Bleed (Detective Ellie MacIntosh) by Kate Watterson Read Free Book Online Page B

hundred bucks for it and wasn’t about to let it go just because he was going to get wet. He’d seen the piles of thunderheads but figured he’d have time—wrong on that score.
    What the hell was he thinking? This was Wisconsin, and the weather was about as predictable as a cornered rabid badger, and the hail was coming sideways and hurt.
    He banked the canoe, dragging it up, rain coming down hard now, his hair dripping into his eyes …
    And that was when he fell into the grave

Chapter One
    September, 1957
    She was cold. Shivering. Her body reacted to every sound in the creaky old house. The wind was rising, whistling through the eaves, and the old birches outside groaned and protested in a primal whine.
    The one board in the parlor always complained when stepped on just right and she made that mistake, the protest loud and damning.
    No.
    The floor was chilly, but she was freezing already, so it didn’t matter .
    This wasn’t perfect, but she didn’t want perfect, she just wanted it over. Lies were tiresome, there was just no two ways about it. A burden, something to cart around with you all day and take to bed at night. Her mother had always said so, and she was beginning to agree.
    Around the corner there was an oak sideboard, massive, with pretty dishes and an engraved silver coffee urn, looming in the filtered light. There was an old sofa, a carriage lamp, and the smell of roses lingered from a vase full of blooms from the garden, but the flowers were starting to wither, so the sweet odor was tinged with decay. Accidentally she bumped the table and a few of the petals fell, whispering against the polished wood.
    The knife was in her hand. Not heavy—a lightweight steel made for fileting fish, curved, the blade Finnish, something she’d gotten actually from her father, inherited when he died. There was a hint of rust along the edge because she didn’t oil it like he had, but it was still as sharp as death.
    And death was part of this chill night.
    September, present day, Oneida County
    The day was cold and Detective Ellie MacIntosh winced and adjusted her collar in the mist. Raindrops were even gathering on her lashes. So much for Indian summer. The entire week before it had been in the seventies, but that party seemed to be over. The leaves were starting to take on just enough color to indicate summer was going to fade before long. It looked like it might be an early fall.
    “What is it I need to see again?” The question was reasonable because it was hardly the right weather for a stroll through the woods. Damp, too cool, the pine needles underfoot slippery, the trees dripping.
    “A hole.” Her grandfather stopped as if he wasn’t entirely sure where he was going, and then veered off a little to the left. “Over here.”
    That didn’t really fill in the blanks. She carefully stepped over a fallen log with fungus the size and shape of human ears on the side. “Excuse me, but, we are out in this to look at a hole? Can you be a shade more specific?”
    He glanced back. His face was reddened by the crisp breeze and his pale eyes direct. The cold wind ruffled his white hair. As usual, he wore a plaid shirt, a tan coat over it, and his jeans were so worn they must have been three shades lighter than when he originally bought them. His boots were covered in mud, but it was wet out. “Just follow me, Eleanor.”
    Fine .
    She disliked her given name, but could hardly tell him that since she’d been named after his mother, so she instead glanced around the wooded hill. At the bottom of the slope there was the same lake she’d swam in as a child so many times, and right now it held a flotilla of fallen maple leaves, starting to gather in a circle thanks to the wind, the water swirling. The trees were turning early, not a good sign. It had been awhile since they’d had a truly frigid winter by Wisconsin standards.
    Mystified, she watched her grandfather tramp between a ridge of white pines and slender birches