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

said.
    The fact that Mary Alday’s car was not among all the other vehicles Barbara had seen around the trailer caused the women to theorize that something might have happened to one of the men, a sudden illness or a farming accident that would have caused everyone to pile into Mary’s car and head for the nearest hospital.
    As a theory, it sounded plausible enough, so Ernestine began calling the hospitals in the area. The results were disheartening. None of the hospitals had listed any Alday as having been either treated and released or admitted as a patient. It was as if they had all disappeared into thin air.
    Something was wrong, but Ernestine could not imagine what it was. She knew that wherever the Aldays were, they were certainly together. Other than that, she knew only the places where they would not be found. Since the Aldays did not drink, they would not be off drunk somewhere. Nor would they be apt to lose themselves in the nearby tourist traps of Panama City. There were no church, town, or Democratic Club meetings scheduled for that Monday evening.
    In light of all this, only one conclusion seemed possible.
    Something was wrong.
    But what?
    Repeatedly Ernestine called other members of the family in the hope of locating Mary and the missing Alday men, but none of them had heard or seen any of them since earlier in the day. Throughout the night she, Barbara and Fay continued to discuss the various possibilities, one by one dismissing each while hoping that at any moment they might hear the familiar sound of the jeep or the tractor, or Man’s missing blue and white Chevrolet Impala, the one the rest of the Aldays seemed to have packed themselves into late the preceding afternoon, before disappearing without a trace.
    Finally, at approximately 2:30 in the morning, Ernestine gave up. She had called everyone she knew, exhausted every avenue in her search for her missing family. Fay and Barbara had gone back to Jerry’s trailer and knocked at both back and rear doors, but no one had answered. In addition to the calls and visits to the trailer, various members of the family had meticulously searched very inch of the Alday land, moving into the fields and woods, endlessly driving the many roads that skirted around and through the farm, everything from county highways to obscure wooded paths. But all of this searching had turned up nothing, not so much as the faintest suggestion of where Mary and the Alday men might be.
    It was time to take the next step.
    With Fay and Barbara still at her side, though growing more frightened every minute, Ernestine called the only son she still had of whose whereabouts she was absolutely certain, Bud Alday, who’d seen Jimmy pull into the driveway of the trailer many hours before.
    He arrived at Ernestine’s a few minutes later. By then his son-in-law, Roy Barber, and his nephew, Andy Alday, had also arrived. Together with Barbara and Fay, the five Aldays drove to Jerry’s trailer on River Road, determined once and for all to find out what had happened to their missing relatives.
    The area surrounding the trailer was completely dark when they arrived. The yard lights had not been turned on, and inside the trailer they could see only a soft, yellowish glow, as if a single small light were burning somewhere in one of its tiny rooms.
    In the driveway and around the trailer itself, the jeep, tractor, and truck remained as they had been on the afternoon of the previous day. Nothing appeared to have been moved during the ten long hours which had passed since Bud had first seen Jimmy steer his tractor into the driveway. Everything was the same. Except the eeriness of the dimly lit trailer, and the hollow silence.
    Slowly, Bud and the others got out of Bud’s truck and moved to the trailer’s back door. It was very still, the wide, recently planted fields a smooth, black slate all around them, the atmosphere utterly motionless until Jerry’s dog suddenly