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I WALKED ALONG THE jogging path, following the same winding route and heading in the same direction that Sheldon had taken before she vanished into the forest of pines. It took me forty-four minutes to make it around Jarvis Lake to the edge of town.
I reached the outskirts at around 8:30 in the morning, and I was hungry. I hadn’t even thought that if I had stayed with Hank for another hour, he would’ve probably cooked us some breakfast. Old grandpa types were like that. At least that was what I had always believed. My grandpa had died long before I was born. My mother was a lot like him, I think.
I paused and took a break from walking without even realizing it. My feet stopped, and I stood there on the outskirts of town. I looked around, still half buried in my thoughts.
The jogging path had led me into a clearing that merged with the road heading into town. The track, neatly manicured here with a fresh synthetic material that looked like sawdust, became a part of a paved sidewalk that paralleled the town’s main street.
I shook off thoughts of Hank’s trout breakfast and made up my mind to get something to eat. I had plenty of money in my bank account, and a town, no matter where it was in the United States, was bound to have restaurants, cafés, and fast-food joints. Eateries were as American as apple pie. I didn’t imagine there was a town anywhere that didn’t have a place where you could get a good, hearty breakfast — especially small towns. Small towns relied on tourism. They relied on outsiders to come in and pump cash into the local economy.
Black Rock was a fishing town, so it relied heavily on the lake to generate income. Naturally, it would have seafood restaurants and a diner or two.
I decided that I should stop for breakfast and then shop for new clothes and a cell phone charger. I walked into town and noticed a lot of out-of-towners, tourists and vacationers. They were mostly older, white men and mostly from Mississippi or Alabama or Louisiana or Tennessee or Georgia. The accents I had hated to hear in movies were prevalent here. The men drove around in big, fuel-guzzling pickups and wore polo shirts, sunglasses, and ball caps. They all had beer guts and tan lines. They were the faces of Southern fishermen with money to spend. Black Rock prospered on their money, so I knew that there would be some good Southern cooking here.
I walked into the heart of town. The traffic was moderate, and everyone seemed to be already awake. I walked on past streetlights and past a tiny florist shop with an awning shaped like a giant rose petal over the door, an ice cream shop that hadn’t opened yet, and a bakery that smelled of fresh beignets. I moved beyond the town’s municipal buildings and saw a courthouse with a sign out front that read: Public Safety Complex.
It looked like the town had housed all its public safety services under one roof. The courthouse was obviously here. In front of the building, there were a couple of cop cars parked in the lot. In the rear, under a standalone carport, there was an old fire truck, a shiny red thing that looked to be about thirty years old. I guessed they didn’t get a lot of use out of it. But the city had taken good care of it like it was more of a spokesman rather than a functional fire vehicle. They must have washed it constantly, taking it to the local school and allowing the kids to hang on it for pictures. The kids probably took turns ringing the siren. It might’ve been the only time anyone ever heard the damn thing.
Black Rock had so far portrayed itself as a quiet town. Any ruckus in the area probably took place on the lake.
I looked back at the cop cars, studied them briefly. A pair of Dodge Intrepids. They were old, maybe ten years, but like the fire truck, they were well maintained. The Dodge Intrepid was not an uncommon vehicle to be used by police departments. Of course, the Ford Crown Vic was seen more often, but for a small town like this, budget was everything. The Dodge Intrepid police package was probably lighter on the city’s budget and the fact that they didn’t have a lot of ground to cover made it viable to keep the same cars for ten years. I was sure that it was equally important to keep them in proper working order.
I left the Public Safety Complex and walked around the town a bit longer, deciding not to stop for breakfast for at least another half an hour. I wanted to scan the town for all the options that it had to offer. Plus, I wanted to plan my day, so I ventured on.
Cars and trucks drove past me at a slow speed, the drivers seemingly intrigued by the stranger who walked among them.
As I walked, I discovered that the town had at least three different kinds of Christian churches. I saw no other religious house of worship to speak of—no synagogues, no temples, no shrines. I wasn’t surprised. The South wasn’t known for its tolerance of religions outside of Christianity. It wasn’t even tolerant of many denominations of Christianity.
In my experience, though, the South was far more open to pluralism than its reputation conveyed. I had grown up with kids who had gay parents or were gay themselves. I knew black kids, white kids, Asian kids, and Hispanic kids. And my small town was not unlike Black Rock.
Not all the people who lived in Killian Crossing had been Christian. We had Jewish people, atheists, and even a Buddhist family. No one in the town ever protested any of their beliefs. It never caused any friction, wars, or feuds. Everyone had gotten along fine, but I had never seen a building of worship that wasn’t a Christian church. I’m sure that there were some in places like Jackson or Biloxi, but not in Killian Crossing, and probably not in Black Rock.
Still, something about this town felt different to me. Something was missing, and it was eating away at a part of my brain like a pilot fish swimming close to the great white shark, cleaning it by nipping away at the small parasites that festered on its sandpapery skin. I was the shark, and this small something was nipping at my brain like a pilot fish, only I couldn’t tell what it was.
I stopped and shrugged to no one but myself.
I’m hungrier than I thought. I need to eat.
