“What if the crow’s walking?”
She gave him directions, and he headed out the door. The late afternoon air was crisp and clean, and he crossed the street and found a footpath beside the main road that led into town. The path was well-worn, and he settled into a comfortable pace. It had become a beautiful day to be outdoors, and with each step, he felt himself start to calm down.
He walked with his hands stuck in his pockets, thinking about Beasley and the scarecrow. He’d killed seven people in his life, including them. Each time, it had punched an invisible hole in him that had been slow to heal. Most cops he knew could walk away from a killing without any regrets. He couldn’t. He would think about Beasley and the scarecrow for a long time, wondering if he could have handled it any differently.
A mile into his walk, a pickup truck pulled up alongside him. He heard it slow down and stopped walking. Then he glanced at the driver. It was a middle-aged woman with her hair tied in a bun. She stared at him anxiously, and he realized he recognized her. She’d served Ricky soft drinks in the cafeteria and known that Ricky liked to drink Orange Crush.
The truck braked to a halt. The road had four lanes, and no other vehicles were in sight. Valentine took his hands from his pockets and waited expectantly. The woman stared at him while clutching the wheel. She looked scared out of her wits.
“Hello,” he said.
She continued to stare, as if frozen in space.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
Her breath fogged the side window. She shook her head.
“Do you want to tell me something?”
She glanced in her mirror to see if anyone was coming, then rolled down her window. “This is a small town,” she said, making it sound like a curse.
“Am I in danger?”
She hesitated. “You should leave. For your own good.”
“Am I in danger?”
“I’ve told you all I can.”
“Look, we’re going the same way. How about you give me a ride?”
She hesitated. She had a kind face, and he remembered the easy repartee she’d shared with Ricky that morning. He stepped into the road, thinking that if he got in the truck, she might open up and tell him what was on her mind. She shook her head, and the truck quickly sped away. Standing still had gotten him chilled, and he started walking again.
One of the curses of the retired was dredging up childhood memories. Valentine had read this in a magazine published by AARP. According to the writer, the elderly spent too much time dwelling on stuff that had happened when they were kids. It was a hard trap to avoid, considering all the free time retired people had on their hands, and the writer had suggested that his readers take up a hobby, like collecting stamps.
The article had annoyed the hell out of him. Since moving to Florida, he’d found himself thinking about his childhood often and had come to the conclusion that dredging up childhood memories was just another of life’s natural stages. You grow old, slow down, and look over your shoulder at where you’ve been. It wasn’t a trap, and nothing was wrong with it.
He often thought about his father. Dominic Valentine was a drunk and had abused his wife. At age eighteen Valentine had thrown him out of the house, and they’d never gotten along after that. Yet what Valentine remembered about him now was his father’s honesty. His father believed it was wrong to steal or take anything that didn’t belong to him. It was a lesson that he’d instilled in his son, one that Valentine was grateful for.
He stopped walking. He could see Slippery Rock up ahead, and slipped into the forest by the side of the road and stood beneath the shadow of a giant oak. Fishing a pack of Life Savers from his pocket, he popped one into his mouth.
For a while, he watched the comings and goings in town. In the daylight it looked smaller than it had at night. He tried to guess how many people lived here. Nine thousand? Probably less. Atlantic City, the town he’d been born and raised in, was also small. His mother had liked to say that gossip was the local currency, with everyone in town knowing everyone else’s business. He guessed Slippery Rock wasn’t any different.
His thoughts drifted to Ricky Smith. He was a local fixture; the woman in the cafeteria had known what kind of soda he drank. And Ricky knew everyone, as well; he’d pegged Roland Pew’s bicycle sitting outside the bank that afternoon.
What was the woman in the pickup truck trying to tell him? That everyone in town was connected to Ricky in some mysterious way? It sounded far-fetched, yet she had acted genuinely scared.
He rested his head against the tree, its bark cold against his neck. Closing his eyes, he felt like he was falling through a bottomless hole, and put the palms of his hands against the tree for support. All his life, he’d been having epiphanies, strange little moments in time when his brain suddenly saw truth where only questions had been before. He was having an epiphany now, and Ricky’s incredible string of luck suddenly took on a whole new meaning. To an outsider, Ricky winning the lottery and a drawing for a trip to Hawaii and a horse race looked like a miracle. But to the locals, it didn’t look like a miracle at all. Instead of making a fuss over him, they were accepting it. Anywhere else, they would have been throwing palm fronds at his feet and treating him like a saint.
Not here. Not once had Tony seen anyone in town come up to Ricky, whack him on the back, and tell him how amazing his lucky streak was.
But why?
Only one good answer came to mind. The locals knew something about Ricky that he didn’t. They knew what was going on.
Valentine opened his eyes and realized he had his answer. The key to the puzzle was right here in Slippery Rock, and he walked out of the forest determined to find it.
21
Gerry figured it was time to leave Gulfport. He’d done like his father had asked, and talked to Tex Snyder. The fact that it had turned into a dead end was too bad, but he couldn’t do anything about it.
He checked out of the Holiday Inn a few minutes after six. He hadn’t eaten much that day, and had been eyeing the flashing neon sign on the restaurant directly across the road from the casino. BEST STEAKS IN THE SOUTH. He was in the mood for a big bleeding piece of meat, even though his old man would probably holler when he saw the charge come through on the credit card. What the hell.
He ended up ordering a sixteen-ounce T-bone with hash browns and string beans smothered in butter on the side. The meat was tenderized in something that would probably give him stomach cancer in ten years, but he didn’t care. He’d crossed a major bridge in his life today. He’d walked away from temptation. It was worth celebrating.
The meal made him want to sleep, and he ordered a double espresso. By the time he got on the road it was seven-fifteen and his eyelids felt like they were nailed to his forehead. He’d made a hotel reservation in Hattiesburg, and planned to get up first thing in the morning and catch a commuter flight back to Atlanta, then home to Tampa.
He drove to the run-down beachfront marina and hung a left on Highway 49. In his mirror he watched the marina’s lights slowly fade. He’d heard that Donald Trump had expressed an interest in the marina, then backed out. Gerry guessed it was because the Donald didn’t like the way gambling was run in Mississippi. The state had a conscience when it came to gambling, and had put limits on how much locals could wager; five hundred dollars for two hours was the maximum. They’d initiated the rule as a result of a rise in personal bankruptcies, and it had worked great. Gerry had decided he liked that. It kept things sane.
The speed limit was sixty-five. He drove a mile below it through the outskirts of Gulfport. The other good thing was that the state was pouring the proceeds from the casinos into public works and schools. Like the Indian reservations, they were doing something constructive with the money. He liked that, too.
