II
The quarry was a mess.
I couldn't see any in the way they sliced the granite out of the mountain. The idea of a four-year-old—a four-year-old moron—going after a mound of raspberry ice cream kept turning up in my mind as I walked around.
The workmen were gone; it was after five local time. But here and there I saw traces of them. Some of them were sandwich wrappers and cigarette stubs, but most of the traces were smears of blood. Blood streaked across sharp rocks, blood oozing from beneath heavy rocks, blood smeared on the handles and working surfaces of sledge hammers and tools. The place was as gory as a battlefield.
"What are you looking for, bud?"
The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson.
"The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison."
"Yeah, I know."
I had supposed he would.
"I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it out."