Jack Reacher 01 - Killing Floor

coming toward 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. I 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.”

33
    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 tires 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 entrance doors. Finlay came back out of the dark with a stainless-steel revolver and a book of matches. And a grin. He waved the two of us out to the car and struck a match. Threw it under the rear of the wrecked green Bentley and crunched on out to join us.
    “Diversion, right?” he said.
    We saw the fire start as we nosed out of the lot. Bright blue flames were rolling across the carpet like a wave on the beach. The fire took hold of the splintered wood and rolled outward, feeding itself on the huge gasoline stain. The flames changed to yellow and orange and the air started sucking in through the hole where the entrance had been. Within a minute, the whole place was burning. I smiled and took off up the county road.
    I used headlights for most of the fourteen miles. Drove fast. Took maybe twelve minutes. Doused the lights and pulled up a quarter mile short of the target. Turned around in the road and backed up a little way. Left the car facing south. Down toward town. Doors unlocked. Keys in.
    Hubble carried the big bolt cutter. Finlay checked the revolver he’d taken from the office. I reached under the seat and pulled out the plastic bottle we’d filled with gas. Slipped