A Dangerous Road: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  Jimmy and I followed the Mississippi north at first, because I couldn’t think of anywhere else I wanted to go. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go there. I figured on a few days of driving while I settled down, and then I could make some decisions.

  I still haven’t made those decisions, but I need to. Jimmy is asleep beside me, curled up against the passenger door, my jacket over his thin body. He hasn’t smiled in days, weeks, and he is wearing down.

  So am I.

  The cornfields all look the same, and the smell of manure is getting to me. I have to find us a home, and soon. I wish we could go back to Memphis, but we can’t. I’m not sure we can ever go back to Memphis again.

  By our third day on the road, I figured no one was looking for us. At least not nationally. The entire country was searching for a single white shooter, the specter that was coming to haunt the good old U.S. of A., the lone gunman. We were safe, as long as we didn’t return to Memphis. Until that point, I had been running on gut instinct. But the more I learned, the more I realized the instinct was correct.

  Understand, I’ve never been a conspiracy theorist. I believed that Lee Harvey Oswald worked alone, and I didn’t believe that if the Southeast Asia fell to the Communists the rest of the world would follow. I did believe, though, that Jimmy was right; the police had known in advance of Martin’s shooting. Not from people like Withers. He had done his job, whether for the Panthers or the FBI. He had discredited COME, the sanitation workers, and Martin. He had set the stage for something that he didn’t even know was planned, and then he had left. He believed in something I didn’t understand, something that allowed him to betray his own people without a twinge of conscience.

  No. The plot to kill Martin probably happened after the riot, when Martin announced he’d come back. As Jimmy and I drove, we learned a lot of things for the continuous radio reports. We learned that a bounty had been put on Martin’s head not too long before. The black stations were reporting that Martin’s usual local security team—who happened to be black—were not assigned to him this trip. They had been replaced with a white team that conveniently disappeared about ten minutes before six. All the black cops in the area were asked to leave. Some, who would normally have been at the fire station because of Martin’s visit, were asked to stay home.

  Then there were discrepancies about the shooter. The police claim the shots came from a rooming house on South Main, but Jimmy saw a man in the bushes and heard the shot come from directly behind him. And the weapon is a problem as well. The cops said they found a weapon in Jim’s Grill, completely assembled and wrapped in paper. Who has time to wrap up your weapon after committing an assassination? No one.

  The shooter had taken his gun apart as he ran, just as Jimmy saw, and threw the rifle butt away. No one was supposed to see that. But Jimmy had. When those first erroneous reports had come across the radio, Jimmy had argued with them. Then it became clear that this was the story, the story of Martin’s assassination that would be fed to all the media outlets.

  Jimmy’s eyes got rounder, and he grew quiet. We now knew what he had seen that he shouldn’t have.

  It’s too dangerous for him to go back. And that breaks my heart. He had a good home with the Nelsons. He had a start.

  Now it’s up to me.

  I have to do better than I ever have in my life. Jimmy depends on me. I cannot get lost in what should have happened, how I could have prevented things.

  Because, the more I think about it, the more I know I could have. The key was Withers. If I had stopped him, if I had told the right people about him, if I had warned Martin’s lieutenants myself instead of putting it on Henry that Memphis was on the brink of serious trouble, then the March twenty-eighth riot wouldn’t have happened. Martin wouldn’t have been publicly embarrassed; he wouldn’t have had to return, and that wouldn’t have given those white bounty hunters time to find him.

  Although those hunters had help. These are the thoughts that scare me even more than I want to admit. Never before had the news organizations reported where Martin was staying, right down to the room. It was as if someone had hung a target over that balcony, daring others to shoot.

  There were too many police in the area, and they were too calm. A national figure had been assassinated with over fifty police officers in nearby neighborhoods. That doesn’t happen, or if it does, people get fired.

  No one did.

  They knew. Even Jimmy, a ten-year-old boy, could see it.

  The police knew it was going to happen, and it happened with their permission.

  There has been a lot of speculation on the radio about why Martin died now, and the reasons seem obvious to me. As he said, assassination attempts had become commonplace for him, but they had escalated in recent weeks. His airplane coming into Memphis was delayed because of a bomb threat. And then there was this.

  It happened because people were afraid. Lyndon Johnson had resigned. Eugene McCarthy, an unlikely candidate, had risen to a real power. Bobby Kennedy was launching a viable campaign by saying things Martin had been saying for years.

  The time had come. People actually believed a black presidential candidate had a chance, and there was only one viable candidate. Martin. It didn’t matter that he said he didn’t want it. It didn’t matter that he probably wouldn’t have run. What matters is perception. And people perceived—the wrong people—that Martin was going to try for the presidency.

