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“What jackass told you that?”
“You did, the first day we worked out. ”
“You shouldn’t listen to strangers, Mike. ” That got a tiny flicker of an artificial smile. “Okay,” Crow said, turning to get some padded mitts from his equipment bag. “Let’s see how you like hitting back. ” He fitted on two gloves that had thick flat foam pads covered in black leather. “I’ll move around, changing the position and angle of the targets. You hit and kick them as many times as you can. Don’t worry about power—concentrate on speed—and don’t let up, even if I back off. When you’re winning a fight you press the attack until your opponent is down. Fighters who get a good one in and then step back like good sports to give their opponents a chance to collect himself deserve to lose the fight. ”
“No mercy,” Mike said under his breath.
“Well…I’m not sure I’d go as far as that. Let’s just call it the will to win. ”
“Whatever. ” Mike raised his hands and began moving forward before Crow even had his pads up.
“Whenever you’re—”
Mike’s fists slammed into the pads before he could finish, and even through the thick pad Crow could feel the brutal power of the blows. Hard. Much too hard for the weight and muscle Mike carried. As they moved Crow watched the boy’s hips and legs and feet, and he saw that on each punch he was shifting his weight and torqueing his hips to put body weight behind each blow, and the speed gave each shot more foot-pounds of impact. It was right, it was perfect; and Crow was not really sure he had ever shown Mike how to do that.
Mike hit without a sound except for his fists and palms and elbows slamming into the targets. His face was bright with exertion and sweat, and all the while his upper lip was curled back away from his teeth in a feral snarl of hate.
Jesus Christ, Crow thought, this kid is in hell.
4
It became a busy night in the store and Crow never found a good moment to talk to Mike, and as the evening wore on the boy seemed more and more like his old affable and comfortably geeky self. Crow let it go.
At closing, Crow and Mike parted with a few jokes and with that it felt easier, more like normal. Mike rode his bike away through the tourist traffic as Crow locked up and shut off the lights. Val tapped on the door just as Crow was heading back to his apartment and he let her in. They kissed in the doorway and then walked hand in hand back to the apartment.
“How was your day?
“We have the memorial all set for Friday night. The Rotary wanted to host it, so we’ll be using their hall, and the college asked if they could cater it. ”
“Nice of them. ”
“Mark had a lot of friends,” Val said. “Everyone wants to make a gesture. ”
“How are you with all of this?”
Val shrugged. “Better than I thought I’d be. I stuffed my purse with tissues thinking it was going to be that kind
of a day, but I didn’t use a single one. Now, Sarah, on the other hand…she pretty much cleaned me out. ”
“Yeah, she looked pretty rocky. ”
Val sank down on the couch. “She’s keeping it together, but only just. No change at all with Terry. ”
“I know, I spoke to Saul a couple of times today. ”
They sat with those thoughts for a while. Val broke the silence by saying, “Twelve days. ”
He looked at her. “What?”
“Newton’s folklorist friend will be here on the twenty-ninth. Then we can find out what we have to do to put Mark to rest. The thought of him just lying there in that drawer…” She shivered.
“I know, but we’ll have to be pretty careful with how we ask her. Just ’cause she’s a folklore professor doesn’t mean she believes any of this. ”
Val nodded. “We’ll be careful, but I intend to find out one way or another. ”
“I’ll look through my books again tonight when Newt gets here. Maybe there’s something I missed. ”
“You looked, honey. Newton looked. I looked, too. It’s not there. Your stuff, good as it is, is mostly the pop-culture version of folklore. We need to go a lot deeper than that. ”
