Deadly Detail by Don Porter Read Free Book Online

Brahms.
    “Angie, have you noticed that we haven’t slept in a while?”
    “Yep, a bed sounds good, but now that I have my girl things I need about two hours in the bathroom.”
    “Whatever for? You’re the most beautiful girl God ever made, just as is.”
    “Yeah, that’s fine for you bushmen to say, but we’re in the city now. Never mind why, just take me back to the room. The hairbrush alone will be thirty minutes.”
    We tooled back to town, no one following us, and no lurkers in the hotel parking lot. The stairway was clear. I carried the overnight case in my left hand, pistol casually in right hand beside my leg, but the upstairs hallway was vacant. We ducked into our room.
    I put the chain on the door, but decided that sliding the dresser in front of it would be overkill. I kept telling myself that two deadly professionals were out to kill us, but they wouldn’t know where we were. I set the magnum on the nightstand and stretched out on the big bed. It was like floating on cloud nine. Angie had run straight to the bathroom, and I could hear water rushing into the tub.
    The TV remote was beside the phone so I punched the set to life and ratcheted through the cartoons to the Channel Two noon news. I was slapped in the face with a picture of Stan’s truck, and was glad Angie hadn’t seen it. Next, a long commercial for Friendly Ford, then a talking head pontificating about the upcoming Governor’s race. I recognized both frontrunners. The incumbent has been a personal friend for years. Alaska is a very large place geographically, but thousands of unpopulated square miles don’t count in elections. Population-wise, you could fit us all into Rhode Island and it would seem deserted. The population is small enough that almost everyone knows the gov, and most of us call him Bill.
    The challenger had been in Bethel on the campaign trail and I’d flown him to a few of the larger villages. I vaguely registered that he was the owner of Interior Air Cargo, and somehow that seemed significant, then my eyes closed.
    I awoke to twilight. The TV was off, the curtains open, and it was getting dark outside. Angie was sprawled out on the other bed, wearing a robe over pajamas, with little pink twists caught in her hair. She was breathing deeply, regularly, a comfortable homey sound. I thought it must be nice to wake up to a scene like that every day. Maybe when I get back to Bethel I should try again to weasel Connie into marriage. She seems to like me well enough, but she wants a man who’s home at six every evening. That’s understandable. Her ex-husband was a long-haul truck driver who turned out to have a girl in every town. She’s still smarting from that, and my schedule is too erratic for her. Maybe it’s best that I didn’t have to explain why I’m absent without leave and sharing a hotel room with an extremely attractive young lady.
    I made a backrest of the pillows and sat against the headboard. It seemed like there was something I should remember, but it wasn’t coming to the surface.
    I went back over the conversation with Stan, every word and nuance, but it seemed hopeless. Two guys, one he didn’t know, one he didn’t see, talking about something he didn’t hear. Then the blast at the club. Clearly, someone was smart enough to listen to the CB radio, but channel nine is the Fairbanks calling frequency so that didn’t require special knowledge of Stan. I was calling from two thousand feet up, so my half of the conversation would have been heard anywhere in the area, and I had mentioned the Rendezvous and the time frame. Still, getting to the club within an hour and with a bomb required some organization. A bomb that didn’t leave evidence for the police must have been sophisticated, unless there was a cover up. Having police uniforms handy screamed professional .
    “You awake?” Angie asked.
    “I hope not. I hope I’m having the worst and most convoluted nightmare on record, but probably