Greely's Cove by John Gideon Read Free Book Online

parka hood and zipped up tight, as the rain was falling in stinging sheets. But he did not hurry toward Bailey’s Seafood Emporium. Sandy Cunningham Zolten’s disturbing story had killed his appetite.
    Having traveled half the distance between the motel and the restaurant, he nearly turned around and went back. He had forgotten to ask her what she’d meant by “nothing solid ” Elvira Cashmore had disappeared, and nothing solid had turned up. Did this mean that something un solid—an insubstantial clue or an ambiguous explanation—had?
    Just then he stepped smack into the roiling stream of a gutter, soaking his shoe and sock. He swore wildly as the cold shot up his leg, into his guts. He shivered and forged on toward Bailey’s, no longer thinking of steamed mussels. What he needed now was a good stiff Scotch.
    On any other Saturday night Stu Bromton would have gone out with his buddies to pound down some beer, maybe to the Moorage out on Marina Street, or, if they felt like slumming, to Liquid Larry’s. Stu would have allowed himself a steak sandwich and fries, knowing that he’d need to jog an extra mile the next day to keep the fat off.
    On any other Saturday night he would have pounded down his final brew just before midnight and, after announcing to his buddies that all good things must end, gone home to his prefab house with its beige aluminum siding, smelling like a brewery but not even close to being drunk. Being a big man has its advantages, he often said, especially if he happens to be the police chief in a small town and needs to stay respectable. Lots of body weight, lots of capacity.
    But this wasn’t an ordinary Saturday night. This was one month to the day after the latest disappearance in Greely’s Cove, Washington, when a cute young waitress named Elizabeth Zaske stepped into a crack in the earth and shot straight to the molten core. Or climbed up a ladder into an alien ship to be whisked to another galaxy. Or was eaten by a cave bear.
    One month to the day.
    Stu Bromton, chief of the Greely’s Cove Police Department, didn’t feel like drinking beer tonight, but neither did he feel like going home. He didn’t feel like listening to Judy, his wife, whine about the payments on the satellite dish. He was in no mood for his sixth-grade daughter’s complaints about school, her “tacky” clothes, and lack of privacy. And he certainly did not look forward to the din of his four-year-old boy’s violent fantasies with Go-Bots.
    Unfortunately, Stu Bromton had no other choices. This, more than any other frustration—the lack of choices—made his life a hell.
    “I guess I’ll head home, Bonnie,” he said to the dispatcher, who sat in her steel-mesh enclosure. “Give me a buzz if anything happens.”
    “Okay, Stu,” said Bonnie Willis, glancing up from her log sheet. She was a big woman, maybe thirty, who looked as though she had applied her police uniform with a spray gun. “I thought you’d be going out for a few cold ones, after putting in such a long day and all. Do you realize it’s almost eight?”
    Stu realized it. He had purposely made it a long day, finding put-off paperwork to tackle, chores to do, letters to write. But all good things must end. “Have a nice shift,” he said, incurring a sympathetic smile from Bonnie. The heavy door swung closed behind him, and the smell of rain filled his lungs.
    As was his custom, he took a turn around town before heading home, just to verify that things were quiet, not that doing so would cure the unease that wormed in his guts. The disappearances never gave any warning. Nothing ever seemed out of place during the hours and days before someone called the station to report a missing person. No strangers were seen prowling the alleys, and no strange lights appeared in the woods. The plague that had crept into Greely’s Cove operated under the maddening guise of normalcy.
    He cruised down Frontage Street, past the West Cove Motor Inn and the Fox