Citrus County by John Brandon Read Free Book Online

air conditioner and a little generator and he’d have to lug the generator back to the house and sneak it into his bedroom to charge it every, what, couple days? He probably didn’t even have enough money saved. Toby’s mind was blundering. He’d concocted the kidnapping and looked forward to it and executed it, and now he felt unconvinced that it had occurred. It hadn’t sunk in, was all. He felt like if he went down in the bunker right now there’d be nothing but his folding chair. There was weight in Toby’s joints as he put one foot in front of the other. He had to grit his teeth and walk through his doubt like it was a cloud of car exhaust.
    Toby stayed east of Route 19, tacking northward behind stores selling above-ground pools, used tires. A defunct dance studio. Toby had no clue how Citrus County stayed afloat. The roads were cracking and pine trees were toppling onto buildings. Toby hoped that when the manatees gave up the ghost or a hurricane finally got a bead on Citrus County, trucks of guys would come down from Tallahassee and dynamite the place and slide it off into the Gulf of Mexico to sink.
    The bookstore was cavernous and had few customers. It was past lunchtime already, the lazy hours. Toby hurried past the bank of registers in the front, where he was smirked at by a college-aged girl with a dark front tooth. The TV was nestled back among the periodicals and was always tuned to the news from Tampa. Toby positioned a bench. He waited through patter about the nation’s top companies to work for, about the poaching of rare orchids. The anchorman grew serious and spoke the words “Citrus County.” He spoke Kaley’s name. Photos of her appeared next to the anchorman’s head. There were those eyes, just as they’d been when Toby nabbed her, round as saucers. The anchorman outlined the search efforts, just getting underway, led in large part by Kaley’s father, a mosquito control worker. There had been hopes, when the girl had first been discovered missing, that she’d left the house on her own and wandered into the woods, sleepwalking or something, playing a game, but overnight those hopes had lost steam. Now churches were pledging help, along with Little League teams and off-duty cops from surrounding counties. The FBI bloodhounds were on their way, but the woods were fouled with ATV tracks, the personal effects of vagrants, the droppings of stray mutts, abandoned appliances, the remains of bonfires, beer and liquor bottles. Pictures of Kaley were to be tacked to every power pole for miles. There was talk of roadblocks. Toby didn’t know if the response to what he’d done was so swift because this type of thing never happened or because it happened a lot. The kidnapper, according to the authorities, was likely a white male between thirty and fifty-five.
    Toby was in one spot, still, while the world rushed around him. He felt powerful. He’d thrown the county into a commotion, had given everyone something important to do. He’d dealt a blow to the wonderful Shelby Register, the only person in the whole county worth injuring. He’d probably made her a different girl. She wouldn’t be so sure of herself now. She’d be lost like everyone else. And the searchers were looking for the wrong culprit. They were looking for a dime-a-dozen perverted old man when they should’ve been looking for an adolescent the likes of which they’d never fathomed.
    The bookstore smelled like dust. It didn’t smell like books. Racks and racks of magazines stared out at nothing. The anchorman took a moment to regain his solemnity. He informed the viewers that Kaley’s father’s plea to the kidnapper would be re-aired in a matter of minutes. Toby imagined all the news crews crawling the perimeter of the Registers’ property, spying just like he had. He could see the reporters picking at their hairdos in car windows, the women stumbling in their pumps and the men pulling their jackets on and off. It was the news