I abandoned my survey of the town and decided to go straight to breakfast. So far, I had seen a diner that was about three blocks in the opposite direction. I pivoted on my right foot and swung around as if my old drill instructor had shouted, “‘Bout face!” Then I headed back in the other direction, back to the diner.
I walked on until I returned to the corner where I had seen the diner.
The sign on top of the building read: Roy’s Red Dinner.
The spelling was wrong—diner is spelled with one “n,” not two. When I entered, sat down, and opened my menu, I realized that they knew it was spelled incorrectly, part of their gimmick, I supposed. The first page in the menu had a cartoon drawing of a short, fat, bald white man with a pitch-black mustache, the owner and founder. The caption beside his character read: Roy.
Next to Roy’s cartoon picture was a story entitled The Red Dinner. It went on to explain that when it first opened, the diner’s sign was spelled wrong, and it stuck. It was originally called the Red Dinner because the outside of the building was a bright red color. The paint had been recently redone as far as I could tell because it was still bright red. The story said that Roy had owned the diner for twenty-five years until he passed away five years ago. His daughter now ran the place.
I skimmed past the rest of the story and gazed at the food options. They had lots of breakfast items to choose from. They were all egg-based, which was fine by me because all I was in the mood for was eggs and bacon.
While I waited to order, my mind started to wander. I thought about my mom again. We used to be tight. She used to take me hunting and fishing. She’d take me to work, which isn’t that unusual. However, her job was solving murders. And she’d get me to help her.
I was a little boy, solving crimes with my mom.
I remembered one time she had taken me to a murder scene where the body of an old man was sprawled out underneath a white sheet.
“Who killed him?” she had asked.
I said, “I don’t know.”
“Look around the room.”
“I can’t see the body.”
“You don’t need to. Often the details in your surroundings give away more clues than a dead body does.”
I tried, and then I said, “I can’t.”
She said, “Yes, you can. You can do anything you want.”
I was only ten years old the first time she took me to a crime scene like that. Looking back on it, I understood how someone could see it as unorthodox, even borderline immoral. But my mom was training me for something. She had seen more of life and death than most people. She had three decades of experience solving murders. She had insight into a world that most people didn’t know about, and I think she wanted to prepare me for it.
The same way that Robbie Mile’s father had taught him about tires and cars, my mom taught me about solving crimes, about righting wrongs.
I was ten years old, and I was looking at a murder scene after the fact. I looked at the room. It was a motel room way off Interstate 72, exit 131B to the north. We were almost at the end of my mother’s jurisdiction. The Tennessee border was only seven and a half miles away.
I remembered closing my eyes and reenacting the crime scene in my head. With virtually no the details of the dead man’s appearance, I saw a man, two empty beer bottles, and a glass of wine on the tabletop. I saw a condom wrapper on the floor near the trashcan. I saw the dried suds of shampoo or shower gel still near the drain in the tub. I saw a toilet seat that had been left in the down position. I saw a piece of wadded tissue paper in the trashcan. Inside it was a chewed-up stick of gum.
There were subtle signs of a struggle—disheveled furniture, a skewed lampshade, and a rumpled bedspread like someone had been rolling around on the bed. But the only thing that indicated definitively that a struggle had occurred was the bathroom mirror. It was shattered.
My mother said, “What happened here?”
I kept my eyes closed, still scanning the room in my mind. I said, “The guy was shot.”
Never opening my eyes, I pointed at the wall behind my mother and opposite the bed. Blood was splattered high up on the wall and on the corner of the ceiling.
I said, “There’s blood splattered on that wall. The guy was shot from someone lying underneath him on the bed. The bullet was fired at close range and diagonally, probably through his gut. It exited through his back and sprayed blood at an upward angle. That’s why it’s so high up on the wall.
“And there’s stippling.”
My mother asked, “And what’s that?”
I said, “Can I see the body?”
My mother paused a beat, and then she pulled back the sheet, and I looked at the body. Then she returned the sheet and said, “Okay. Now explain.”
I said, “Burns on his skin from gunpowder. That’s how I know he was shot in the gut. It also means it was a close-range shot.”
She asked, “What kind of bullet? What kind of gun?”
I shook my head. Then I said, “I have no idea.”
I heard her frustration, but she hadn’t said anything. It was there in her breathing.
She asked, “So who killed him?”
I opened my eyes and asked, “Where’s his wallet?”
“We found it outside in the bushes.”
“His car?”
“Gone.”
I asked, “Was the money gone?”
She nodded and then she asked again, “So who killed him?”
I said, “A prostitute. He wanted to go straight to adult business after they had had a few drinks. He drank beer out of the bottle, and she drank wine by the glass. He refused to pay her up front, so she pulled a small-caliber gun out of her stocking or from a nearby purse or from wherever a woman might hide a small handgun. She shot him right in the gut—point blank.”
My mom asked, “And then?”
I said, “Then she rolled him off her and grabbed his car keys and his wallet. She ran outside, took money out of the wallet, and stole his car.”
“Any chance it was self-defense? Maybe the guy refused to pay and then decided to force himself on her?”
