Dale laughed. It was a mirthless crack of a sound. “Really?” he said. They did a brief two-step as he tried to dodge past Ledger. Finally, he gave up and pulled himself up stiffly instead. “Well, maybe you didn’t know him as well as you think. You’d be surprised at the things Bell believed in.”
“Believed in what, demons?” Ledger asked. The word made Dale squirm in discomfort. He licked his lips and absently checked the pocket he’d jammed the money into. “Except demons are real.”
Dale went still. He stared at Ledger like he could see him for the first time.
“Is this a trick?” he asked, his voice scratchy and thin in his throat. His tongue dabbed out at his lower lip, and he leaned in to whisper accusingly, “Bell?”
Before Ledger could deny it, Dale bolted. He shouldered by Ledger and dove into the shadowy spaces between the bookcases. Ledger staggered—Dale was stronger than he looked, and his shoulder was like a knife—but caught his balance against a shelf. He swore under his breath and chased after Dale.
“I’m not Bell,” he yelled as he wove between Autobiography and Politics. “I just want to talk to—”
Ledger stumbled to a halt as he rounded a sharp, walnut corner and came face-to-face with Dale.
“I don’t care who you are,” Dale said. “Bell or whoever. All I did was sell some books. That’s not a crime.”
Ledger held his hands up in a placating gesture. “I’m not Syder,” he said. “I’m not a cop. I just want some information.”
“I’m not worried about the cops,” Dale said.
He pushed one of the romance bookcases over with a short, hard shove. Books pitched off the painted wooden shelves and came down in a rain of paper and cardboard. Ledger threw himself out of the way. He hit the ground on his knee and elbow, and momentum skidded him over into the wall as the heavy wooden shelving hit the floor with a crash.
“Fuck,” Ledger muttered as he pushed himself up from the floor. His shirt was dirty, and the leg of his chinos was ripped. Respectable wasn’t the word to describe him right now—Ledger brushed cobwebs out of his hair—and now he was going to have to chase some asshole down the street. “This is why I don’t take commissions anymore.”
Ledger barged out the door and paused on the doorstep to look left and then right. For a second, he thought he’d managed to lose Dale. Then someone hit their horn, and he saw the short, slightly built man on the other side of the street.
Dale saw him too.
Their eyes met over traffic, and Ledger mimed a “come on” gesture with both hands. Dale bolted again anyhow. He pushed his way down the street and darted around the corner into the alley.
Ledger let his head fall back and groaned, but if Dale was willing to go to this extreme not to talk to him… That meant something.
He wasn’t sure what. Not yet. But something.
Ledger stepped over the curb, waited as a dark blue van sped by, and then sprinted over the road. He had to stop abruptly, weight balanced on the balls of his feet, to avoid being run down by a Harley. It growled by, close enough that he could smell leather, and then he was on the other side of the road.
He didn’t go after Dale.
Instead, he jogged in the opposite direction. On his way down the road earlier, he’d noticed that the old laundromat was still open. It had a different name now and presumably new owners—the old one, Edith Jones, had been seventy if she was a day when Ledger had left town—but hopefully, nothing else had changed.
Ledger pushed the door open and dropped back to a brisk walk when he got inside. An older couple, side by side on the faded leather chairs, looked up from their magazines at him. The slow grumble of the machines filled the space.
It had new—at least, they had been in the last decade—machines and flooring. Instead of old, ripped lino, there were cool tiles underfoot as Ledger headed for the one thing that hadn’t changed. The door marked Management: Do not Enter.
A tired-looking woman in a faded blue tunic looked up from the wet sheets tangled around her hands as he passed.
“You can’t go in there.”
“I know,” Ledger said and pushed the door open.
The only thing on the other side was another room with a chair and a sink that might have been fixed since he last cut through here. Probably not, though. The mop and bucket in the corner were new. It didn’t seem worth the price of the sign to keep people out.
Ledger put his shoulder to the heavy external door and shoved it open onto the small backyard. The door clunked against the fire bucket full of sand and old cigarette butts shoved against the wall behind it.
It turned out that no matter how far away from home you got, you always remembered the rat runs. Ledger boosted himself over the low wall and dropped down into the alley. His leg hurt as he landed, and he winced.
That had been easier when he was fifteen and running from a beating.
Most of the town hadn’t blamed him or Abigail for what Bell did. A few blamed their mom. Nobody had wanted them around, though, and teenagers… Teenagers were a bad mix of perceptive and cruel. In the months between Bell being dragged out of his house and the case going to trial, Ledger had learned a lot of shortcuts.
