LEE CHILD. KILLING FLOOR

`He was blind,’ she said. `But he was sporty. You know that word? Sporty? It means kind of uppity. Uppity with a smile and a grin is sporty. Blake was sporty. Had a lot of spirit and energy. Walked fast and talked fast, always moving, always smiling his sweet fool head off. But one time, we came out of a place in town here, walking down the sidewalk, laughing. Nobody else around but for two white folks coming towards us on the sidewalk. A man and a boy. I saw them and ducked off the sidewalk, like we were supposed to. Stood in the dirt to let them pass. But poor Blake was blind. Didn’t see them. Just crashed into the white boy. A white boy, maybe ten years old, maybe twelve. Blake sent him flying into the dirt. White boy cut his head on a stone, set up such a hollering like you never

heard. The white boy’s daddy was there with him. j knew him. He was a big important man in this town. His boy was screaming fit to burst. Screaming at his daddy to punish the nigger. So the daddy lost his temper and set about Blake with his cane. Big silver knob on the top. He beat poor Blake with that cane until his head was just split open like a burst watermelon. Killed him stone dead. Picked up the boy and turned to me. Sent me over to the horse trough to wash poor Blake’s hair and blood and brains off from the end of his cane. Told me never to say a word about it, or he’d kill me too. So I just hid out and waited until somebody else found poor Blake there on the sidewalk. Then I ran out screaming and hollering with the rest of them all. Never said a word about it to another living soul, that day to this.’

Big wet tears were welling out of her eyes and rolling slowly down her thin cheeks. I reached over and smudged them dry with the back of my finger. Took her other hand in mine.

`Who was the boy?’ I asked her.

`Somebody I seen around ever since,’ she said. `Somebody I seen sneering around just about every day since, reminding me of my poor Blake lying there with his head split open.’

`Who was he?’ I said.

`It was an accident,’ she said. `Anybody could have seen that. Poor Blake was a blind man. Boy didn’t have to set up such a hollering. He wasn’t hurt so bad. He was old enough to know better. It was his fault for hollering and screaming like he did.’

`Who was the boy?’ I asked her again.

She turned to me and stared into my eyes. Told me the sixty-two-year-old secret.

`Grover Teale,’ she said. `Grew up to be mayor, just like his old daddy. Thinks he’s king of the damn world, but he’s just a screaming brat who got my poor Blake killed for no reason at all except he was blind and he was black.’

THIRTY-THREE

We piled back into Charlie’s black Bentley in the alley behind the barbershop. Nobody spoke. I fired it up. Swung out and rolled north. Kept the lights off and drove slow. The big dark sedan rolled north through the night like a stealthy animal leaving its lair. Like a big black submarine slipping its mooring and gliding out into icy water. I drove through the town and pulled up shy of the station house. Quiet as a tomb.

`I want to get a weapon,’ Finlay said.

We picked our way through the shattered wreckage of the entrance. Hubble’s own Bentley was sitting in the squad room, inert in the gloom. The front tyres had blown and it had settled nose-down, buried in the wreckage of the cells. There was a stink of gasoline. The tank must have split. The trunk lid was up because of the way the rear end was smashed in. Hubble didn’t even glance at it.

Finlay picked his way past the wrecked car to the big office in back. Disappeared inside. I waited with Hubble in the heap of shards that had been the

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