Atomic Lobster by Tim Dorsey Read Free Book Online Page A

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    “What?”
    “You know.”
    “Where are we going to move?”
    “Anywhere.”
    “Martha, we can’t sell the place every time something happens in the world. First Triggerfish Lane, then Manatee Drive and now here.”
    “Jim! A dangerous criminal was in our house!”
    “The garage.”
    “Next time it will be the house. But you don’t care.”
    “Honey, petty theft happens everywhere. It’s okay—”
    “Don’t start with that!”
    “With what?”
    “Being calm.”
    “You want me to get excited?”
    “I want you to do something!”
    Jim grabbed the remote and turned on the TV.
    “Are you deliberately trying to start a fight?”
    “I’m checking the news. Maybe there’s something on that guy in the windshield at the Skyway.”
    “Exactly what I’m talking about. It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.”
    “They were just old people who couldn’t drive.”
    “But if it’s not one thing…”
    Jim clicked over to the Channel 7 Action First Eyewitness Report. Flashing police lights at one of their neighborhood convenience stores. Little plastic flags on the ground marked bullet casings. Martha opened a book. “You can stay. I’m moving.”
    “We can’t move now.” He clicked the remote. A major house fire behind a Dairy Queen in Sarasota.
    “Why can’t we move?”
    “We’re renovating. We’ll never get our price with the place torn up.”
    “What will it matter if we’re murdered?”
    “You’re overreacting.”
    The bedroom briefly brightened.
    Martha sat up. “What was that?”
    “Police helicopter.”
    “And I thought she was crazy.”
    “Who?”
    “Our old neighbor,” said Martha. “She warned us about the grid streets: When everything’s laid out straight, it’s easier for criminals to dart in and out from the main arteries and elude cops. Puts every psychopath on the west coast within striking distance.”
    “Honey—”
    “Heard she just moved into a serpentine neighborhood.”
    “How about this? Let ’em finish the work on the house. Then, if you still feel the way you do, we’ll move to a street that curves. Why don’t you try getting some sleep?”
    “Can’t.”
    “Thought you were over that.”
    “You’ve just been out like a light. But I’ll be up at some crazy hour looking down from the window, and there are all these people there.”
    “Where? Our front yard?”
    “No. A block over on that main drag that cuts through our neighborhood. Just walking up and down the sidewalks all night. What can they be doing?”
    Jim shrugged.
    She threw the covers off her legs and went over to the window.“It’s like this entirely different species crawls out after we go to sleep at night.”
    Jim got up and walked up behind his wife. He wrapped his arms around her. “I promise it’ll be okay.”
    Martha rested her head back on his shoulder. “You know what’s really underneath it all?”
    “I do.”
    “And you’re not worried?”
    “Baby, the home invasion was ten years ago.”
    “But there’s one McGraw left—and he swore he’d get even with you for killing his cousins.”
    “That was self-defense.”
    “Jim, you did what you had to. It doesn’t change the threat.”
    “But he’s still in prison.”
    “For how long?”
    “A long time. Besides, there’s a law requiring authorities to inform victims before a prisoner’s release.”
    Martha took a deep breath. “Maybe I should make another appointment with the doctor.”
    “That’s a good idea.”
    They held hands again and stood in front of the window. Jim looked up. “The moon’s beautiful tonight.”
    Martha looked down. A man wheeled a gas grill up the sidewalk. “The Fergusons just bought that.”
    MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
    North Florida might as well be south Georgia. It actually is, at least where the St. Mary’s River carves a tongue of land almost down to I-10 between Baker and Nassau counties. Undiscovered territory. Oaks, moss, national forests, a couple of speed traps