The Silent Places Read Free Page A

the sleeve when he hit the ground. No gloves, no thermal underclothing, no hat. The instructors at Fort Benning had told him and the others at Ranger School that cold lowers your efficiency, decreases your ability to think. Moreover, it could mess up your perspective. Too much cold and all your thoughts would begin to focus on getting warm. Everything else would be secondary.
    He should stop and build a fire. Like the man in that Jack London story. To build a fire. And live. Except that the fire and life would not be extinguished by snow falling off a branch, but by a sharpshooter crouching in the brush.
    Reese looked east. He estimated he had about an hour and a half of night left. The sun would rise and he would be exposed to daylight. Visibility was more of a threat to him than cold. When the sun rose, he would have to find a place to hide and rest. That would be the proper thing to do. The thing he had been trained to do. But instinct told him to get as much distance as possible.
    Forty minutes passed, and he saw lights in the distance. Then he heard the faint sounds of traffic. A truck’s exhaust. Music. Who would have thought he’d ever be glad to hear such a thing?
    Another thirty minutes brought him to a truck stop. Before the sun came up, he was in the back of a semitrailer, sharing hay and shit with around thirty head of cattle. He placed himself in a corner and covered himself with hay. He was asleep when the truck moved back on the highway.

TWO
    The day after the mistrial, Howard Rhodes was called to Capt. Karen Brady’s office. Hastings went with him. Lt. George Hastings was Rhodes’s supervisor and had been so for two years. Rhodes was in his early thirties, tall and handsome. He had a bit of a regal bearing and he was faintly aware of it. He was the only black detective on Hastings’s squad.
    When they arrived at the captain’s office, Karen Brady widened her eyes in surprise. She had not expected Hastings to come with Rhodes. In her mind, the issue did not concern Hastings, and she had hoped to be able to deal with Rhodes alone.
    Hastings said, “Karen,” acknowledging her with a politeness and respect that was due her rank, if not her person, but letting her know at the same time he was there.
    George Hastings had always had a tenuous relationship with Karen Brady. He believed he had nothing personal against her. He did not consider her a bad person. But he knew she had never been more than a mediocre detective. She was not good with people, whether they were from the street or cops.
    Now she said, “Close the door.” Using an order tone, probably trying to get something back on Hastings now.
    Hastings closed it, and that was when he noticed that Deputy Chief Fenton Murray was also with them. Well, well, well. The morning was full of surprises.
    The deputy chief and the detectives greeted one another. Karen motioned for the detectives to take seats. They did, and then they were on opposite sides of the captain’s desk, the brass facing members of the homicide squad.
    Hastings did not exactly trust Fenton Murray. To begin with, Murray had never worked as a detective. His entire career had been either in patrol or administration. Homicide detectives have a reputation for being snobbish and elitist, and that reputation is, to a large extent, deserved. But detective or no, Murray was no dummy. Murray was also an African-American. He was wily and cunning, as most men are who have the ambition to be chief. People who had worked with him years earlier had said he was a good, conscientious police officer, but they knew he wanted to be at the top. Or near it. He was an able, intelligent man and he not achieved his rank by luck or circumstance. But for all that, Murray was quietly threatened by homicide detectives who believed they might be smarter than he was, and he was not above the occasional power play to keep them in place.
    Now Murray said, “So what happened yesterday?”
    Rhodes looked briefly at