“Is that an issue for you?”

“I live in Mississippi,” she said. “I was in the Marine Corps and I’m not married.”

“OK,” I said.

“And I’m not currently dating.”

“OK,” I said.

“I’m not gay,” she said.

“Understood.”

“But even so, for a woman cop to be seen obsessing over a female victim’s looks never goes down well.”

“Understood,” I said again. I leaned forward to let my back clear the chair, and I pulled the file out of my waistband. I laid it on the desk.

“Mission accomplished,” I said. “Nice moves, by the way. Not many people beat Neagley in a mind game.”

“Takes one to know one,” she said. She slid the file closer and ran her palm over it, left and right, and her hand came to rest at one end, and she kept it there. Maybe where it was warm from the small of my back.

She asked, “Did you ID the car?”

Chapter

24

She kept her palm pressed on the file folder, and looked straight at me. Her question hung in the air between us. Did you ID the car? In my head I heard Garber’s emphatic squawk in my ear, on the phone in the diner: Do not, repeat, do not give that number to local law enforcement.

My commanding officer.

Orders are orders.

Deveraux said, “Did you?”

I said, “Yes.”

“And?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Both. Classified information, as of five minutes after I called it in.”

She didn’t respond.

I said, “Well, what would you do in this situation?”

“Now?”

“Not now. Then. When you were in the Corps.”

“As a Marine I would have done exactly what you’re doing.”

“I’m glad you understand.”

She nodded. She kept her hand on the file. She said, “I didn’t tell you the truth before. Not the whole truth, anyway. About my father’s house. It wasn’t always rented. He owned it, from when he was married. But when my mother got sick, they found out they didn’t have insurance. They were supposed to. It was supposed to come with the job. But the county guy who was responsible had run into trouble and had been stealing the premiums. Just a two-year hiatus, but that happened to be when my mother got sick. After that, it was a pre-existing condition. My father refinanced, things got worse, and he defaulted. The bank took the title, but they let him live there as a renter. I admired both parties. The bank did the right thing, as far as it could, and my daddy kept on serving his community, even though it had kicked him in the teeth. Honor and obligation are things I appreciate.”

“Semper Fi,” I said.

“You bet your ass. And you answered my question anyway, as I’m sure you intended. If the ID is classified, then it’s a Kelham car. That’s all I really need to know.”

“Only if there’s a connection,” I said. “Between the car and the homicide.”

“Unlikely to be a coincidence.”

I said, “I’m sorry about your father.”

“Me too. He was a nice man, and he deserved better.”

I said, “It was me who beat on those civilians.”

Deveraux said, “Really? How on earth did you get there?”

“I walked.”

“You can’t have. You didn’t have time, surely. It’s more than twelve miles. Almost past Kelham’s northern limit. Practically in Tennessee.”

“What happened there?”

“Two guys were out doing something. Maybe just taking a walk. They could see the woods around Kelham’s fence, but they weren’t particularly close to it. A guy came out of the woods, the two hikers got rousted, it turned bad, they got hit. They claim the guy that hit them was a soldier.”

“Was he in uniform?”

“No. But he had the look, and he had an M16 rifle.”

“That’s bizarre.”

“I know. It’s like they’re establishing a quarantine zone.”

“Why would they? They’ve already got about a million acres all to themselves.”

“I don’t know why. But what else are they doing? They’re chasing anyone that gets anywhere near the fence.”

I said nothing.

Deveraux said, “Wait. Who did you beat on?”

“Two guys in a pick-up truck. They harassed me last night, they harassed me again this morning. Once too often.”

“Description?”

“Dirt, grease, hair, and tattoos.”

“In an old black truck painted with a housepainter’s brush?”

“Yes.”

“Those are the McKinney cousins. In an ideal world they should be beat on at least once a week, regular as clockwork. So I thank you for your full and frank confession, but I propose to take no action at this time.”

“But?”

“Don’t do it again. And watch your back. I’m sure that right now they’re planning to get the whole family together and come looking for you.”

“There are more of them?”

“There are dozens of McKinneys. But don’t worry. Not yet, at least. It will take time for them to assemble. None of them has a phone. None of them knows how to use a phone.”

And at that point phones started ringing all throughout the building. And I heard urgent radio chatter from the dispatcher’s hutch, where the stout woman sat. Ten seconds later she appeared in the doorway, out of breath, holding both jambs to steady herself, and she said, “Pellegrino is calling in from near the Clancy place. Near the split oak. He says we got ourselves another homicide.”

Chapter

25

Both Deveraux and I glanced instinctively at the file folder on her desk. Three photographs. Soon to be four. Another sad visit to grieving relatives. Another request for a good recent likeness. The worst part of the job.

Then Deveraux glanced at me, and hesitated. Not a democracy. I said, “You owe it to me. I need to see this. I need to know what I’m committing suicide over.”

She hesitated another second, and then she said, “OK,” and we ran for her car.

The Clancy place turned out to be more than ten miles north and east of the town. We crossed the silent railroad and headed toward Kelham for a mile, deep into the hidden half of Carter Crossing. The wrong side of the tracks. Over there the road had no shoulders and no ditches. I guessed the ditches had silted up and the shoulders had been plowed. Flat fields full of dirt came right up to the edge of the blacktop. I saw old frame houses standing in yards, and low barns, and swaybacked sheds, and tumbledown shacks. I saw old women on porches and raggedy kids on bikes. I saw old trucks moving slow and a solitary shopper with a straw hat and a straw basket. Every face I saw was black. Different places are for different folks, the McKinney cousins had told me. Rural Mississippi, in 1997.

Then Deveraux turned due north on a washboard two-lane and left the dwellings behind us. She hit the gas. The car responded. The Chevy Caprice was every working cop’s favorite car for a reason. It was a perfect what if proposition. What if we took a roomy sedan and put a Corvette motor in it? What if we beefed up the suspension a little? What if we used four disc brakes? What if we gave it a top speed of 130 miles an hour? Deveraux’s example was well used and worn, but it still motored along. The rough surface pattered under the tires, and the body wallowed and shuddered, but we got where we were going pretty fast.

Where we were going turned out to be a large hardscrabble acreage with a battered house in its center. We turned in and used a two-rut driveway that became a plain farm track as it passed the house. Deveraux blipped her siren once as a courtesy. I saw an answering wave from a window. An old man. A black face. We headed onward across flat barren land. Way far in the distance I could see a lone tree, chopped vertically by lightning down two-thirds of its height. Each half was leaning away from the other in a dramatic Y shape. Both halves were dusted with pale green springtime leaves. The split oak, I assumed. Still alive and in business. Still enduring. Near it was parked a police cruiser, right out on the dirt. Pellegrino’s, I assumed.