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Hell, you're just guessing. It might've had nothing to do with that. We aren't in Alabama, here. Could've been a perfectly ordinary motive. Jealousy, greed. Maybe the kid was a pusher, could've been skimming and . . . |
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Right. He was black, therefore he was a pusher. |
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That's the kind of thinking . . . |
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The stadium lights came on. |
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Hanson flinched, sucked in a quick breath. Oh, Jesus! He whirled around. he scanned the stands on both sides of the field. Nobody there. But he knew he'd been caught. |
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Stay cool, he told himself. |
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Probably just a maintenance man. Might not even know I'm here. Yet. |
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Hell, I'm a cop. I've got business here. |
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Somebody turned the lights on. |
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But his skin prickled as he imagined the dead boy staggering through a passageway of the stadium, coming toward the field. A black shape shuffling through the dark. Rigid all over, arms sticking out, stubs of fingers hooked like claws. No face at all. Just a black, earless knot above the shoulders. With teeth. |
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He thought he could hear the slow shuffle of Maxwell's charred feet on the concrete, hear his crisp skin cracking as he moved, see it flaking off and drifting down from him like dead leaves. |
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