Blood Echoes by Thomas H. Cook Read Free Book Online

garden. She had nearly finished the day’s weeding when she glanced up River Road toward the trailer of Jerry and Mary Alday and saw two cars pull out of the driveway. She recognized one of them as Mary Alday’s, but the other was not familiar, and, as she would later say, it left her with only the vague impression of something dark.
    A short way down River Road, fifteen-year-old Michael Jackson was watering flowers in his front yard when he saw two cars move slowly past his house. He recognized the first one as Mary Alday’s, but noticed that it was being driven by a long-haired young man he did not recognize, and that a black man sat hunched slightly forward in the back seat. Directly behind it, he saw a dark-colored Chevrolet Super Sport with two long-haired boys inside. It cruised very near the Alday car, and Michael got the impression that it was carefully following it. Both cars drifted past him slowly, then returned about five minutes later, moving in the opposite direction, as if heading back to Mary Alday’s trailer down the road. Five minutes later they passed a third time, moving once again down River Road, the same people, the same cars, only this time they were going very fast.
    Still farther down the same road, Jerry Godby was busy filling a chemical tank on the back of a 3020 John Deere tractor when he glanced up and saw two cars traveling down River Road. The first car had rushed by too quickly for him to see it very well, but he saw the second very clearly. It was a dark green Chevrolet, and as it passed, the driver, a young man with shoulder-length hair, waved at him politely, and Godby waved back.
    Only a few minutes later, as Godby was spraying the peanut field on the north side of Hamock Springs Road, he again saw the same two cars, one so close behind the other that for a moment Godby thought they might be about to begin a drag race. One was green, and he recognized it as the same car he’d seen only a few minutes before. The other was blue with a white top, a Chevrolet Impala that reminded him of the one driven by a neighbor down the road. He squinted to see if he could make her out, but he only saw two men, one in front, driving, one in back, sitting off to one side. It was an oddly formal configuration in a part of the country where chauffeurs were unknown, and because of it, he decided the car must belong to someone other than his neighbor. Besides, as he continued to watch the cars move down the road, there was no sign at all of Mary Alday.
    At approximately 6:30 P.M., Barbara Alday, Shuggie’s wife, left for her job at the Dairy Bar Restaurant in Donalsonville. On her way, she passed Jerry’s trailer, and noticed that Mary was not working in her flower garden as she usually did this time of day.
    That wasn’t the only thing she noticed, however.
    The tractor was pulled up onto the carefully maintained lawn and parked in an odd position, one she doubted Jerry would have parked it in, since he’d always been very careful about damaging the lawn. For the briefest instant, she felt that something was wrong in the Alday trailer, then dismissed the thought and continued into town. Once at work, the thought returned to her, and at around 7:00 P.M., she began calling the trailer. Finally, after several attempts, she called a friend, Bill Woods, and asked him to go to the local high school and find out if there was a Young Farmers’ meeting, the only local gathering, other than church services, that the Aldays were likely to attend. Woods did as Barbara asked, then called her back to report that no meeting was being held.
    By ten o’clock the same night, Inez Alday, Aubrey’s wife, had also begun to worry about her husband. Earlier in the day, Aubrey had told her the exact location of where he intended to work that day, and so, with her son, Curtis, she decided to drive down to the area of the farm he’d indicated. They reached it a few minutes later. It