  I couldn’t have changed that part, any more than I could have done something about the police. I could simply have prevented the events that led up to this debacle. With just a few different actions, I could have made sure that Martin wasn’t in Memphis on April four.

  But I didn’t. I hadn’t. I had been too wrapped up in Laura, in Jimmy, and in the past, in the events that began at the Junior League ball, all those years ago.

  * * *

  I cannot forgive myself for that. But I cannot change things either. Because I did not act, I am in this car with a little boy who has lost his entire family, who has witnessed a murder and cannot help solve the crime.

  I am the only one who can help him, and I will help him. I just have to figure out a place to settle.

  Henry wants us to go to the SCLC headquarters in Atlanta and have Jimmy tell them what he knows. My foster mother agrees. She has offered to care for Jimmy. It would be so easy to let her do so. But Jimmy doesn’t want to go to Atlanta, and I don’t want to shove my problems on my foster parents any more. Jimmy and I will deal with this together.

  I have told Henry to give the SCLC Jimmy’s name in case they need actual eye-witnesses one day, in case they believe they can go up against the Memphis police and whoever else had a hand in Martin’s death. I have told Jimmy that giving out that information won’t hurt, since the police have his name anyway. But I’m not willing to do more than that. And Jimmy thought even that was too much.

  I have given Henry permission to rent out my house and to deposit the money in my account. He is also canceling the lease on my office and selling the meager equipment inside, after he puts the files in storage for safe-keeping. He has already returned the file to Porter.

  Jimmy and I need time to heal. The money, what little of it there is, will give us some of that time. And then, I suppose, I’ll have to find a job somewhere. But I will deal with that when it happens.

  Just as I will deal with the legacy left me by Laura’s parents. I have always looked at its effect on me. Right now, though, I must look at its effect on Jimmy. If I pay the money back, I have no resources, and I need them to care for him. I’m sure Laura will understand, perhaps better than anyone.

  I doubt I will go back to Memphis, even after things settle down. Jimmy doubts it too, although we do not talk about it. We talk about other things, like the way the land gets flat in the center of the country, and the spectacular length of the sunsets.

  I have told him that we are family now, and will remain so, always. I have told him about losing my parents and how my f
oster parents cared for me. I have told him family means many things.

  He has said nothing about that, but he has listened. And that’s a start—for both of us.

  Because once again, my life has changed overnight. If I have learned anything, it is that nothing goes as I plan. I need to adjust, to move, to allow myself to go with whatever happens, however it happens.

  I wish I had done that more with Laura.

  I think of her sometimes, usually at sunrise, when the light is so golden that it makes the land seem brighter than it can ever be. And, despite myself, I find hope in that light.

  It is as Martin said on the last night of his life. Only a man who has seen the darkest night can appreciate the light.

  I am just beginning to appreciate it. And for the first time, I am turning toward it, believing it will lead me home.

  ABOUT KRIS NELSCOTT

  Kris Nelscott is an open pen name used by USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

  The first Smokey Dalton novel, A Dangerous Road, won the Herodotus Award for Best Historical Mystery and was short-listed for the Edgar Award for Best Novel; the second, Smoke-Filled Rooms, was a PNBA Book Award finalist; and the third, Thin Walls, was one of the Chicago Tribune’s best mysteries of the year. Kirkus chose Days of Rage as one of the top ten mysteries of the year and it was also nominated for a Shamus award for The Best Private Eye Hardcover Novel of the Year.

  Entertainment Weekly says her equals are Walter Mosley and Raymond Chandler. Booklist calls the Smokey Dalton books “a high-class crime series” and Salon says “Kris Nelscott can lay claim to the strongest series of detective novels now being written by an American author.”

  For more information about Kris Nelscott, or author Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s other works, please go to KrisNelscott.com or KristineKathrynRusch.com.

  THE SMOKEY DALTON SERIES

  in order:

  Novels

  A Dangerous Road

  Smoke-Filled Rooms

  Thin Walls

  Stone Cribs

  War At Home

  Days of Rage

  Street Justice (March 2014)

  Short Stories

  Guarding Lacey

  Family Affair

  Copyright Information

  A Dangerous Road

  Copyright © 2013 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover and Layout copyright © 2013 by WMG Publishing

  Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing

  Cover art copyright © Marfx/Dreamstime

  First published in 2000 by St. Martins Press

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  The Smokey Dalton Series

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  About Kris Nelscott

  The Smokey Dalton Series

  Copyright Information