The Affair_ A Reacher Novel - Lee Child [15]
Pellegrino said, “She got elected because of her name.”
“The sheriff?”
“That’s who we were talking about.”
“Why? What’s her name?”
“Elizabeth Deveraux,” he said.
“Nice name,” I said. “But no better than Pellegrino, for instance.”
“Her daddy was sheriff before her. He was a well-liked man, in certain quarters. We think some folks voted out of loyalty. Or maybe they thought they were voting for the old guy himself. Maybe they didn’t know he was dead. Things take time to catch on, in certain quarters.”
I asked, “Is Carter Crossing big enough to have quarters?”
Pellegrino said, “Halves, I guess. Two of them. West of the railroad track, or east.”
“Right side, wrong side?”
“Like everywhere.”
“Which side is Kelham?”
“East. You have to drive three miles. Through the wrong side.”
“Which side is the Toussaint’s hotel?”
“Won’t you be staying with your friend?”
“When I find him. If I find him. Until then I need a place.”
“Toussaint’s is OK,” Pellegrino said. “I’ll let you out there.”
And he did. We drove out of the tunnel through the trees and the road broadened and the forest itself died back to stunted saplings left and right, all choked with weeds and trash. The road became an asphalt ribbon laid through a wide flat area of earth the size of a football field. It led through a right turn to a straight street between low buildings. Main Street, presumably. There was no architecture. Just construction, a lot of it old, most of it wood, with some stone at the foundation level. We passed a building marked Carter County Sheriff’s Department, and then a vacant lot, and then a diner, and then we arrived at the Toussaint’s hotel. It had been a fancy place once. It had green paint and trim and moldings and iron railings on the second-floor balconies. It looked like it had been copied from a New Orleans design. It had a faded signboard with its name on it, and a row of dim lights washing the exterior facade, three of which were out.
Pellegrino eased the cruiser to a stop and I thanked him for the ride and got out. He pulled a wide U-turn behind me and headed back the way we had come, presumably to park in the Sheriff’s Department lot. I used a set of wormy wooden steps and crossed a bouncy wooden veranda and pushed in through the hotel door.
Chapter
9
Inside the hotel I found a small square lobby and an unattended reception desk. The floor was worn boards partially covered by a threadbare rug of Middle Eastern design. The desk was a counter made of hardwood polished to a high shine by years of wear and labor. There was a matrix of pigeonholes on the wall behind it. Four high, seven wide. Twenty-eight rooms. Twenty-seven of them had their keys hanging in place. None of the pigeonholes contained letters or notes or any other kind of communication.
There was a bell on the desk, a small brass thing going green around the edges. I hit it twice, and a polite ding ding echoed around for a spell, but it produced no results. None at all. No one came. There was a closed door next to the pigeonholes, and it stayed closed. A back office, I guessed. Empty, presumably. I saw no reason why a hotel owner would deliberately avoid doubling his occupancy rate.
I stood still for a moment and then checked a door on the left of the lobby. It opened to an unlit lounge that smelled of damp and dust and mildew. There were humped shapes in the dark that I took to be armchairs. No activity. No people. I stepped back to the desk and hit the bell again.
No response.
I called out, “Hello?”
No response.
So I gave up for the time being and went back out, across the