Flight to Darkness by Gil Brewer Read Free Book Online Page A

lunchroom. I had to find
Leda.
    “ Pete!” Hartly yelled.
“Samson!”
    I ran on the wet grass, head down, my feet
sliding.
    A shadow burst from in front of a cabin. The
other cop with his hand raised, holding something. I dove for the
hand. My foot slid and I pulled a split.
    The hand came down hard once, twice against my
head, and then I was lying with my face pressed into the puddled
gravel of the driveway. My head ached and bright white pains
flashed into my middle like tracer bullets.
    “ My God, what a dope.”
    “ Dope is right.”
    “ His fingers moved, I think he’s
coming around.”
    The rain was cool on the back of my
head.
    Sprawled in the muddy gravel drive I knew for
sure it was just too good. I had a bad head now, all
right.
     
     

Chapter 4
     
    “ He’s got a hard head.”
    “ The son-of-a-bitch, I should of
cracked it.”
    “ Come on, Garth,” Redfern said.
“Get up!” He grabbed my arm, helped yank me to my feet. The rain
wasn’t letting up and the night was as black as Amelia Woodruff’s
hair. “He just wants to play it the hard way,” Redfern said. “We
get ’em lots of times like that. Reckon he’ll loosen up,
though.”
    I was dazed. Hartly had said Leda was in the
lunchroom. I started to pull away from Redfern but he caught me
up.
    “ Geez,” Hartly said. “He still
wants to run.”
    The other cop grunted and walked off toward my
cabin.
    “ He’s perturbed is all,” Redfern
said. “Anybody’d be perturbed. You’d be perturbed, Bill, if you
done a thing like this. Reckon I’d even be perturbed.”
    “ I want to see my wife.”
    “ That’s where we’re going. Come
on.”
    Redfern led me back down the drive and I saw a
squad car with a spotlight mounted on the roof. The other cop was
at the wheel. Hartly climbed in front. Redfern said, “I’ll sit in
back with Mr. Garth. You’ll have to come back for his
car.”
    We went around the drive and stopped in front
of the lunchroom. I saw Leda seated inside at the counter, talking
with Amelia Woodruff. Leda still wore the play suit with the green
lizards climbing on it.
    We went inside. Leda saw the cops, then me,
and her eyes went wide. “Eric! What’s happened?”
    I stepped quickly over to the counter beside
her, told her to be still. Redfern and Hartly stood behind me.
Amelia Woodruff’s eyes glazed and the long talons of her right hand
fussed with a brooch which dangled from the bodice of her dress
like a clock pendulum.
    Just then Herb Woodruff came in from the
kitchen.
    “ Amelia,” he said. “Amelia, get
back here.” He looked hard at me, then said, “Amelia,”
again.
    She turned and looked at him.
    Redfern said, “Yeah, Mrs. Woodruff. Better do
like your husband says.”
    Amelia glanced at Leda, then me. She turned
and stalked back into the kitchen. The spring door flapped like my
grandmother’s old palm-frond fan. The one with the Sherwin Funeral
Parlors advertisement printed on it.
    Neither Redfern nor Hartly said
anything.
    “ Did you go into town?” I asked
Leda.
    “ Sure.” She looked at me anxiously.
“I came back just a few minutes ago. What’s the matter? You’re all
over mud.”
    “ Never mind that. How’d the car get
back to the cabin if you stopped here?”
    “ I didn’t take the car, darling. I
took one of those little buses that run into town.” She shrugged.
“I went to the drugstore, got the tooth paste and the other stuff
you wanted.” She moved her hand to the counter, flicked her finger
against a paper bag. “I took the bus on around the town and back
out here. The lights weren’t on in the cabin so I figured you were
asleep. Didn’t want to wake you yet.” Her eyes told me what no one
else could see. But she kept looking at my mud-stained clothes.
“What’s the matter, Eric?”
    “ You sure you didn’t take the
car?”
    “ Certainly.”
    Redfern and Hartly said nothing. I felt hollow
inside—hollow and dead. Then I seemed to wake up a little and knew
I’d be