BLIND TRIAL Brian Deer (best novels for beginners TXT) 📖

parked nose to the cruiser, leaped out, and strolled to the doors. The glass was taped with makeshift yellow crosses and a yellow-framed laser-print sign.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

DO NOT ENTER

THIS BUILDING IS CLOSED

Ben made binoculars with his fingers against the glass, and glimpsed men and women in dark pants and white shirtsleeves stacking plastic crates around reception. More crates were piled against a Proud of our Products stand, like stuff getting ready to ship. Each bore a label, scrawled with red Sharpie.

9/09, 9/10, 9/11, 9/12…

16/1, 16/2, 16/3…

He stepped away from the doors, dug his hands in his pockets, and strolled, so casual, to his car. He reversed in an arc around the white police Ford. This wasn’t a time to chew the fat with cops.

He swung right onto Tenth—gas, turn signal, gas—and hung the next right for the freeway.

“Like to see their faces, bro. Shame we gotta go. We talking about a trial here, or what?”

His foot pressed the pedal and the car surged forward down a ramp to I-75 North.

THE BMW felt heavy with all his shit to take home. They’d been up since dawn cramming it in: back and forth past the pool, hauling boxes, bags, and books. Now, with clothes heaped to the windows, and the Gibson in the trunk, it was adios Atlanta, nice to know you Georgia, look out for my return with the band.

He filtered left onto the freeway, fished out the Maui Jims, and hit the player with Son Volt’s Trace. He’d often covered a track by his hero, Jay Farrar, about a river town resisting a flood. He cranked back the sunroof. Luke’s hair fluttered. Commuter traffic snarled on the inbound.

He dropped his seat a notch and Luke did the same. In seven hundred miles they’d be home.

TWO HOURS later, they were north of Chattanooga, climbing toward the Central time zone. On the pine-covered slopes of the Tennessee Valley, Luke saw an eagle soar out across the interstate: a silhouette, hardly moving on the breeze.

“Know what I think?” he said, inspired by the bird.

“Do tell, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“What happens to them doesn’t matter much at all. It’s what happened to you that counts.”

“What, lost my first job after fifty-seven days? Just as you predicted, I guess.”

“Shit, who predicted. It’s what you did, man. Shows if you do the right thing, and pick the right moment, it can pay off a life’s worth of shit.”

“Oh yeah? And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Like, balance it all out, you know? Like how the smallest crack of light lets you see in a dark room.”

“You think?”

“I think.”

“Therefore I am.”

Luke sensed avoidance: which was probably to be expected. It was too deep to analyze. Yet. But late Monday evening, plus half the day Tuesday, they’d gone over and over the facts. Then Tuesday afternoon Ben went to his bedroom, called his mother, and talked for an hour.

Luke sat by the pool, and when his buddy resurfaced, more than one eye was red.

TWO HOURS more and they were the better side of Nashville, then another two, past Paducah. Luke took the wheel near the Illinois state line and, as they cruised at 70 mph into God’s own jurisdiction, he squeezed his Motorola. Back on call.

Ben replayed Trace, rolled a joint in the glove box, and cracked a can of Heineken beer. That would be illegal transportation of an alcoholic beverage: a twelve-month suspension—for the driver.

Ben shut the roof, lit the joint, breathed deep, and let the smoke trickle from his lungs. “Trouble with you is you’re so theoretical, you know that? Always looking for the smart explanation.”

“So… Tell me I’m wrong. What’s the dumb explanation? Why didn’t you go along with that scam?”

“Yeah, well look at it this way. What if it was you who’d gotten that vaccine? You thought about that?”

“Sure I have.”

“And thought you were protected, caught the bug, and got worse for the shots?”

“You know me. Would have laid that on you.”

“Yeah, and you could have. You could have laid that on me. Think of that. Think of what I’d be in on.”

“Well, shit’s incremental. Nobody wakes up one day and says, ‘I’m gonna fuck everyone over.’ I mean, Henry Louviere wasn’t born bribing judges. People get suckered into shit.”

“People have choices.”

“Yeah, well choice is contingent on circumstance, don’t you think? Said yourself what happened might have something to do with me. What if we never met at the Cozy Cleaners on Menomonee?”

TWO HOURS more and they were onto I-57, past the turnoff for East St. Louis. Luke still drove. Ben poked his new phone, then announced that he’d had an idea. “Let’s go see Belleville. Breathe the Son Volt air. Play with Farrar. What you say? What you say?”

“Yeah, why don’t we? Take tea with Santa Claus and Sponge Bob while we’re there. Farrar moved to St. Louis. Least that’s what I heard. And he wouldn’t play with you if he didn’t.”

“Yeah, well, let’s take a look. You want to take a look? Can we? What you say? What you say?”

“Okay, we’ll take a look. Only add a hundred miles.”

They came off on Illinois 161.

The state road was dusty, the color of desert, and lined with a feeble yellow verge. Yards from the interstate, Luke saw the sign, but no words of acknowledgment were called for. It was a regular green job, lettered in white, but he saw it in bolts of fork lightning.

CENTRALIA 9

BELLEVILLE 59

They were never going to need that extra fifty.

He drove without speaking. Beside him, Ben coughed. Luke didn’t glance—well, not obviously. He could see his friend sideways from behind the Maui Jims while pretending to check the mirror. He saw him strain the seatbelt, hands clasped between his knees, leaning forward like a confused little kid. He was looking so hard to soak up the sights that anyone who came this way saw.

Past a Burger King restaurant, over a railroad bridge, and through the old town of Centralia. Fourteen thousand residents… White clapboard houses…

Luke