Dale didn’t look back as he threw himself into the road. In front of the SUV.
It hit him, and his legs folded in the wrong place and in the wrong direction. The impact threw him up onto the hood of the SUV, his limbs broken and loose like a tossed doll.
The driver’s face was visible briefly, a woman with blond hair and an almost comically shocked expression; then Dale’s head cracked off the windshield. The glass shattered into diamond-shaped pieces, and the woman’s face disappeared. He hung there, suspended, for a moment. Then the driver hit the brakes. The SUV screeched to a halt, and Dale was thrown forward, off the hood, and into the road.
He bounced. Just once.
“What the fuck!” one of the men Dale had pushed by said, his voice thin and shocked.
Ledger stared with the rest of them. Unnatural violence he was used to, more or less. Mundane physical brutality left him wrong-footed. The same as everyone else on the street. No one moved until a baby started to cry, the noise breaking the stillness.
A woman joined the baby with a scream. The SUV door opened, and the driver pulled herself out, knuckles white as she clutched the top of the door. The sound of the baby crying got louder, filtered through from the back of the car.
“He just ran out!” the woman said. She pressed one hand to her mouth as she stared at the limp sprawl of Dale’s body. “Oh, my God.”
One of the two men trying to get a TV into the car dropped his end of the box. It smacked down onto the concrete sidewalk, cardboard corner crumpling like Dale’s legs, and he pointed at Ledger.
“It was him!” he shouted. “I saw him. He chased the guy into the road.”
“Yeah!”
“Me too. I saw him.”
Voices chimed in from the crowd around Ledger. He shook his head to clear the shock out of it and took a step back. A shove from behind pushed him forward again, toward the road.
A tall woman had run out into the street to throw her arm around the shaking driver. Her fingers dug into the driver’s thin arms as she hugged her close. “Isn’t that Bell Conroy’s boy?”
“The killer?”
“He’s back?”
“Don’t let him go!”
“I didn’t do anything,” Ledger protested. It was a lie, but he didn’t think it would have mattered if it wasn’t. “I don’t even know him.”
He didn’t care for the mood of the crowd. He’d been here before, during Bell’s trial. There had been protestors outside the courthouse every day, there to shame him, see him, or just get on TV for a fifteen-second sound bite. Most of the time, the mood of the crowd had been steady. After all, there hadn’t been much doubt that Bell would be found guilty. Then the defense’s expert witness, Dr. Harkness, arrived, and the idea that Bell might be found not guilty—even with the rider: “by reason of insanity”—occurred to someone. Rage at that idea had built quickly.
The police had gotten Bell in safely, but the family hadn’t gotten the same consideration. The car had been surrounded as they drove up, slowed to a crawl. Ugly, raging faces had been pressed against the window, mouthed insults wet against the glass, and they’d shoved at the car until it rocked like they were on a boat.
Ledger’s trick didn’t usually let him know what someone felt, notinthe moment. It had that day. Anger, that feeding-on-itself sour fury, smelled like used engine oil on hot roads.
A smashed window had startled the mob mentality out of everyone, and the scent had melted away like cheap perfume. The memory of it had stuck with Ledger, though, and it teased at the back of his nose as he turned to go. A burly man in a delivery uniform blocked him.
Ledger tried to cut around him, but the man stretched his arms out to claim the space.
“You’re not going anywhere,” the man said firmly. “Just stay where you are and wait for the cops to get here.”
Two other men joined the blockade: a stocky older man with big swollen knuckles and concrete caked on his work boots and a young man in a suit that didn’t quite fit.
Ledger bit down on the inside of his cheek and clenched his fists. The muscles in his arms burned with the urge to take the first swing—the rage in the air was infectious—but he resisted the impulse. He’d lose for a start.
“Get out of my way,” he said.
A short blond in the crowd near them waved her phone at him. “I’m recording this!”
The older of the three men looked over at her. “Maybe call the fucking sheriff first,” he said dourly. The blond flushed and glared at him. He turned his attention back to Ledger. “You’re going to stay here and wait for the deputies.”
That didn’t sound like something Ledger wanted to do.
