This book is a finalist for the 2025 Colorado Book Award for Mystery.
Author’s note: Denver, 1992. Claudette Cooper and Moses King have been failed by the justice system. Claudette was sexually assaulted and brutally attacked—blinded by the perpetrator, she’s not able to identify him until she has a dream about the attack where she sees the face of Moses King. When Claudette testifies that she’s identified her attacker from her dream, Moses is wrongfully convicted and sent to prison for the crime.
White Cane Fields
The nib of her cane was sharp, hewn by the concrete that scraped with each radar sweep. She moved with speed, aided by broad strokes that delivered their findings to her fingertips for interpretation. Her feet trusted her fingers—the only thing she trusted these days.
Smooth and steady.
Measured and on a mission.
Today her goal was simple: go to the grocery store and return home as soon as possible.
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Snow was coming. She could smell it the same way she did the rain in the spring. This substance she’d once loved was now her nemesis, because snow meant ice and ice meant that she had to stay at home. The one place she didn’t want to be.
In her bag were eggs, milk, and cherry cigars. The trip home from the grocery store took less time because she’d already scanned the memorized route and removed any obstacles so she could make better time coming than going.
Her greatest hurdles were not the cracks in the sidewalk or even the winter ice, but people. She’d lost track of the number of times people—not kids but grown adults—would hear the scrape of her cane and yet stand dead still in her path until she ran into them. It made no sense why they wouldn’t move or say something or whistle. It was as if they thought she was the one with the extra sense to detect their presence. So while she had surveyed the route for stones and wood, she couldn’t detect a person with rocks for brains and petrified common sense who had blocked the path in the last twenty minutes since she’d passed by.
“A Dream in the Dark”
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As she neared the open field on her right, she shifted her cane to her left hand along with the plastic bag and reached her right hand into her coat pocket, gripping the cold metal. It was here that she had smelled the faint odor of marijuana when she had passed by the first time, and she wasn’t taking any chances that the partaker wasn’t coming out of his stupor, hungry for who knew what.
Three cars passed on her left, and based on the sound of their exhaust, she was pretty sure they were a Honda, a Volkswagen, and some version of Detroit steel. After another block, she was in the open stairwell of her apartment building.
Folding her cane and slipping it into the pocket of her coat, she made her way up the three flights, skipping steps and stopping briefly on each landing to click her tongue and listen for any anomalies in the echo that would signal the presence of a person.
At her door, she stopped.
Inhaling deeply through her nose, she tried the doorknob and found it still locked, as she had left it. Another deep breath, this time through her mouth. Satisfied, she slid her key first into the chamber on her reinforced iron screen door, then into the double locks on the interior door.
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Inside, with both doors locked behind her, she set the milk and eggs at her feet and stood with absolute stillness.
Like a deer on full alert, she waited.
Mrs. Gilette, her neighbor, was watching Jeopardy. She heard the voice of Alex Trebek, a buzzer and a wrong answer, but nothing else invaded her ears.
A deep breath through her mouth for taste. Nothing.
In through her nose. The lingering residue of her last cherry cigar in the ashtray.
She removed the knife from her pocket, the handle now warmed by her grip, and made her way through her small, one-bedroom apartment room by room, inch by inch.
Claudette Cooper would never be caught off guard again.
Robert Justice is a Denver native and the author of two novels— “They Can’t Take Your Name,” which was a finalist for the 2020 Eleanor Taylor Bland Award, and the sequel, “A Dream in the Dark.” He is the host of the Crime Writers of Color podcast and founder of the Read a Book, Right a Wrong campaign. Learn more at RobertJusticeBooks.com and follow him on Instagram/Bluesky/Twitter: @Robert4Justice.
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