Black Night Falling by Rod Reynolds

have anything by then, I’ll come right back.’ I felt disingenuous as I blurted it; yesterday’s resolution, made redundant by what I’d found out since. Already playing games with the truth.
    ‘On the strength of a hunch? You don’t have to be the hero this time. You have nothing to prove.’
    ‘I need you to know—’
    ‘Charlie, you have nothing to prove to me.’
    I started to say that I owed it to Robinson, but I clammed up because that wasn’t it. I thought about why I was so determined to chase this, and I realised my wife had come to it long before I had: it was because of Texarkana. Because it was all connected; if not directly, then at least in how I saw myself. I’d nearly died six months ago trying to prove to myself I wasn’t a coward; if I walked away now, how much of that was I giving back again? ‘Nothing could stop me from coming home, remember that. I’ll call you soon.’
    I didn’t hang up, wanting to hear her tell me she understood, or at least she wasn’t mad. When she didn’t say anything right away, I thought she was going to wait me out with the silent treatment, but instead, after a few seconds passed, she said, ‘I love you, Charlie. Please be safe.’

Chapter Five
    Clay Tucker told me Robinson had been in Hot Springs almost three weeks. What did he do in that time? Who did he talk to? And how did it relate to the woman in the photograph? Still wary of showing my hand to Layfield, I decided to go back to Duke’s to press Tucker on those questions, certain he knew more than he was letting on.
    When I got there, though, the doors were still locked and there was no sign of him. I looked along the street; aside from the diner where Robinson had stashed his car, it was a mix of bars, low-rent hotels and private residences. Not content to kick my heels, I started working along block-to-block, asking if anyone remembered Jimmy.
    I had no photograph of him to show, and the only description I could give was sketchy – and months out of date. I flashed the picture of the woman in every joint I stopped in, but got bupkis on her – no signs of recognition at all. Most every establishment I went in had an upstairs parlour or rooms, offering gambling or girls.
    I was almost to the end of the street when I hit on something. It was in a bar called the Keystone; the tender gave his name as Leke, and nodded along when I reeled off Robinson’s description.
    ‘Yeah, I know the man,’ he said. ‘Came by here on occasion.’
    ‘You have a conversation with him ever?’
    ‘Not worth a damn, he wasn’t no talker. Besides, what he did say was fair bleak.’
    ‘Are you thinking of something specific?’
    The man leaned on his elbows over the bar top. ‘I’d seen him around a couple weeks, and he’d been in before, so I asked him what all brought him to Hot Springs. Wasn’t meaning to pry – most folk don’t stay in town that long is all, couple days, so I was curious, you know?’ He rubbed his nose with his knuckle. ‘Anyhow, when I did, he put his glass down and said, “ I’m fixing to drink until it does for me. ”
    ‘I thought he was fooling, so I asked him why in the world he’d want to do that. He put a look on me would cut glass, and that’s when I knew he weren’t.’ He pointed at his own eyes with two fingers, for emphasis. ‘Said to me he’d seen too many bad things and he was through with it all. I told him to put the whiskey away, see how it looked in the morning, but he didn’t look like he was listening. Tell by the smell of him he was liquored up already, so I let him alone after that. I thought maybe he was a veteran still getting his head turned up the right way.’
    ‘When was this?’
    He scratched his left cheek. ‘Three, four days ago.’
    I started to think about a timeline of Robinson’s movements. ‘Can you say which?’
    ‘Today’s Saturday?’ he asked. I nodded. ‘Then Tuesday, I think.’
    ‘What time did you see him? Approximately?’
    He