Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller by John A. Daly Read Free Book Online Page B

flickering
neon “Open” sign hanging outside of the Winston Café hadn’t yet been turned off,
but as Sean drove by the restaurant’s wide windows that faced the street, he saw
chairs placed on top of half the tables. No patrons were inside.
    Down the street, he noticed a couple of lights on inside the Winston Police Station.
A Jeep was parked out in front. Police Chief Gary Lumbergh appeared to be burning
the midnight oil on something. Apparently, not even shoulder surgery could keep him
out of the office for a few days.
    Sean milked the brakes as he approached the center of the square—a small patch of
snow-covered grass that could have been considered a little park if it were only
a bit larger. Instead, it served as a lasting tribute to one of the town’s most respected
former citizens: Zed Hansen.
    A life-sized, bronze statue of Hansen had been unveiled at the site just a few months
earlier. It was a good likeness: his uncle’s trademark straw cowboy hat sat proudly
on his head; his long sideburns and goatee; a toothpick wedged between his teeth.
Having been sculpted using a pile of pictures provided by Diana, it managed to capture
Hansen’s always dignified demeanor.
    When passing through town, Sean would often steal a glance at the statue and chuckle
at the sight of a random bird perched upon its toothpick. Birds were obsessed with
the statue. It was often covered with white, runny excrement. One persistent swallow
even tried to build its nest on top of Uncle Zed’s squared chin. It drove Diana nuts,
but Sean knew his good-natured, modest uncle would find the same humor in it that
he did.
    Three small spotlights lit up the effigy from the ground, and though most of the
figure was covered with snow, its wide hat-rim kept the face fairly dry.
    Just a few yards away, on the cobblestone sidewalk in front of the statue, were two
metal newspaper vending machines. They were barely visible from the indirect light
around the statue. The navy-blue machine dispensed copies of the Denver Post . The
bright-yellow one belonged to the Winston Beacon . Both were coated with powdery snow.
    The Winston Beacon was a local paper sold only in town. Its owner, Roy Hughes, had
become somewhat of a nemesis of Sean in recent years. When Hughes, at the age of
twenty, inherited the fledgling publication from his father, he decided that the
only way to keep a sustainable level of readership was to turn a section of it into
what was essentially a tabloid column. The regular piece entitled “The Winston Buzz”
featured town gossip, often with an invasive, investigative reporting twist to maximize
the shame of those Hughes chose to target.
    Sean Coleman was by far Hughes’ favorite victim.
    Sean had a long history of being a drunk, a bully, and a man who had a knack for
always making the wrong decisions at the worst possible times. Much of the town’s
citizenry didn’t like him. Thus, Hughes felt legitimized in exploiting him for the
purpose of lowbrow entertainment. It worked well with a readership that had an appetite
for learning of Sean’s failures. Hughes had backed off for a while following Zed’s
murder, but in recent weeks—possibly due to a decline in sales—he’d begun to ratchet
things up again. Sean figured it was probably tough for a guy like Hughes to compete
against the national news cycle with a war going on in the Middle East. Crucifying
Sean was apparently his answer to that problem.
    Sean pulled up to the curb and stepped out of his car, nearly taking a tumble after
his foot slid on a patch of ice along the sidewalk. He fed a quarter into the blue
machine and yanked open the door at its face.
    “Fuck!” he snarled at the sight of an empty shelf inside.
    Had the front of the machine not been covered with snow, he would have noticed that
all copies of that day’s Denver Post had been bought. Or had they?
    He had long speculated that Roy Hughes occasionally emptied the competing paper’s
machine out with a