Short Stories by Lee Child

Author:Lee Child
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: toothrot
Published: 2012-01-15T23:00:00+00:00

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

He said he wouldn’t talk to me. I asked him why. He said because he was a cop and I was a journalist. I said he sounded like a guy with something to hide. He said no, he had nothing to hide.

“So talk to me,” I said, and I knew he would.

He scuffed around for a minute more, hands on the top of the bar, drumming his fingers, moving a little on his stool. I knew him fairly well. He was edging out of the summer of his career and entering the autumn. His best years were behind him. He was in the valley, facing a long ten years before his pension. He liked winning, but losing didn’t worry him too much. He was a realistic man. But he liked to be sure. What he hated was not really knowing whether he had won or lost.

“From the top,” I said.

He shrugged and took a sip of his beer and sighed and blew fumes toward the mirror facing us. Then he started with the 911 call. The house, out beyond Chandler, south and east of the city. A long low ranch, prosperous, walled in, the unlit pool, the darkness. The parents, arriving home from a party. The silence. The busted window, the empty bed. The trail of blood through the hallway. The daughter’s body, all ripped up. Fourteen years old, damaged in a way he still wasn’t prepared to discuss.

I said, “There were details that you withheld.”

He asked, “How do you know?”

“You guys always do that. To evaluate the confessions.”

He nodded.

I asked, “How many confessions did you get?”

“A hundred and eight.”

“All phony?”

“Of course.”

“What information did you withhold?”

“I’m not going to tell you.”

“Why not? You not sure you got the right guy?”

He didn’t answer.

“Keep going,” I said.

So he did. The scene was clearly fresh. The parents had gotten back maybe moments after the perpetrator had exited. Police response had been fast. The blood on the hallway carpet was still liquid. Dark red, not black, against the kid’s pale skin. The kid’s pale skin was a problem from the start. They all knew it. They were in a position to act fast and heavy, so they were going to, and they knew it would be claimed later that the speed was all about the kid being white, not black or brown. It wasn’t. It was a question of luck and timing. They got a fresh scene, and they got a couple of breaks. I nodded, like I accepted his view. Which I did. I was a journalist, and I liked mischief as much as the next guy, but sometimes things were straightforward.

“Go on,” I said.

There were photographs of the kid all over the house. She was an only child. She was luminous and beautiful. She was stupefying, the way fourteen-year-old white Arizona girls often are.

“Go on,” I said.

The first break had been the weather. There had been torrential rain two days previously, and then the heat had come back with a vengeance.

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