“Maybe. But either way, that’s up to the prosecution. And this guy’s dead. The woman isn’t. I doubt the prosecutor will let it go as self-defense.”
She nodded. “My job is to solve, not to judge. Always remember that, Widow. I don’t want you to act outside of the law.”
I stayed quiet.
She paused and then said, “Good job. Every man is innocent until proven guilty. Judgment is up to a judge and jury, not a single man.”
*****
“DO YOU WANT COFFEE?” a voice asked.
I looked up from the menu. An older waitress with deep-set brown eyes and a warm smile on her face stood over me, gazing down.
She held a jug of steaming coffee in her right hand and had an old, white coffee mug in her left. The mug looked like it had seen its fair share of dishwashers. It was worn, faded, and had tiny cracks on the exterior.
I looked up at her with a smile. She had said the magic words. What Navy man doesn’t drink coffee? I said, “Please! Let me get a coffee. Black. And two eggs, four pieces of bacon, and four pieces of toast.”
She smiled and turned and disappeared behind a counter piled with beverage machines and coffee makers. Menu items like pies and cookies were displayed in glass containers. Soon she came out from behind the display with my coffee—black, a single cup, and placed it in front of me. She handed me a set of silverware in a napkin that was rolled tight and held together by a thin sticker like the seal on an envelope. I ripped through the sticker and placed the utensils in front of me.
I drank the coffee. It was good.
About twelve minutes later, the food came. It smelled good.
I was served on a red ceramic dish. I guessed that the whole theme of the diner was red—red dishes, red walls, everything red. I wondered why the coffee mugs were white and not red, but I dismissed my curiosity almost as fast as I had raised the question.
I was more interested in eating.
*****
AFTER I FINISHED MY BREAKFAST, I asked the waitress about the area. She explained that the town’s economy was based on the lake, which was obvious. It was the next part I was more interested in. She told me that there was a medical research facility that played a smaller role, and then she didn’t say another word about it. She went on to tell me she had grown up here in Black Rock and was retiring here in a few years.
You’re probably going to die here, I thought. Not on purpose, not with any kind of intentional meanness, but thoughts came and went, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
I glanced at her nametag. It read “Hazel.”
I asked, “The medical place, is that the compound that’s surrounded by the barbed wire fence?”
She nodded and said, “It’s called the Eckhart Medical Center. The town’s only clinic is run out of it. Dr. Eckhart has been great to us. Before the doctor, we all had to drive to Oxford for serious afflictions.”
“It’s a hospital?” I asked.
“No, it’s a research facility. They do research on animals or something. But the lower north wing is set up as a clinic and emergency room. There’s a twenty-four-hour staff. The doctor keeps business hours and is always on call.”
I nodded and said nothing.
She paused and put the check down in front of me, and then she asked, “Will there be anything else?”
“Where’s the nearest Radio Shack?”
She looked at me with a blank expression and then said, “There’s Cellular Citi. It’s the only electronics store in town. They carry all kinds of stuff. It’s like a small Best Buy. Want me to draw you a map?”
I smiled. “That would be great.”
She set her tray down on my table, pulled out a pen, tore a clean sheet off a notepad, and began drawing on the paper. It took her about a minute to finish. She handed the map to me.
I accepted it and smiled again, and then she left.
I looked at the check. The bill was $9.55. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a ten and a five, stacking the bills on top of the check. The five made it a fifty percent tip, but I had the money and figured she could use the extra.
I stood up from the table and held the map in my line of sight. I stared at it and memorized the exact route she had plotted out for me. I crumpled the paper up and left it on the table. The map was etched into my memory.
My mind worked like a computer. It always had. I could visualize anything that I’d seen before or imagine anything with great detail just by closing my eyes and concentrating.
I left Roy’s Red Dinner and walked on to the electronics store. I wanted to get that charger for my phone.
*****
USING THE MAP THAT the waitress had drawn up for me, it took me over ten minutes to walk to the store. The place smelled like it was once a Laundromat. Instead of tile, it had a thick blue carpet that was stained from God knows what. Not the cleanest store ever.
I went straight to the counter and pulled my phone out of my pocket. It took the clerk all of two minutes to find the charger I needed. I paid for it and left the store.
After the store, I didn’t have a plan of attack as far as which direction I needed to go. Left seemed as good a direction as right, so I decided that from now on if I was confused about which way I wanted to go, I’d pick left.
I turned left and walked through the town. I’ve got to admit that I was starting to understand the appeal of the drifter life. Being a stranger in a strange place was appealing. It was like I was on the frontier. I was an explorer in a place that I had never explored before. It was freeing. Being told about a place and experiencing it for myself were two completely different things.
I walked through town—past the bait shops, the bars, two seafood restaurants, a used-car lot, a used-boat lot, and shabby-looking museum, which was closed today. The town had a quaint, small-town feel to it. Quite touristy, if you go for that sort of thing.
I stopped walking and found an outdoor café. I sat at a table and ordered my second coffee. The waiter brought it and left. He didn’t ask if I wanted food.
I took some time and started to think about my plan of attack. Where would I start? I had no leads, except that the sheriff knew my mother, which wasn’t much. Plus, I needed to find a way to speak to the sheriff without blowing my cover.
.