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sick, who is working the case?”
    Pellegrino said, “The chief.”
    “Does he have much experience with homicides?”
    “She,” Pellegrino said. “The chief is a woman.”
    “Really?”
    “It’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 team loses a big game. 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’s tires sounded worn and soft. They set up a dull baritone roar on the blacktop. Up ahead the evening gloom had gone completely. Pellegrino’s headlights 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 competing for light and air and minerals, like they had seeded themselves a hundred years ago on abandoned arable land. They flashed past in the light spill, like they were frozen in motion. I saw a tin sign 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’s. It promised the convenience of a Main Street location, and rooms of the highest quality.
    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