The Last Highway: The gripping new mystery from the award-winning, bestselling author of A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS

CONTENTSTitle PageAcknowledgements1234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829303132333435363738394041424344454647484950515253545556575859606162636465666768697071727374757677787980818283848586878889909192CreditsAbout the AuthorAlso by R.J. ElloryCopyright AcknowledgementsThis work is dedicated to all those who stood by me through the best of times and the worst of times.To Victoria, my wife of more than three decades; to my son, now a father himself; to my brother, first reader and judicious critic; to Tim Willocks, a great writer and a very dear friend; to all my French family at Sonatine Editions; to Celia Killen, my astute and understanding editor; to all those at Orion who have now worked with me through eighteen novels.I owe you all a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid. 1News of his brother’s death came soon after breakfast.Victor Landis went onto the porch with his coffee and his cigarette and sat on the swing seat. The morning was bright and clear. He looked towards the highway and tried to remember the last time he and his brother had spoken. He could not. It had been a number of years, for sure – eleven, likely closer to twelve now – and the words they’d shared had come to blows. Whatever fraternal bond they’d once shared had been broken beyond repair. There was a history between them, its telling all kinds of different depending on who was asked.Little more than a year between them, Victor and Frank Landis now shared nothing but blood. That they’d both wound up in law enforcement was attributable to coincidence alone. Neither one had evidenced a hankering for such a thing in their early years. Victor had in fact shown a leaning towards music. Fancied himself a guitar player, much like their father. How the law came about – how it connected and then further separated them – was yet another twisted strand in the barbed-wire fence of their past. For both of them, that past was as good as quicksand – the harder they’d fought to escape, the harder it had dragged them back.The news that Frank was dead seemed proof enough that persistence invariably paid off. He had finally escaped, though not as he’d intended.‘Thought maybe a hit-and-run,’ Dade County Deputy Sheriff explained on the telephone. ‘That’s what I figured until the coroner got himself out there. Seems whoever run him down backed up and run over him again for good measure. He done moved a good deal too in between, suggesting he weren’t gonna quit until they got him flattened three, maybe four more times.’‘Tough as cat meat, my brother,’ Victor said, thinking that some people were born to die hard.‘Best get yourself over here soonest,’ the deputy said. ‘You bein’ next-of-kin an’ all.’‘I didn’t get your name, son,’ Landis said.‘Abrams. Paul Abrams. Been your brother’s deputy more ’an five years now.’‘Well, I guess you’re gonna be the new sheriff soon enough.’Landis took his time. He had a second cup of coffee, smoked a second cigarette, then telephoned Barbara Wedlock at the office.‘My brother’s got himself killed over there in Dade County,’ he said. He knew he was saying the words, but it sounded like someone else’s voice.‘Oh my, Sheriff,’ Barbara said. ‘Oh my, oh my.’Barbara had been at the Sheriff’s Office dispatch desk for more years than Landis had been sheriff. She knew everyone’s business. Anything she didn’t know wasn’t worth spit.‘Gonna head over there and identify him and whatnot. Anything comes up, tell Marshall to take care of it.’‘Will do, Sheriff Landis,’ she said. ‘And condolences to you.’Landis thanked her and hung up.The distance from Blairsville to Trenton was all of seventy miles by crow, closer to a hundred by road. Landis took 76 on past Mineral Bluff, turned northwest and joined the highway that followed the Conasauga River. He headed north again until he was nothing but a loud holler from the Tennessee state line, and then he turned back down again across Whitfield County. The Appalachians were bold on the horizon, beneath them the sprawling wonder of the Cherokee National Forest.En route Victor listened to the radio. There was a station out of Bunker Hill that aired the kind of music he wished he could play. He was working on it, but his hands were more suited to skinning rabbits than plucking strings.Coming up on the county line, he eased up on the gas. The news had not yet sunk in. Whether it would ever sink was another matter. All he knew was that the cold, broken body of his brother would be laying up on a steel table at the coroner’s office and he’d have to say something about a man who was more a stranger than kin. Preparing something was as much use as laundering skunks. Anything planned would be meaningless when the moment came.Outside of Wildwood he joined Interstate 24 and headed on to Trenton.The city itself was everything northern Georgia had to offer, nestled there in a fertile valley of the Appalachian foothills, Lookout Mountain to the east, Sand Mountain to the west. Dade County was half the size of Union, maybe a hundred and eighty square miles. Named after Major Francis Langhorne Dade, the man himself killed in the Dade Massacre of the Seminole Indians way back in the mid-1830s. The Cherokee were the next to be routed, the land then raffled off in the Georgia Lotteries. For the first century, there was no road into Dade from Georgia. Anyone venturing there had to take a scenic route by way of Alabama or Tennessee.Dade was as far north as you could get without actually leaving the state.It was somewhere after 11.00 am when Landis gained the city limits. He pulled over at the first diner he saw. Mountainview Grill, a busted neon sign half-heartedly announced. He wanted a cup of coffee, a cigarette or two, a handful of moments to gather his thoughts.The waitress attending his table was all sunshine and pleasantry. It took a moment, but Landis saw the light go on in her head.‘Well, this must be the strangest thing ever,’ she said. ‘You look more like the