The Affair: A Reacher Novel

the car wreck again. See if you can find a license plate or identify the vehicle. Pellegrino got nowhere with it.”
    “Why would you trust me?”
    “Because you’re the son of a Marine. And because you know if you conceal or destroy evidence I’ll put you in jail.”
    I asked, “What did Merriam mean, when he wished you better luck with this one than the other two?”
    She didn’t answer.
    I said, “The other two what?”
    She paused a beat and her beautiful face fell a little and she said, “Two girls were killed last year. Same MO. Throats cut. I got nowhere with them. They’re cold cases now. Janice May Chapman is the third in nine months.”

Chapter
20
    Elizabeth Deveraux said nothing more. She just climbed into her Caprice and drove away. She pulled a wide U-turn in front of me and headed north, back to town. I lost sight of her after the first curve. I stood still for a long moment and then set off walking. Ten minutes later I was through the last of the rural meanders and the road widened and straightened in front of me. Main Street, in fact as well as name. Some daytime activity was starting up. The stores were opening. I saw two cars and two pedestrians. But that was all. Carter Crossing was no kind of a bustling metropolis. That was for damn sure.
    I walked on the right-hand sidewalk and passed the hardware store, and the pharmacy, and the hotel, and the diner, and the empty space next to it. Deveraux’s car was not parked in the Sheriff’s Department lot. No police vehicles were. There were two civilian pick-up trucks there, both of them old and battered and modest. The desk clerk and the dispatcher, presumably. Locally recruited, no union, no benefits. I thought again about my friend Stan Lowrey and his want ads. He would aim higher, I guessed. He would have to. He had girlfriends. Plural. He had mouths to feed.
    I made it to the T-junction and turned right. In the daylight the road speared dead straight ahead of me. Narrow shoulders, deep ditches. The traffic lanes banked up and over the rail crossing andthen the shoulders and the ditches resumed and the road ran onward through the trees.
    There was a truck parked my side of the crossing. Facing me. A big, blunt-nosed thing. Brush-painted in a dark color. Two guys in it. Staring at me. Fur, ink, hair, dirt, grease.
    My two pals, from the night before.
    I walked on, not fast, not slow, just strolling. I got within about twenty yards. Close enough for me to see detail in their faces. Close enough for them to see detail in mine.
    This time they got out of their truck. The doors opened as one and they climbed out and down. They skirted the hood and stood together in front of the grille. Same height, same build. Like cousins. They were each about six-two and around two hundred or two hundred and ten pounds. They had long knotted arms and big hands. Work boots on their feet.
    I walked on. I stopped ten feet away. I could smell them from there. Beer, cigarettes, rancid sweat, dirty clothes.
    The guy on my right said, “Hello again, soldier boy.”
    He was the alpha dog. Both times he had been driving, and both times he was the first to speak. Unless the other guy was some kind of a silent mastermind, which seemed unlikely.
    I said nothing, of course.
    The guy asked, “Where are you going?”
    I didn’t answer.
    The guy said, “You’re going to Kelham. I mean, where the hell else does this road go?”
    He turned and swept his arm through an extravagant gesture, indicating the road, and its relentless straightness, and its lack of alternative destinations. He turned back and said, “Last night you told us you weren’t from Kelham. You lied to us.”
    I said, “Maybe I live on that side of town.”
    “No,” the guy said. “If you’d tried living on that side of town, we’d have visited you before.”
    “For what purpose?”
    “To explain the facts of life. Different places are for different folks.”He came a little closer. His buddy came with him. The smell grew stronger.
    I said, “You guys need to take a bath. Not necessarily together.”
    The guy on my right asked, “What have you been doing this morning?”
    I said, “You don’t want to know.”
    “Yes, we do.”
    “No, you really don’t.”
    “You’re not welcome here. Not anymore. None of you.”
    “It’s a free country,” I said.
    “Not for people like you.” Then he paused, and his gaze suddenly shifted and focused into the far distance over my shoulder. The