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I follow him down the dark alley, heart racing and palms sweating. I blow out my breath. I’m so close to knowing the truth.
He stops. His bloodshot eyes race over me. “Slick Lix, he gave you my number?”
“Yes.”Slick Lix?
He rams his palm up his nose, clearing the wetness dripping from it. “How’s my boy doin’?”
“I didn’t come here for small talk.” Or to watch this asshole wipe the snot from his nose. “What do you know about Reacher’s death?”
His brows lower, and he stops moving for the first time. “You knew Reacher?”
“He was my uncle.”
“Ah.” He drops his hood from his head. “Yeah.” He grimaces, enhancing the pockmarks on his face, no doubt from being a chronic drug user. “Reacher, he was one of the good guys.”
“That’s right, and he didn’t deserve to die.” I swallow back my anger. Can’t let it get to me. Lix gave me Finch. I can’t mess this up like I did with Jenson Collins when I visited him in jail. “Were you there when he died?”
He glances down the alley at Selina, then back to me. He nods, averting his eyes to the ground.
“What happened? What happened that day in juvie?”
“It was crazy.” He kicks something on the ground. “It started when the fire alarm went off. The guards were trying to secure the place. No Face Trace—”
“Trace Morton?”
“Yeah, Trace Morton. He wanted to break out of the joint. Ya know, take advantage of the situation with the guards bein’ preoccupied. So he talked a few of us into heading to the office to look for the keys.”
“Who? Who was with you?”
“Let’s see.” He looks up at the dark sky. “Trace, Wally, Jens—”
“And Lix?”
“No.” He drops his head and looks at me. “Slick Lix was locked in the quiet room.”
“What’s the quiet room?”
“It’s like solitaire. Yeah, like in jail, the kind you see in the movies and shit.”
Lix was locked up when my uncle died? Could this be true? “Why was he in there?”
“Well, ya see.” He scratches the scruff on his chin that hasn’t probably seen soap and water in days. “No Face Trace, they call him that on account of during a fight, you couldn’t hit the fucker in the face. He was good at blocking it. Slick Lix, my boy.” He taps his chest proudly. “He was the only one to leave a mark on Trace’s ugly mug. They hated each other. When the cops caught up to Trace, they put him in juvie, same wing as Slick Lix and me. Trace and his boys—”
“Wallace Hunter and Jenson Collins?”
“Yeah, they jumped Slick Lix. Beat him bad. When Reacher showed up earlier that day at juvie and saw Slick Lix, what they’d done to him, he locked Slick Lix in the quiet room. Ya know, to keep him safe and out of their reach.”
Lix must’ve meant something to my uncle. There’s no doubt about it. He saw something in Lix. “Then the fire alarm went off?”
“Yeah.” He pulls a cigarette pack from his hoodie pocket and lights one up. His eyes bounce around as if he’s used to being on edge and waiting for something to happen. “We all went to the office to find the keys.” He takes a drag, blowing out the smoke. “Reacher was in there. He and Trace got into it.”
“They said my uncle had bruises all over him. So I assumed he was in a fight.”
“Yeah. Reacher gave good fight, but Trace struck him in the chin. That’s when, ah… when Reacher fell back and he, ah…he hit his head on the corner of the desk.”
“Blunt force trauma to the back of the head. That’s what the coroner said caused my uncle’s death,” I say, and Finch’s story just confirmed it. All the dots are finally connecting.
“Yeah, the hit knocked Reacher out. You could see, ah—” He pauses for another quick puff of his smoke. “He wasn’t getting up from it. The guys ran out of the office. I checked on Reacher. Checked for a pulse. There was nothin’.” He pauses for another drag of his smoke. “I snagged his key card and got Slick Lix out of the quiet room. If there really was a fire, I didn’t want my boy stuck in there.”
