A Visible Darkness - By Jonathon King Page 0,67

of the parking lot before he started the Caprice and drove away.

Eddie had started feeling better, was getting back to his routine, pushing his cart at night when he saw the blue-and-red lights flashing down the street near his momma’s house. He was coming down off a high and couldn’t figure out why the police cars were pointing at each other.

From behind a hedge he watched them waving cars on when they slowed down to look. People that he recognized, neighbors of his mother, were standing near the cars, walking back and forth, asking the cops questions and then turning away in frustration. Ms. Emily was out there with her old robe and slippers on, her hair all standing up straight and stiff-like, her voice like his momma’s, all high and preachy.

“Ain’t nobody in that house, I’m tellin’ y’all. Ms. Baines done left to go back up to Carolina to be with her people,” she was singing to one of the cops. “Y’all got us standin’ out here for nothin’, an’ I’m gonna miss my Survivor.”

Eddie left after he heard his mother’s name used. He took the alleys and the back ways and stopped once behind the auto glass place to mix his last package of heroin. Before the sun came up he was here, under the bridge.

Nearby, three homeless men were taking turns with a WILL WORK FOR FOOD, GOD BLESS YOU sign. Two would stay down under the bridge, sharing a bottle, while the third climbed up for handouts on the off ramp. When one man’s allotted time was done, they would switch. When they first saw Eddie curled up, they watched him carefully, eyeing his cart down below. But when they got brave and came close, Eddie unfolded himself and stared into their faces and they backed off and went on with their routine.

Now, with the traffic humming and burring across the concrete above him and the full sun hot just a few feet away, he was cold.

Maybe if he waited for the dark, he thought, maybe then he could be invisible again.

After Diaz dropped me at the sheriff’s office, I spent the rest of the night sleeping in my truck, parked in a spot along the ocean- front. It was windless but I could still hear the surf sliding up on the wet sand. I was awake when the sky went from dark to gray to a green-blue blush, and then the sun rose like a bubble of wax. When it cleared the horizon it threw a trail of light crystals across the flat water.

My cell phone rang at 7:00 A.M.

“Sorry if I woke you at an inopportune time,” Billy said. “But I did manage to get some information and I wanted to pass it on while you were in the thick of things.”

“You saw the news?”

“The demise of Dr. Marshack seems particularly coincidental, and I know how much you despise that standard.”

“So spill already,” I said, trying to rub my eyes into focus before realizing that there was a film of salt spread across my front window.

“Dr. Marshack did indeed work at the prison at the same time as McCane. He left a year after McCane was bounced.”

“Have you talked with our partner recently?” Billy asked.

“I paged him,” I said. “Nothing.”

“I’ll call his main office in Savannah, find out if he is still supposed to be on the job,” Billy said.

When I filled him in on the way Eddie Baines was fleshing out, Billy went silent for an uncomfortable stretch.

“Nothing to tie him to the deaths of our women?”

“Nothing but a feeling, Billy. But we haven’t been able to talk with him yet. I’ll call you,” I said and punched the set off.

The sun had gone white and the air in the cab was already thick and hot. I rolled up the window, kicked on the A.C. and went to find coffee.

I was sitting at a sidewalk table at a beachfront café watching the early sunbathers make their trek to the sand when McCane called.

“Hey, Freeman. I didn’t catch you loungin’ around in someone’s bed this morning getting’ a little on-the-job perk, did I?”

I took a long drink of hot coffee, counted five cars rolling by on the avenue and waited until my jaw unclenched.

“Freeman? You there, bud?”

“You lose your beeper, McCane?” I finally answered.

“Nope. Got it right here with, uh, three of your pages on it.”

“You been on vacation?”

“Matter of fact I was down to Miami,” he said, putting a southern “ah” on the