Read Online The Affair by Lee Child - Free Book Online

was bigger than the dish it was in. My coffee was in a tall stoneware mug. Deveraux had plain water in a chipped glass.
    It’s easier to let a pie go cold than a cheeseburger, so I figured I had a chance to talk while Deveraux had no choice but to eat and listen and comment briefly. So I said, “Pellegrino told me you guys are real busy.”
    Deveraux chewed and nodded.
    I said, “A wrecked car and a dead woman.”
    She nodded again and chased an errant pearl of mayonnaise back into her mouth with the tip of her little finger. An elegant gesture, for an inelegant act. She had short nails, nicely trimmed and polished. She had slender hands, a little tanned and sinewy. Good skin. No rings. None at all. Especially not on her left ring finger.
    I asked, “Any progress on any of that?”
    She swallowed and smiled and held her hand up like a traffic cop. Stop. Wait . She said, “Give me a minute, OK? No more talking.”
    So I ate my pie, which was good. The crust was sweet and the peaches were soft. Probably local. Or maybe from Georgia. I didn’t know much about the cultivation of fruit. She ate, with the burger in her right hand, her left taking fries one by one from her plate, her eyes on mine most of the time. The grease from the meat made her lips glisten. She was a slim woman. She must have had a metabolism like a nuclear reactor. She took occasional long sips of water. I drained my mug. The coffee was OK, but not as good as the pie.
    She asked, “Doesn’t coffee keep you awake?”
    I nodded. “Until I want to go to sleep. That’s what it’s for.”
    She took a last sip of water and left a rind of bun and six or seven fries on her plate. She wiped her mouth and then her hands on her napkin. She folded her napkin and laid it down next to her plate. Dinner was over.
    I asked, “So are you making progress?”
    She smiled at some inner amusement and then leaned sideways away from the table, hands braced to increase her angle, and she looked me over again, slowly, a crooked path, all the way from my feet in the shadows to my head. She said, “You’re pretty good. Nothing to be ashamed about, really. It’s not your fault.”
    I asked, “What isn’t?”
    She leaned back in her chair. She kept her eyes on mine. She said, “My daddy was sheriff here before me. Since before I was born, actually. He won about twenty consecutive elections. He was firm, but fair. And honest. No fear or favor. He was a good public servant.”
    I said, “I’m sure he was.”
    “But I didn’t like it here very much. Not as a kid. I mean, can you imagine? It’s the back of beyond. We got books in the mail. I knew there was a big wide world out there. So I had to get away.”
    I said, “I don’t blame you.”
    She said, “But some ideas get ingrained. Like public service. Like law enforcement. It starts to feel like a family business, the same as any other.”
    I nodded. She was right. Kids follow their parents into law enforcement far more than most other professions. Except baseball. The son of a pro ballplayer is eight hundred times more likely to make the Majors than some other random kid.
    She said, “So look at it from my point of view. What do you think I did when I turned eighteen?”
    I said, “I don’t know,” although by that point I was pretty sure I did know, more or less, and I wasn’t happy about it.
    She said, “I went to South Carolina and joined the Marine Corps.”
    I nodded. Worse than I had expected. For some reason I had been betting on the Air Force.
    I asked her, “How long were you in?”
    “Sixteen years.”
    Which made her thirty-six years old. Eighteen years at home, plus sixteen as a jarhead, plus two as Carter County Sheriff. Same age as me.
    I asked her, “What branch of the Corps?”
    “Provost Marshal’s office.” I looked away.
    I said, “You were a military cop.”
    She said, “Public service and law enforcement. I killed two birds with one stone.”
    I looked back, beaten.
    I asked her,