Dark Horse (A Jim Knighthorse Novel) Read Free

Ana, accompanied by Charley Brown’s assistant,
Mary Cho. We were alone, waiting for Derrick Booker to make his
grand appearance. Mary was Chinese and petite and pretty. She wore
a blue power suit, with the hem just above her knees. She sat next
to me, and from our close proximity I had a clear view of her
knees. Nice knees. Cho was probably still a law student. Probably
worked out a whole lot. Seemed a little uptight, but nothing a
little alcohol couldn’t fix. Was probably a little tigress in bed.
She wasn’t much of a talker and seemed immune to my considerable
charm. Probably because she had caught me looking at her knees.
    The heavy door with the wire window opened
and Derrick was shown into the conference room by two strapping
wardens. He was left alone with us, the wardens waiting just
outside the door. The kid himself was manacled and hogtied. Should
he make a run for it, Pope John Paul II himself could have caught
him from behind.
    Mary Cho sprang to life, brightening
considerably, leaning forward and gesturing to a chair opposite
us.
    “Derrick, thanks for meeting us,” she
said.
    He shrugged, raising his cuffed hands
slightly. “As if I had anything better to do.”
    Which is what I would have said. I stifled a
grin. I suspected grins were illegal in the Orange County jail.
Derrick sounded white, although he tried to hide that fact with a
lot of swaggering showmanship. In fact, he sounded white and rich,
with a slightly arrogant lilt to his voice. He was good looking,
with strong features and light brown eyes. He was tall and built
like an athlete.
    “I have someone here who wants to speak with
you,” said Cho.
    “Who? Whitey?”
    I raised my hand. “That would be me.”
    Derrick’s father owned lots of real estate
across southern California, and Derrick himself had grown up filthy
rich. He was about as far from the ghetto as you could get. Yet
here he was, sounding as if he had lived the mean streets all his
life. As if he had grown up in poverty, rather than experiencing
the best Orange County had to offer, which is considerable. I
suspected here in prison he was in survival mode, where being a
wealthy black kid is as bad as being a wealthy white kid. Except
that he had the jargon wrong and a few years out of date, and he
still sounded upper class, no matter how hard he tried to hide
it.
    “My name’s Jim Knighthorse.”
    “Hey, I know you, man!”
    “Who doesn’t?” I said. “And those who don’t,
should.”
    He smiled, showing a row of perfect white
teeth. “How’s your leg? Saw you bust it up against Miami. Hell, I
wanted to throw up.”
    “I did throw up. You play?”
    “Yeah. Running back.”
    “You any good?” I asked.
    “School is full of whities, what do you
think?”
    I shrugged. “Some whities can run.”
    He grinned again. “Yeah, no shit. You could
run, bro. Dad says wasn’t for your leg you’d be in the pros.”
    “Still might.”
    “No shit?”
    “No shit.”
    “What about the leg?” he asked.
    “We’ll see about the leg,” I said.
    We were silent. Derrick was losing the ghetto
speak. His eyes had brightened considerably with the football talk.
We looked at each other. Down to business.
    “You do her, Derrick?”
    “Do her?”
    “He means kill her, Derrick,” said Cho. “He’s
asking if you killed Amanda Peterson.”
    “Thank you, assistant Cho,” I said, smiling
at her. She looked away quickly. Clearly she didn’t trust herself
around me. I looked back at Derrick. “You kill her, Derrick?”
    “Hell, no.”
    His arms flexed. Bulbous veins stood out
against his forearms, disappearing up the short sleeves of his
white prison attire. I could see those arms carrying a
football.
    “Why should anyone believe you?” I asked.
    “Give a fuck what anyone believes.”
    “They found the knife in your car, Derrick.
Her blood was on the knife. It adds up.”
    He was trying for hostile bad-ass, but he was
just a kid, and eventually his emotions won out. They