The Affair: A Reacher Novel

of a light bar on the roof. At first I thought it was Pellegrino out on patrol, but when the car got closer it killed its lights and I saw a woman behind the wheel, and Mississippi suddenly got a lot more interesting.

Chapter
11
    The car came over into the wrong lane and stopped alongside me. It was an old Chevy Caprice police cruiser painted up in the Carter County Sheriff’s Department colors. The woman behind the wheel had an unruly mass of dark hair, somewhere between wavy and curly, tied back in an approximate ponytail. Her face was pale and flawless. She was low in the seat, which meant either she was short or the seat was caved in by long years of use. I decided the seat must be caved in, because her arms looked long and the set of her shoulders didn’t suggest a short person. I pegged her at somewhere in her middle thirties, old enough to show some mileage, young enough to still find some amusement in the world. She was smiling slightly, and the smile was reaching her eyes, which were big and dark and liquid and seemed to have some kind of a glow in them. Although that might have been a reflection from the Chevy’s instrument panel.
    She wound down her window and looked straight at me, first my face, then a careful up-and-down, side-to-side appraisal all the way from my shoes to my hair, with nothing but frankness in her gaze. I stepped in closer to give her a better look, and to take a better look. She was more than flawless. She was spectacular. She had a revolver in a holster on her right hip, and next to it was a shotgun stuffed muzzle-down in a scabbard mounted between the seats. There was a big radio slung under the dash on the passenger side, and a microphoneon a curly wire in a clip near the steering wheel. The car was old and worn, almost certainly bought secondhand from a richer municipality.
    She said, “You’re the guy Pellegrino brought in.”
    Her voice was quiet but clear, warm but not soft, and her accent sounded local.
    I said, “Yes, ma’am, I am.”
    She said, “You’re Reacher, right?”
    I said, “Yes, ma’am, I am.”
    She said, “I’m Elizabeth Deveraux. I’m the sheriff here.”
    I said, “I’m very pleased to meet you.”
    She paused a beat and said, “Did you eat dinner yet?”
    I nodded.
    “But not dessert,” I said. “As a matter of fact I’m heading back to the diner for pie right now.”
    “Do you usually take a walk between courses?”
    “I was waiting out the hotel people. They didn’t seem in much of a hurry.”
    “Is that where you’re staying tonight? The hotel?”
    “I’m hoping to.”
    “You’re not staying with the friend you came to find?”
    “I haven’t found him yet.” She nodded in turn.
    “I need to talk to you,” she said. “Find me in the diner. Five minutes, OK?”
    There was authority but no menace in her voice. No agenda. Just the kind of easy command I guessed came from being first a sheriff’s daughter and then a sheriff herself.
    “OK,” I said. “Five minutes.”
    She wound up her window again and reversed away and turned around, in a slower version of the same maneuver the two guys in the truck had used. She switched her headlights back on and drove away. I saw her brake lights flare red and she turned into Main Street. I followed on foot, in the weeds, between the pavement and the ditch.
    * * *
    I got to the diner well inside the five minutes I had been given and found Elizabeth Deveraux’s cruiser parked at the curb outside. She herself was at the same table I had used. The old couple from the hotel had finally decamped. The place was empty apart from Deveraux and the waitress.
    I went in and Deveraux said nothing specific but used one foot under the table to shove the facing chair out a little. An invitation. Almost a command. The waitress got the message. She didn’t try to seat me elsewhere. Clearly Deveraux had already ordered. I asked the waitress for a slice of her best pie and another cup of coffee. She went through to the kitchen and silence claimed the room.
    Up close and personal I was prepared to concede that Elizabeth Deveraux was a seriously good looking woman. Truly beautiful. Out of the car she was relatively tall, and her hair was amazing. There must have been five pounds of it in her ponytail alone. She had all the right parts in all the right proportions. She looked great in her uniform. But then, I liked women in uniform, possibly because I had known very few of the other kind. But best of all