn’t know he was dead. Things take time to catch on, in certain quarters.”
    I asked, “Is Carter Crossing big enough to have quarters?”
    Pellegrino said, “Halves, I guess. Two of them. West of the railroad track, or east.”
    “Right side, wrong side?”
    “Like everywhere.”
    “Which side is Kelham?”
    “East. You have to drive three miles. Through the wrong side.”
    “Which side is the Toussaint’s hotel?”
    “Won’t you be staying with your friend?”
    “When I find him. If I find him. Until then I need a place.”
    “Toussaint’s is OK,” Pellegrino said. “I’ll let you out there.”
    And he did . We drove out of the tunnel through the trees and the road broadened and the forest itself died back to stunted saplings left and right, all choked with weeds and trash. The road became an asphalt ribbon laid through a wide flat area of earth the size of a football field. It led through a right turn to a straight street between low buildings. Main Street, presumably. There was no architecture. Just construction, a lot of it old, most of it wood, with some stone at the foundation level. We passed a building marked
Carter County Sheriff’s Department
, and then a vacant lot, and then a diner, and then wearrived