Jack Reacher 01 - Killing Floor

bucket is all filled up with old stuff that happened way back. You understand what I’m saying here?”
    “Sure I understand,” I said. “So way back, did you ever hear him play?”
    “Who?” he said.
    I looked at both of them in turn. I wasn’t sure whether this was some kind of a rehearsed routine.
    “Blind Blake,” I said. “Did you ever hear him play?”
    “No, I never heard him play,” the old guy said. “But my sister did. Got me a sister more than about ninety years old or thereabouts, may she be spared. Still alive. She did a little singing way back and she sang with old Blind Blake many a time.”
    “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