A Visible Darkness - By Jonathon King Page 0,43

the carport door still held the yellow crime scene tape across its threshold. At the next corner I turned back south, this time using the narrow alley. Behind the Thompson house, I stopped and got out, assessing the way a stealthy man on foot might have approached. The alley-side street lamp was a jagged cone of broken glass.

From here he would have been able to see the windows of the back bedroom, but not the front, where Ms. Thompson might have discreetly let her man in.

I sat down on an upended paint can and watched the back of the house, guessing at the difficulty a killer would have getting across the darkened lawn to the storage shed behind the carport. None. A trail of ants worked in a line across the breadth of the alley like a fishing line on the surface of nervous water.

He could have sat back here for hours. But who might have seen him? Trash collectors? Kids on their bikes? Neighbors using the alley to park instead of circling for a street-side spot?

I moved the can closer to the hedge and estimated the cover he would have had in the dark to work on the carport door. Behind me I picked up the sound of shoes scuffing to my left. They weren’t sneaking, just walking slow and sure, like athletes showing up for practice.

The three young men I’d first mistaken for the neighborhood drug posse had gathered behind me. The one who seemed to be the leader was watching me with a curious head tilt. The other two had cut off any escape route to the north. My truck clogged the path to the south. Their hands were out of their pockets this time. One of them was wearing a thin black glove with the fingers cut off. It was impossible to tell with their baggy, calf-high shorts and long shirts whether they were carrying or not.

They let me check them before the leader took a couple of steps closer and then squatted on his heels to bring his face down even to mine.

“This part of the investigation, G?”

He had put a derisive emphasis on the “in” syllable.

“I’m not with the government,” I said, holding his eyes but watching for movement from the pair behind him. I could probably kick through him and scramble for the truck. But if they were armed, I wouldn’t make it.

“This the second place you showin’ up after somebody did wrong in the off-limits,” the leader said. “Ms. Mary said you was helpin’.”

It was a statement, and it is my practice not to answer statements that are phrased as questions. Some people think I’m a smart-ass when I do it.

“I’m working with an attorney,” I answered. “A friend of the women who have recently died like Ms. Mary’s mother.”

“Workin’ on what? Takin’ they money?”

His eyes betrayed no anger in the accusation. They only drifted off my face to the direction of the Thompson house. He was three feet away. I could see the two gold caps on his back teeth when he spoke. His breath was odorless.

“Some people don’t think those women died naturally,” I said. “Some people think they might have been murdered for their life insurance money.”

“Family gets insurance,” he said, this time his voice held a sense of dismissal.

“In these cases, some investors bought up the policies. But the longer the women lived, the less the policies were worth.”

He kept his eyes on the house for several beats, assessing my words.

“Ms. Thompson ain’t dead,” he finally said, finding the flaw in my explanation.

“Some people think whoever’s doing the killing didn’t know she was being visited by Mr. Harris.”

One of the two standing close behind now snickered, and the sound pulled at the corner of the leader’s mouth.

“Hell,” he said. “Everybody know Mr. Harris be visitin’.”

When the leader went quiet, the others followed. He shifted his feet and the movement made me flinch, but I covered by asking my own question.

“What did you mean by ‘the off-limits?’ ”

He assessed me again and decided to answer.

“They’s parts of the neighborhood that business ain’t done,” he said. “People here know you don’t mess in the places where the old folks live. ’Specially the great-grands.”

The two behind were nodding.

“You wanna sell and smoke some shit, they’s a place for that. We don’t mess with that. They leave the off-limits alone.”

I nodded my head. It was an odd truce, but admirable in some way. Again the silence had its time.

“I think the man