Free The Blackstone Commentaries by Rob Riggan

the middle of the night, wake my wife and scare her like I’d died, then suggest I was out philandering.”
    Dugan reached over, grabbed that morning’s copy of the Gazette & Reformer and slid it across the desk. It was folded open to page 5. Above a huge ad for Reedy’s Mobile Home Sales was a picture of the Carvers’ Monte Carlo, obviously taken out at Clyde Dean Forrest’s auto yard. The back end of the tow truck was in view, as well as several cars parked against a high wooden fence. The Carvers had probably tipped the paper off, Dugan reflected. Or the city police. The family lived in the city, and cops got prickly about knowing what was going on in their bailiwick. But there was just the photo and a little blurb beneath it describing the incident in the barest terms, giving only the name of the Carver family, not the suspect car or the fact that there was one. Harlan knew better. The paper hadn’t even called Dugan. It just made extra photos and sent them to him, knowing he’d tell them what he had when he got ready.
    â€œI never suggested you were out philandering.” I didn’t have to. He watched Pemberton go ashen over the picture.
    â€œYou think I had something to do with that ? Listen close.” Pemberton’s patrician face had turned a fine pink. He leaned over and pointed a finger at Dugan. “That’s my name, my reputation, my family, my home you’re playing with. You have intruded where you don’t belong !”
    â€œNo one has accused anyone, Martin.” Still patient, but the world was suddenly too quiet. “Were you up there?”
    Startled, Pemberton stood upright. “Hell no!” Face now red at the audacity.
    â€œThen you’ve got nothing to worry about. Like I just said, it’s routine, Martin.” Suddenly he didn’t believe that a bit, hearing the lie beneath his own soft, unshaken voice, knowing the man across the desk was too quicknot to hear it, too. Here we go , he thought. It’s been there since I pried that damn hundred dollars out of you, just waiting. He felt himself go out of focus, a fine pain shooting through his temples, a twinge of nausea. He flashed to the mountains and the cabin where he’d first lived when he came to Blackstone County, all that world below just grass and wind. Then he was back in his office, the man across the desk showing a look of amazed incredulity changing into rage, like someone had just grabbed his balls and windpipe at the same time and pulled in opposite directions.
    â€œNo you don’t, Dugan. You don’t play your fucking little games with me.” Pemberton’s features twisted now, not at all refined or aristocratic or rich or educated or just plain born right.
    Dugan was comforted. Just another unhappy human face. How close to the surface it always was. This one likes to swear, only he’s keeping his voice in check—he’s not a yeller, all noise and lack of substance. And he’s been waiting, too. So let’s go ahead and get it over with.
    Hell , he thought moments later, alone again, feeling a touch of regret and sadness when he heard the outside door slam, I haven’t even got a case .

VIII
    Eddie
    Ordinarily, anywhere from midnight to dawn, if they were out and the night was pretty well gone anyhow, that was Charlie and Eddie’s favorite time, gliding along empty roads, passing darkened houses and farms. They could drive anywhere they wanted and belong wherever they wanted to belong, whether it was down in the flats among the old cotton fields, or in the scrub of the Pinetown area where the black people lived, or way up in the mountains near the state line where Charlie began his career in Blackstone County, up above Rainer Cove where Doc Willis had his clinic. Sometimes a narrow road opened so they might suddenly see little lights far off and below them, and they knew it was Damascus or some other town, maybe in Virginia.