Killing Floor

“She did?” I said. “She sang with him?”

“She sure did,” said the gnarled old guy. “She sang with just about anybody passing through. You got to remember this old town lay right on the big road to Atlanta. That old county road out there used to come on down through here straight on south into Florida. It was the only route through Georgia north to south. Of course now you got the highway runs right by without stopping off, and you got airplanes and all. No importance to Margrave now, nobody coming on through anymore.”

“So Blind Blake stopped off here?” I prompted him. “And your sister sang with him?”

“Everybody used to stop off here,” he said. “North side of town was just pretty much a mess of bars and rooming houses to cater to the folks passing through. All these fancy gardens between here and the firehouse is where the bars and rooming houses used to be. All tore down now, or else all fell down. Been no passing trade at all for a real long time. But back then, it was a different kind of a town altogether. Streams of people in and out, the whole time. Workers, crop pickers, drummers, fighters, hoboes, truckers, musicians. All kinds of those guys used to stop off and play and my old sister would be right in there singing with them all.”

“And she remembers Blind Blake?” I asked him.

“She sure does,” the old man said. “Used to think he was the greatest thing alive. Says he used to play real sporty. Real sporty indeed.”

“What happened to him?” I said. “Do you know?”

The old guy thought hard. Trawled back through his fading memories. He shook his grizzled head a couple of times. Then he took a wet towel from a hot box and put it over my face. Started cutting my hair. Ended up shaking his head with some kind of finality.

“Can’t rightly say,” he said. “He came back and forth on the road, time to time. I remember that pretty well. Three, four years later he was gone. I was up in Atlanta for a spell, wasn’t here to know. Heard tell somebody killed him, maybe right here in Margrave, maybe not. Some kind of big trouble, got him killed stone dead.”

I sat listening to their old radio for a while. Then I gave them a twenty off my roll of bills and hurried out onto Main Street. Strode out north. It was nearly noon and the sun was baking. Hot for September. Nobody else was out walking. The black road blasted heat at me. Blind Blake had walked this road, maybe in the noon heat. Back when those old barbers had been boys this had been the artery reaching north to Atlanta, Chicago, jobs, hope, money. Noon heat wouldn’t have stopped anybody getting where they were going. But now the road was just a smooth blacktop byway going nowhere at all.

IT TOOK ME A FEW MINUTES IN THE HEAT TO GET UP TO THE station house. I walked across its springy lawn past another bronze statue and pulled open the heavy glass entrance door. Stepped into the chill inside. Roscoe was waiting for me, leaning on the reception counter. Behind her in the squad room, I could see Stevenson talking urgently into a telephone. Roscoe was pale and looking very worried.

“We found another body,” she said.

“Where?” I asked her.

“Up at the warehouse again,” she said. “The other side of the road this time, underneath the cloverleaf, where it’s raised up.”

“Who found it?” I said.

“Finlay,” she said. “He was up there this morning, poking around, looking for something to help us with the first one. Some help, right? All he finds is another one.”

“Do you know who this one is?” I asked her.

She shook her head.

“Unidentified,” she said. “Same as the first one.”

“Where’s Finlay now?” I asked her.

“Gone to get Hubble,” she said. “He thinks Hubble may know something about it.”

I nodded.

“How long was this one up there?” I said.

“Two or three days, maybe,” she said. “Finlay says it could have been a double homicide on Thursday night.”

I nodded again. Hubble did know something about it. This was the guy he had sent to meet with the tall investigator with the shaved head. He couldn’t figure out how the guy had gotten away with it. But the guy hadn’t gotten away with it.

I heard a car in the lot outside and then the big glass door sucked open. Finlay stuck his head in.

“Morgue, Roscoe,” he said. “You too, Reacher.”

We followed him back outside into the heat. We all got into Roscoe’s unmarked sedan. Left Finlay’s car where he’d parked it. Roscoe drove. I sat in the back. Finlay sat in the front passenger seat, twisted around so he could talk to the both of us at once. Roscoe nosed out of the police lot and headed south.

“I can’t find Hubble,” Finlay said. Looking at me. “There’s nobody up at his place. Did he say anything to you about going anywhere?”

“No,” I said. “Not a word. We hardly spoke all weekend.”

Finlay grunted at me.

“I need to find out what he knows about all this,” he said. “This is serious shit and he knows something about it, that’s for damn sure. What did he tell you about it, Reacher?”

I didn’t answer. I wasn’t entirely sure whose side I was on yet. Finlay’s, probably, but if Finlay started blundering around in whatever Hubble was mixed up in, Hubble and his family were going to end up dead. No doubt about that. So I figured I should just stay impartial and then get the hell out of there as fast as possible. I didn’t want to get involved.

“You try his mobile number?” I asked him.

Finlay grunted and shook his head.

“Switched off,” he said. “Some automatic voice came on and told me.”

“Did he come by and pick up his watch?” I asked him.

“His what?” he said.

“His watch,” I said. “He left a ten-thousand-dollar Rolex with Baker on Friday. When Baker was cuffing us for the ride out to Warburton. Did he come pick it up?”

“No,” Finlay said. “Nobody said so.”

“OK,” I said. “So he’s got some urgent business some-where. Not even an asshole like Hubble’s going to forget about a ten-thousand-dollar watch, right?”

“What urgent business?” Finlay said. “What did he tell you about it?”

“He didn’t tell me diddly,” I said. “Like I told you, we hardly spoke.”

Finlay glared at me from the front seat.

“Don’t mess with me, Reacher,” he said. “Until I get hold of Hubble, I’m going to keep hold of you and sweat your ass for what he told you. And don’t make out he kept his mouth shut all weekend, because guys like that never do. I know that and you know that, so don’t mess with me, OK?”

I just shrugged at him. He wasn’t about to arrest me again. Maybe I could get a bus from wherever the morgue was. I’d have to pass on lunch with Roscoe. Pity.

“So what’s the story on this one?” I asked him.

“Pretty much the same as the last one,” Finlay said. “Looks like it happened at the same time. Shot to death, probably the same weapon. This one didn’t get kicked around afterward, but it was probably part of the same incident.”

“You don’t know who it is?” I said.

“His name is Sherman,” he said. “Apart from that, no idea.”

“Tell me about it,” I said. I was asking out of habit. Finlay thought for a moment. I saw him decide to answer. Like we were partners.

“Unidentified white male,” he said. “Same deal as the first one, no ID, no wallet, no distinguishing marks. But this one had a gold wristwatch, engraved on the back: to Sherman, love Judy. He was maybe thirty or thirty-five. Hard to tell, because he’d been lying there for three nights and he was well gnawed by the small animals, you know? His lips are gone, and his eyes, but his right hand was OK because it was folded up under his body, so I got some decent prints. We ran them an hour ago and something may come of that, if we’re lucky.”

“Gunshot wounds?” I asked him.

Finlay nodded.

“Looks like the same gun,” he said. “Small-caliber, soft-nose shells. Looks like maybe the first shot only wounded him and he was able to run. He got hit a couple more times but made it to cover under the highway. He fell down and bled to death. He didn’t get kicked around because they couldn’t find him. That’s how it looks to me.”