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6

I showered and dressed in the dark, socks, boxers, pants, my old T, my new shirt I laced u else behind No ID, no wallet, no watch, no nothing Method acting I figured that was hoould do it, if I was doing it for real

Then I headed out I walked up the post&039;s uardhouse and Garber ca for ht Garber was in BDUs, presuo, but he looked like he had spent that hour rolling around in the dirt on a farht The air was very cold

Garber said, "You don&039;t have a bag?"

I said, "Why would I have a bag?"

"People carry bags"

"What for?"

"For their spare clothing"

"I don&039;t own spare clothing I had to buy these things especially"

"You chose that shirt?"

"What&039;s wrong with it?"

"It&039;s pink"

"Only in places"

"You&039;re going to Mississippi They&039;ll think you&039;re queer They&039;ll beat you to death"

"I doubt it," I said

"What are you going to do when those clothes get dirty?"

"I don&039;t know Buy soet to Kelhaet a Greyhound bus to Meine that&039;s how people do these things"

"Have you eaten breakfast?"

"I&039;m sure I&039;ll find a diner"

Garber paused a beat and asked, "Did John Jaet you on the phone yesterday? From Senate Liaison?"

I said, "Yes, he did"

"How did he sound?"

"Like we&039;re in big trouble unless Janice May Chapman was killed by another civilian"

"Then let&039;s hope she was"

"Is Frazer in my chain of command?"

"Probably safest to assuuy is he?"

"He&039;s a guy under a whole lot of stress right now Five years&039; work could go down the pan, just when it gets i that makes me feel uncomfortable"

"Bullshit," Garber said "You&039;re not in the aruy on leave does after he gets drunk in a bar is not a company commander&039;s fault"

"Only in the real world," Garber said "But this is politics we&039;re talking about" Then he went quiet again, just for ato decide which one of them to start with But in the end all he said was, "Well, have a safe trip, Reacher Stay in touch, OK?"

The walk to the Greyhound depot was long but not difficult Just a case of putting one foot in front of the other I was passed by a few vehicles None of theht have if I had been in uniform Off-post citizens are usually well disposed toward their hbors, in the heartland of Auise was convincing I was glad to pass the test I had never posed as a civilian before It was unknown territory So new for me I had never even been a civilian I suppose technically I was, for eighteen years between birth and West Point, but those years had been spent inside a blur of Marine Corps bases, one after another, because ofon post as part of ato do with civilian life Absolutely nothing at all So that &039;s walk felt fresh and experimental to me The sun caround h it and thought of my old pal Stan Lowrey, back on the base I wondered if he had looked at the want ads I wondered if he needed to I wondered if I needed to

There was a coach diner a half-mile short of don and I stopped there for breakfast I had coffee, of course, and scrarated pretty well, visually and behaviorally There were six other customers in there All of them were civilians, all of theed and unkempt by the standards required to maintain uniformity within ahats on their heads Six ricultural equipment manufacturers, or seed otten such a hat I hadn&039;t thought about it, and I hadn&039;t seen any in the PX

I finished my meal and paid the waitress and walked on bareheaded to where the Greyhounds caht a ticket and sat on a bench and thirtysouth and west

7

The bus ride was nificent, in its way Not a radical distance, no iant continent, no e ed so slowly it seee at all, but even so the landscape at the end of the journey was very different than at the beginning Memphis was a slick city, laced et streets, boxed in by low buildings paintedwith furtive unexplained activity I got out at the depot and stood a ht afternoon and listened to the hum and throb of people at work and at play Then I kept the sun on ht shoulder and walked south and east First priority was theout of town, and second priority was so to eat

I found myself in a built-up and insalubrious quarter full of pawn shops and porn shops and bail bond offices, and I figured getting a ride there would be next to iht stop on the open road would never stop in that part of town So I put reasy spoon cafe, and resigned thy hike thereafter I wanted a corner with a road sign, a big green rectangle marked with an arrow and Oxford or Tupelo or Colun with his thuoing No explanation was required No need for a driver to stop and ask, which helped a lot People are bad at saying no face to face Often they just drive on by, purely to avoid the possibility Always better to reduce confusion

I found such a corner and such a sign at the end of a thirty-e of what I took to be a leafy suburb, which woulddrivers would be respectable nore er, and no driver with just a o would offer a ride But to walk on would have been illusory progress A false econo still than to waste it walking and burning energy Even with nine cars out of ten wafting on by, I figured I would be mobile within an hour

