Boogie House: A Rolson McKane Mystery by T. Blake Braddy Read Free Book Online Page B

eyes. They weren't out this time of year, not like in the fall, but they could be found here and there, and so it still got a reaction out of me. Hitting an animal that size at this speed would be catastrophic. I’d seen men tossed through windows or impaled on horns.
    I backed off, let the truck take a sizable lead. It dawned on me how crazy I was acting. I had the tag number memorized; all it would take was a single phone call.
    When I passed the reflection, I saw it wasn’t eyes at all but the text on the door of a Lumber Junction police cruiser, and I blew right past it.
    The lights went on immediately, and he pulled out behind me. Apart from the fact that I was speeding, I had been drinking, as well. Good a lawyer as Jarrell was, there was no way he could get me out of this. Topping a hundred in the truck after a shot and a couple of beers meant at least - at least - a few months in lock-up.
    You know: to think things over.
    The tail of something sinister was winding around me, and I somehow knew that struggling against it would only secure misfortune more tightly to me.
    But still, I knew I would struggle, hoping to find the way free.
    I punched the gas and was quickly up over a hundred again. That cop had set up shop out here because it was a great place to catch speeders, but he didn't realize that I knew the very routes he didn't expect me to take.
    If it had only taken me a second to memorize the truck’s tag, then the officer behind me would only need moments to do the same. Rather than swerve, however, I tried to get as much distance between myself and his car as I could, as quickly as possible.
    A little sharp edge was working its way through my brain - about the whole situation, really - but I had no time to contemplate it. Not until I was out of the situation and back to safety.
    Getting taken in meant the end of my little investigation, which would go cold and shrink to a near-invisible size without my help.
    Then a solution presented itself. If, that was, I didn’t kill myself trying to make it happen.
    I rounded a sharp corner, the weight of the truck threatening to spin it out, but I kept the tires on the asphalt and made a hard turn down a dirt road.
    The backside tires slid, and though the front end managed to hold, I couldn’t keep the goddamn thing from fishtailing. Both sides of the road were surrounded by trees, and I slid into one pretty good with my rear quarter panel. I sort of bounced off and righted the truck before I went headlong into the row of trees on the other side.
    I killed the headlights and coasted to a stop as the cruiser sped past on the main highway, its own lights creating a symphony in the gaps between trees. I listened intently. If he saw me, I was a goner. No way I'd be able to get past him on this dirt road.
    But he didn't. He went on by, and both the lights and the sirens disappeared down the highway. I hoped he hadn't gotten my tag number. I guess I would know the next time I went into town, because they’d be looking for a reason to bring me in.
    I spent the drive home wondering about the chase. No way the cruiser hadn’t seen the truck, too, so why flip on the lights just for me? In whose pocket was the PD? They couldn’t necessarily know the junker I was driving, but what really mattered was that, on sight, the cop had ignored that truck. Something to look into later.
    The questions plagued me well into the night, until consciousness melted away and my waking life could not be distinguished from my dreams. Several times I was arrested and taken away, charged with murder, and several times I awakened in a cold sweat. Shadowy figures slipped in and out of the bedroom. The floorboards creaked and I reached blindly for my .45. Bad habit to start.
    At one point, I dreamed of a girl with an electrified hand, from which giant bolts of blue light emerged and burned her surroundings. She was a pretty stranger, but a stranger nonetheless. She was clad in a bright red get-up -