You Don't Name Him

Chapter 5

 Chapter-5

   Outside in the gravel lot the heat was up. It must have rained all night and now the sun was blasting away and the ground was steaming. I stood up face to the sun and inhaled as the officers regrouped. One at each elbow for the short walk to the cars. Jackson still on ball with the pump action. At the first car he skipped backwards a step as the officer named Cisco opened the rear door. My head was pushed down and I was nudged into the car with a neat hip-to-hip contact from the left hand backup. So far, I was rather impressed by these lads. In a town this far from anywhere, surely a result of a lot of training more than experience.

   I was alone in the back of the car. a thick glass partition divided the space. The front doors were still open. Cisco and Jackson got in, Jackson drove as Cisco was twisted around keeping me under observation. Nobody talked as the backup car followed. The car was definitely new. Quiet and smooth riding. Clean and cool inside. No ingrained traces of desperate and pathetic people riding where I was riding. 

   I looked outside of my window. Georgia. I saw rich, red and heavy earth. Very long and straight rows of short bushes in the field. Peanuts maybe. Belly crops but valuable to the owner. Or to the grower. Did people own their land here? Or did the giant corporations? I didn't know.

   The drive to the town was too short. The car hissed over the smooth soaked tarmac. After maybe half a mile, I saw two neat buildings, both new, both with tidy landscaping. The police station and the firehouse. They stood alone together behind a lawn with a statue, north edge of the town. Attractive county architecture with a generous budget. Roads were smooth tarmac, sidewalks were red blocks. Three hundred yards south, I could see a blinding white church steeple behind a small huddle of buildings. A prosperous community. Built, I guess on prosperous farm incomes and high taxes on commuters who worked up in Atlanta. 

   Jackson stared at me as the car slowed to yaw into the the approach to the station house. A wide semicircle of driveway. I read a low masonry sign : Margrave Police Headquarters. I thought : should I be worried? I was under arrest in a town I had never been before. Apparently for murder. But I knew two things. First, they could not prove something had happened if it had not happened. And second, I hadn't killed anybody. Not in their town, and not for a long time, anyway.