Grievances. Mark Ethridge

I said sullenly. “Why not someone from the projects team?”

      “Because we barely have enough reporters to cover the city council meeting much less some years-old killing in a place far, far away. You tell me this could be a good story and my gut tells me you’re right and I get paid because someone decided that my gut instincts were the ones to listen to. So we’re going to do it. At least, we’re going to take the sniff. That’s all I’m committing to. But whatever we do, we have to fly below the radar. The publisher can’t know we’re putting even one staffer, especially you, on this story, much less two. If I take one of the big boys from the projects team, he’ll notice in a heartbeat.”

      Walker paused. “Plus, I’ve got two other reasons.”

      “What are they?”

      “With the disciplinary crap with Ronnie and all this protest stuff with you, I need to get you both out of the newsroom for a while.”

      “What’s the other?”

      “This place is drivin’ me loco. I’ve had it with the publisher. I need a new ranch to ride. I’m lookin’ for the story that’ll punch my ticket outta here.”

      Lots of us were. But it was still a shock to hear Walker say it. I couldn’t imagine working at the Times without him, but that was a discussion for another time.

      There’s no question I would have preferred to go to Hirtsboro alone. And if I did need to have a partner, Ronnie Bullock wouldn’t have made the top ten on my list. But at the end of the day I’d gotten what I’d wanted.

      And so was created the unlikely team that would investigate the years-old murder of Wallace Sampson: a rich Yankee blueblood with a social conscience, an occasionally embarrassing redneck reporter throwback, and me.

Chapter Six

      It was the next week before shifts were rearranged and news stopped breaking out sufficiently so that Walker felt comfortable springing Bullock and me to go to Hirtsboro.

      It took less time than that for us to butt heads.

      “We’re taking my Dodge,” Bullock informed me as we planned over coffee in the newspaper cafeteria, a place that perpetually smelled of Lysol and green beans cooked to death. “That rice-burner you drive is an insult to the American working man and it sure as hell will look out of place in Hirtsboro, South Carolina. Besides, the Dodge has an engine. We might need it.”

      Light from the window created a thin rainbow of film that floated on top of Bullock’s coffee, like gasoline on water. He stirred four heaping teaspoons of sugar and several ounces of milk into the Styrofoam cup. The coffee barely lightened. “God, this stuff is nasty,” he marveled. “I wonder how they make it so bad.”