The Hollow Ones(69)

“I’m sorry,” said Solomon. “Sorry you got pulled into this. Sorry for my part in it. I’m not thinking very straight. Do you understand what I am saying? I am trying to warn you.”

Odessa hated seeing Solomon like this. She put the back of her hand to her mouth, unable to think of anything to say.

Blackwood stepped forward. Solomon’s hand rested on his chest, and Blackwood reached for it. Solomon tried to pull back once he realized what was happening, but Blackwood would not let him go. He gripped Solomon’s hand, the forever man looking down into the eyes of the dying man.

Blackwood said to him, “You never got over the boy in Mississippi. Your first case.”

Solomon’s face relaxed. “Vernon,” he said. Solomon’s mind seemed to clear. His eyes found Blackwood’s face—really found it—for the first time that afternoon.

“You are wrong about what you accomplished in your time,” said Blackwood. “You were instrumental in saving this world many times over. You have a legacy, Earl Solomon. A great and secret legacy. No one else knows the things we have seen.”

Tears welled in Solomon’s eyes. Odessa saw his knuckles whiten, returning Blackwood’s grip with what little remained of his strength.

“You were right about one thing,” said Blackwood. “I do envy you your final journey. May it be a peaceful one.”

Tears shook loose, spilling down Solomon’s gaunt cheeks. On deep, cleansing breaths, he said, “Thank you.”

Blackwood released him. Solomon’s hand lay back across his belly over the sheet. He was calm again. He was present.

His gaze found Odessa’s. After a moment, he nodded, as though reassuring her he was all right. “Just be careful,” he said.

Odessa nodded, smiling out of relief rather than joy.

Solomon’s gaze drifted upward almost to the ceiling, as though watching something else. Odessa thought they were losing him again, until his hand lifted up, pointing above her head.

“There,” he said.

She turned slowly, indulging him…only to realize that the television was in fact behind and above her head, the sound muted.

On it, a live shot of a bank robbery in progress, a siege situation in Forest Hills, Queens. Police vehicles with lights flashing were part of a cordon half a block away from the bank’s entrance. The news camera zoomed in on the door, which was held open by a woman wearing a business suit, the tail of her blouse hanging out, pointing what appeared to be a handgun in the direction of the camera, screaming something at the police.

The chyron read: ACTIVE SHOOTER IN HOSTAGE SITUATION AT QUEENS BANK: BRANCH MANAGER SUSPECTED.

Odessa was emotionally drained. It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing.

“Branch manager suspected?” she said. “Shooting up her own bank?” Blackwood was standing at her shoulder now, looking up.

“It’s a Hollow.”





1962. The Mississippi Delta.



Solomon parked behind some pickups with out-of-state tags from Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee. Outside the corner gas station and auto repair shop, a white station attendant in a dark-blue jumpsuit with his sleeves rolled up leaned on one of the pumps, watching the men in suits, one black and one white, walk past. The station was open but there was no business today.

Solomon approached the ramshackle post office in the center of Gibbston. A crowd of whites, maybe thirty strong, stood on and off the sidewalk, mostly men in short sleeves with two or three women wearing light dresses and sun hats. That’s where Sheriff Ingalls stood with his deputies, his thumbs in his gun belt. On the other side of the street, not far down from there, a smaller crowd of blacks stood out in front of the church, an even number of men and women, staring uneasily at their opposite number.

Organ music played from the church, but it wasn’t Sunday. It was an impromptu weekday morning service. The congregation was mourning the death of Vernon Jamus.

The boy’s corpse had been discovered in an old, unmarked graveyard overnight, not far from the tree where Hack Cawsby had been hanged.

Solomon glanced back at Blackwood, who had slowed a few steps behind him, an I told you so look, but also an accusatory one.

The boy’s death had set the town on edge. And now Blackwood expected Solomon to lie for him.

Macklin, the Jackson special agent in charge, came off the sidewalk in front of the post office, cleaning his eyeglasses with the end of his necktie. “Good Christ, Solomon,” he said, sliding on his spectacles and blinking. “Now what?”

“I know, sir.”

“Lucky piece of work, you finding the boy’s body so quick.”

Solomon cleared his throat, feeling Blackwood a few feet behind him. “The graveyard and the hanging site are not far from the boy’s house as the crow flies. There’s paths through the sugarcane.”

SAIC Macklin nodded. Solomon couldn’t be sure he believed him. Macklin looked down at the black crowd outside the church. “They think it was retributive. A life for a life.”

Solomon said, “Wouldn’t you?”

Macklin glanced at the white crowd, nearer them. “I don’t know,” he said. “Killing kids is not usually how it’s done.”

Solomon could think of a handful of cases off the top of his head where that wasn’t true, but he let it stand. The less talking he did, the better.