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We strolled through the trees toward a white gazebo. Pine needles and rose petals had been scattered on the grass by a windstorm during the night.

'My PI had to do some checking on Darl's record,' I said. I kept my eyes straight ahead on the piled dirt and sacks of pasteurized fertilizer and potted hydrangeas by the edge of a freshly spaded flower bed.

Jack cleared his throat slightly. 'Why's that?' he said.

'You don't want to find out later the other side is waiting for you with a baseball bat. Darl has four arrests involving violence of some kind… Am I correct, he beat up a waitress in a bar?'

Jack squatted by the mound of black dirt and picked up some pottery shards and rubbed them clean between his fingers. There was a thin, round place in the center of his gold hair.

'He shouldn't have been there. But she wasn't a waitress. She was a prostitute, and she and her pimp tried to roll him when they thought he was passed out,' he said.

'I'd like to take a Polaroid of Darl.'

'I'm a little unclear as to where this is going.'

'The kid who might take you for seven figures should at least be able to identify your son in a photo lineup.'

'Wait here. I'll get him.'

Five minutes later the two of them came out of the back of the house together. Even though it was almost noon, Darl's face looked thick with sleep. He raked his hair downward with a comb, then gazed at the lint that floated out in the sunlight.

'What's that spick say?' he asked.

'Darl…' his father began.

'That you blindsided him and kicked him on the ground,' I said.

'How about my car? I was supposed to enter it in the fifties show in Dallas. What right's he got to ruin my paint job?'

'That's a mean cut on your ring finger,' I said.

'It collided with a flying object. That guy's mouth.'

'Two weeks ago?'

'Yeah, his tooth broke off in my hand. I'm lucky I didn't have to get rabies shots.'

'Look up a little bit,' I said, and popped the flash on the Polaroid.

Darl's eyes stared back at me with the angry vacuity of an animal who believes it has been trapped in a box.

'I'm going back to the house,' he said.

'Thank Mr Holland for the help he's giving us, son,' Jack said.

'He's doing this for free? Get a life,' Darl said. Thick-bodied, sullen, his face unwashed, he walked through the shade, his hand caressing the peach fuzz along his jawbone.

Jack turned away, his fists knotted on his hips, his forearms corded with veins.

That afternoon Temple Carrol found me back by the windmill, hoeing out my vegetable garden. The sky behind her was purple and yellow with rain clouds, the air already heavy with the smell of ozone.

'My sister-in-law works at the video store. This tape was in the night drop box this morning,' she said.

I stopped work and leaned on my hoe. The blades of the windmill were ginning rapidly overhead.

'Somebody must have dropped it in by mistake. You'd better take a look,' she said.

We went through the back of the house to the library and plugged the cassette into the VCR.


Tags: James Lee Burke Billy Bob Holland Mystery