Harmony Black Read Online Free PDF

book. Outside the margins, improvisation is key. We operate under special circumstances. Can you think on your feet?”
    I nodded slowly. “I do all right.”
    “Then we’ll get along just fine.”
    The sun was nothing but an orange glow on the horizon when we hit the outskirts of town. A big forest-green sign at the side of the road read, W ELCOME TO T ALBOT C OVE: THE T OWN T HAT W ORKS ! P OPULATION 2,032 .
    “Yikes,” Kevin said, glancing up from his laptop. “Kind of place where everybody knows your name, huh?”
    I just shrugged and said, “Small-town America.”
    We cruised down Main Street, a row of mom-and-pop stores in sturdy Midwestern brick, most of them already closed up for the night. The modern world had to force its way into Talbot Cove through the cracks, one piece at a time: I smiled at the sight of a PC café rubbing shoulders with a thrift store and a TV-repair shop.
    In the distance, out toward the water, the tall scaffolding and smokestacks from the old paper mill rose up over the town. The crimson glow from the setting sun turned them into silhouettes of skeletal fingers, grasping at the sky.
    “Find us a base camp,” Jessie said, and I obliged. The Talbot Motor Lodge was right where I remembered it, a sleepy one-floor motel nestled on the outskirts of town and flanked by clumps of towering oak trees. A cartoon owl loomed over us from a lit plastic sign, its claws perching on a placard that offered HBO and a heated swimming pool.
    The Circus might play fast and loose with the regulations, but even Jessie Temple wasn’t about to break the Bureau’s rules on travel expenses. We doubled up, renting the two rooms on the far end of the motel.
    “All right,” Jessie said to April and Kevin, stretching like a cat as she clambered out of the car. “You two set up here while Harmony and I introduce ourselves to the local legal beagles.”
    “Does setting up include dinner?” Kevin asked, pulling April’s wheelchair out of the trunk.
    “Order some pizzas. And get receipts. I mean it.”
    The police station was a squat gray concrete shoe box with three late-model Fords parked out front. They shared a lot with the Talbot Cove Library on one side and the town hall on the other, a colonial building topped by a redbrick clock tower.
    “Memories coming back?” Jessie asked me.
    I looked up at the clock tower, cold and still in the gathering dark, and shook my head. “Vaguely? I mean, I was six when we left town. I . . . recognize these places, I know most of the streets, but they don’t mean anything to me. They’re just places.”
    Inside the police station, an elderly receptionist sat behind a rolling desk and paged through a back issue of People magazine. We held out our badges, letting her take her time looking them over.
    “FBI, ma’am,” I said. “Special Agents Temple and Black. May we speak to the sheriff, please?”
    “He’s in back,” she said. “I’ll go fetch him.”
    She left us alone in the lobby, standing under stark yellow fluorescent lights. Jessie wandered, checking out the notices on the community bulletin board. She let out a low whistle.
    “Uh-oh. Looks like some kids have been playing mailbox baseball out on Route 7. We got here just in time.”
    “Are you always this flippant?” I asked her.
    She looked back at me. Smile gone. Eyes frozen.
    “It’s a coping mechanism,” she said, her voice flat, “for spending a career wading through the worst shit the human mind can come up with, and then some. What’s yours?”
    I took a step back and shrugged, looking down at the scuffed linoleum.
    “I . . . I don’t.”
    “You don’t have a mechanism,” she said, “or you don’t cope?”
    I was still trying to answer that when the door behind me swung open and a big voice boomed, “Harmony!”
    I turned on my heel and couldn’t help but smile. Barry looked just like I remembered him the night my father died, but he’d put on two things: another forty