Judas Burning by Carolyn Haines Read Free Book Online Page A

Tommy?” the young man demanded. “Has something happened? He should be home by now.”
    Dixon hesitated. “Please ask Mr. Hayes to call me when he returns,” she answered.
    “It’s that bitch Angie, isn’t it? He should have had her expelled.”
    “Angie?” Dixon fumbled on her desk for the story of the missing girls. One of them was named … she found the copy that Tucker had turned in. Angie Salter. “What does Angie Salter have to do with this?”
    There was silence, then the telephone hummed in her ear. Dixon swiveled her chair to face the front window. Dust motes swirled in the slanting golden sunlight, and she thought of the story her father had told her when she was a child. When the day died, the dust motes turned into tiny fairies, creatures brought to life by the fading sun to dance for an instant in the blue hour before the fall of night.
    A brief, fierce dance of death.
    Outside, along the half-mile strip of Main Street, the lights were on. The pink mercury vapors were the only concession to “town.” Jexville didn’t exactly welcome the night with celebration, but it didn’t struggle against the darkness with shafts of neon, either. It gave up gently with a locking of shop doors and the glow of kitchen lights and televisions.
    She went to the composing room and reread Tucker’s story on the missing girls. The connection between Tommy Hayes, a just-fired teacher, and a missing girl, who might be the source of his problems, was disturbing. Her gut told her to play it big, but she left it as it was. If she trusted her gut, she’d end up back in the bottom of a bottle.

    Awake in the moist embrace of the night, Dixon lay on her left side. In the moonlight that filtered through the bedroom window, the far wall was a pale coral. The beaded board paneling had been a bitch to paint.
    In the darkness a vehicle shushed past leaving isolation in its wake. The house on Peterson Lane, with the woods around it and the small creek behind, remained untouched and secluded. She’d lived her adult life in the hustle of cities. Now she found the woods comforting but wasn’t sure why.
    Beside the bed the gauzy curtain fluttered as if blown about by the unexpected cry of a bird that swam through the humid night. The gentle question of a hoot owl came from somewhere in the woods behind the house.
    Dixon wasn’t sure whether it was the awful heat and humidity, anxiety, or a noise from the woods that had awakened her. She listened for a moment, but there was nothing except the owl and the autumnal rustle of the leaves, a branch brushing lightly against the screen on the window.
    She rose from the bed and walked across the room, pulling the nightshirt away from her sticky skin. She fought the uncooperative windows closed and flipped on the old air conditioning unit that droned so loudly it blocked out the night sounds.
    Ignoring the letter on her bedside table, she checked the clock. It was nearly dawn. Tucker would already have driven the black asphalt highway to the printing press in Gautier with this week’s edition of the
Independent
, Leaning back into the pillows, she forced herself to savor the sense of accomplishment. The front page was solid, and the editorial page had some teeth. It was a good start. The only thing that troubled her was the story on the missing girls. That and the letter.
    At last she snapped on the light and lifted the letter to read again her mother’s angry words.
    Dear Dixon
,
    Since you won’t return my calls I have no other recourse but to write. The warden at the prison has called me again. He said you were there, asking to talk with that murderer. I demand that you stop this foolishness. Your father is dead. By going to the prison, you make that horrible day alive for me and for everyone else who suffered so. You must stop this reckless behavior, for your own sake as well as mine. I view the purchase of that weekly newspaper as another reckless act. You are bent on