The Affair by Lee Child Page A

me.”
    “Are you from Kelham?”
    “No,” I said. “I’m not from Kelham.”
    The two guys went quiet and kind of deflated themselves, like parade balloons, back through their windows, back into the cab, back into their seats. I heard the truck’s transmission engage, and then it took off backward, fast, and then it slewed and lurched through a 180 turn, with dust coming up and tire squeal, and then it drove away and braked hard and turned into Main Street. Then it was lost to sight behind the dark bulk of the Sheriff’s Department. I breathed out and started walking again. No damage done. The best fights are the ones you don’t have , a wise man once said to me. It was not advice I always followed, but on that occasion I was pleased to walk away with clean hands, both literally and figuratively.
    Then I saw another car coming toward me. It did the same thing the truck had done. It went to turn, and then it paused and straightened and headed in my direction. It was a cop car. I could tell by the shape and the size, and I could make out the silhouette 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 microphone on 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