Blood Echoes by Thomas H. Cook Read Free Book Online Page A

was a clear night, and she could see a long way out into the distance. If anyone had been working out there, she would have been able to see the lights from the tractor and go out to them. But there were no lights, and so for a time she and her son remained by the road, staring out into the empty silence of the nightbound fields.
    Nearly a hundred miles to the west, at the Riverside Restaurant in Elba, Alabama, Mrs. Birdie Kieth saw a blue and white Chevrolet Impala pull into the restaurant’s parking lot. Two men got out of the car, a tall man in his mid-twenties and a black man with thick, dark-rimmed eyeglasses. The black man seemed to position himself by the door while the white one sauntered up to the counter and ordered coffee and barbecue sandwiches. After a time, the black man stepped over and played the jukebox, while his friend remained at the counter, eyeing the cash register each time Mrs. Keith opened it.
    While the black man swayed to the music of the jukebox and the white one waited for the sandwiches he’d ordered, Mrs. Kieth disappeared into the back of the restaurant, retrieved the pistol she always kept there, and gave it to Mrs. Jacobs, one of her employees. “Stay behind the curtain,” she told her, “and keep an eye on those guys.”
    A few minutes later, after joking with one another boisterously for a while, the two men paid the bill, left the restaurant, and disappeared down the road, leaving nothing behind but the money they’d paid the bill with. But like the two men themselves, that was odd, too. She could not remember ever having been paid such a substantial bill with nothing but coins, especially these coins, all of them the same, all of them Kennedy half-dollars, the sort you expected to find in a little household bank.

Chapter Seven
    A t about the same time Inez Alday was returning with her son from the empty fields, Ernestine was also beginning to worry about her family. She had long ago gotten used to the long hours the Alday men kept during planting season. And when that planting season came late, as it had this year because of the incessant and unseasonably late rains, the hours grew even longer, stretching into what rural people call “can see to can’t see” working days.
    On the Alday farm, just as in industry, time was money. What could not be planted could not be harvested and later brought to market. Because of that, much had to be done to ensure that the 552 acres of Alday land were fully planted, and to do it required that the men work from dawn to dusk to make up for the valuable time the rains had stolen. At the noon meal, Ned had even warned her that he and the boys might well be working late into the night.
    Consequently, for the first few hours, as supper grew cold on the table and she continued with her other chores, Ernestine had allowed for the lateness by reminding herself of what Ned had told her. By nine o’clock, however, with the late-spring air pitch-black outside, she could not imagine that the Alday men were still at work, and she began to talk to Fay about what they might do to find out where the men were.
    Nor was Ernestine the only Alday woman who had begun to grow concerned. At nine-thirty Shuggie’s wife, Barbara, came over to ask if Ernestine had seen or heard from any of the men.
    Ernestine shook her head. “I haven’t heard from any of them,” she said.
    Barbara then told Ernestine that earlier she’d become sufficiently concerned to take a drive down River Road in search of Shuggie. She’d driven by Jerry’s trailer and seen something that made her worry even more.
    â€œThere were lots of cars there,” Barbara said, “just about everybody. Jerry’s jeep and Jimmy’s pickup truck, along with the family tractor.”
    But the one vehicle that should have almost certainly been there was missing.
    â€œMary’s car was the only one that wasn’t there,” Barbara