And I was Less than twenty minutes later an old pick-up truck eased to a stop next tofor a lumberyard out past Gerrasp the local geography, so the guy told le with nothing but a straight shot into northeastern Mississippi ahead of me So I cliain, on the shoulder of a dusty two-lane that headed una Buick sedan picked ether and drove forty uy in a stately old Chevy truck took me twenty miles south on a minor road and let me out at what he said was the turn I wanted By that point it was late in the afternoon and the sun was heading for the far horizon, pretty fast The road ahead was die-straight with low forest on both sides and nothing but darkness in the distance I figured Carter Crossing straddled that road, perhaps thirty or fortythe first part of et there The second part was to ht be harder There was no cogent reason for a transient bum to pal up with people in police unifor arrested, which would start the whole relationship on the wrong foot

But in the event both objectives were achieved in one fell swoop, because the first eastbound car I saas a police cruiser heading houy stopped for me He was a talker and I was a listener, and within minutes I found out that so

8

The cop&039;s nah he didn&039;t say that I got the impression that people drank from the tap in that part of Mississippi On reflection it was no surprise he stopped for me Sers heading into their territory The easiest way to find out who they are is simply to ask, which he did, immediately I told him my name and spent a minute onto Carter Crossing to look for a friend whothere I said the friend had last served at Kelha to say in response to that He just took his eyes off the e, and then he nodded and faced front again He was ht, maybe French or Italian way back, with black hair buzzed short and olive skin and broken veins on both sides of his nose He was souessed if he didn&039;t stop eating and drinking he wasn&039;t going to make itI found out was that he wasn&039;t a s, technically Carter Crossing had no police depart was in Carter County, and Carter County had a County Sheriff&039;s Depart inside an area close to five hundred square miles But there wasn&039;t much inside those five hundred square miles except Fort Kelham and the tohich here the Sheriff&039;s Departain, in a sense But Pellegrino was indisputably a deputy sheriff, not a police officer, and he seemed very proud of the distinction

I asked hirino said, "Not very We got the sheriff, e call the chief, we got a sheriff&039;s detective, we got ot a civilian on the desk, we got a wo term with his kidneys, so it&039;s just the three of us, really"

I asked him, "How many people live in Carter County?"

"About twelve hundred," he said Which I thought was a lot, for three functioning cops Apples to apples, it would be like policing New York City with a half-sized NYPD I asked, "Does that include Fort Kelham?"

"No, they&039;re separate," he said "And they have their own cops"

I said, "But still, you guys must be busy I mean, twelve hundred citizens, five hundred square ht noe&039;re real busy," he said, but he didn&039;tabout Janice May Chapman Instead he talked about athe day before, under cover of darkness, soain He had said there were two trains a day, but Pellegrino told ht exactly, a ht north froht train had s it co it into the woods The train had not stopped As far as anyone could tell it hadn&039;t even slowed down Which ed to stop if he struck soht it was certainly possible the guy hadn&039;t noticed So did I Thousands of tons against one, rino seemed captivated by the senselessness of it all He said, "I mean, ould do that? Who would park an automobile on the train track? And why?"

"Kids?" I said "For fun?"

"Never happened before And we&039;ve always had kids"

"No one in the car?"

"No, thank God Like I said, as far as we knoas just parked there"

"Stolen?"

"Don&039;t know yet There&039;s not ht have been blue It set on fire Burned so car?"

"Not yet"

I asked, "What else are you busy with?"

And at that point Pellegrino went quiet and didn&039;t answer, and I wondered if I had pushed it too far But I reviewed the back-and-forth inconversation A guy says he&039;s real busy but uy is entitled to ask for h the dusk in a corino&039;s hesitation was based purely on courtesy and old-fashioned Southern hospitality That was all He said, "Well, I don&039;t want to give you a bad i as you&039;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&039;s inforain Janice May Chapman had not been mutilated Her throat had been cut, that was all And delivery of a fatal wound was not the sa 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 woht 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 sorino&039;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&039;d been into it enough at soravel Which I don&039;t think she would be"

"You knew her?"

"We saw her around"

I asked, "Who did it?"

He said, "We don&039;t know A guy off the base, probably That&039;s e 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 rino said "The chief is a woman"

"Really?"

"It&039;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 teaame 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&039;s tires sounded worn and soft They set up a dull baritone roar on the blacktop Up ahead the evening gloohts 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 coht and air and o on abandoned arable land They flashed past in the light spill, like they were frozen in n 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&039;s It promised the convenience of a Main Street location, and roorino said, "She got elected because of her name"

"The sheriff?"

"That&039;s ere talking about"

"Why? What&039;s her name?"

"Elizabeth Deveraux," he said

"Nice narino, for instance"