Lizardskin by Carsten Stroud Read Free Book Online Page A

ready?”
    “I’m ready.”
    “Just a minute—Gabriel, Nigel wants me to say how much he appreciates this take. He knows you’ll give it all you’ve got.”
    “Tell Nigel he’s gonna see everything I’ve got if I miss that bag.”
    “Squibs armed. Okay … they’re rolling … when you’re ready, Mr. Picketwire. When you’re ready.”
    He was at the edge of the roof now. He looked out to sea again, saw the curve of the world and the tiny white sails in the bronze light and the color of everything. He smelled salt and blood and sensed the things moving under the surface out there. Life was everywhere around him, and the wind was sliding over his left cheek. A hundred feet below him the black rectangle of the dumpster looked like a small door to somewhere far away.
    He raised the rifle and drew back the bolt and let it snap home, feeling the first round grate up out of the magazine and slide into the chamber. It all felt very familiar, and he remembered a time when believing in nothing at all was the only way to come out alive.
    “It is a good day to die,” he said, not believing in the words. He moved forward.
    Bullshit—it’s never a good day to die.
    He felt the explosions tearing at his chest. The wind was all around him. The flak jacket spread open, and he dropped through the light. The M-16 was working against his ribs. He held it in close. White flame seared his cheek. The black door rose up at him, a flat denial of metaphysics. Maybe he had seen a hawk.
    Maybe it was a hawk.
    Maybe it was a

3
1900 Hours–June 14–Billings, Montana
    McAllister followed Lieutenant Meagher’s navy-blue Town Car all the way back to the station house in Billings, trying to enjoy the sundown on the ancient slopes and the way the light was always changing along the valleys, trying not to think about how it would go once they got there.
    He hadn’t exactly covered himself in glory back there at Pompeys Pillar, although he was damned if he could think of any other way he could have handled the situation.
    One thing for sure, Eustace had no intention of letting McAllister root through Bell’s office with no particular idea of what he was rooting for. Meagher had made sure that Beau put the office back together—the compact disk still in the case, the tape mound intact—and then he walked him out of the office and back to the crime scene.
    By then, the Criminal Investigation Bureau guys from the state were there, a couple of plainclothes guys named Finch Hyam and Rowdy Klein. Klein was a long bony bundle with large pale hands and floppy feet whose real name was Rudy but who refused to answer to anything but Rowdy after seeing a bunch of
Rawhide
reruns on cable TV. He kept it up so long that the rest of the men and women on the force had been plain worn down. Even Eustace called him Rowdy now.
    Beau always made it a point to call him Howdy every chance he got. By way of getting even, Rowdy always called Beau by his full name, pronouncing it
Bo-ree-gard
.
    Finch was just Finch, a silly bird-name on a man his size, but Finch was a solid investigator and a reasonable man witha very sweet wife who made it a point to try to match up Beau with any spare woman she could find. Like all good wives, she hated to see a man running loose. It offended her sense of order.
    Rowdy and Finch looked up as they walked over. Rowdy had the kid’s shirt pulled up, and they were looking hard at something on his chest.
    “Hey, LT,” said Finch, smiling at Beau but talking to Lieutenant Meagher. “Whaddya make of that?”
    They had the boy’s bloody plaid shirt pulled up to his neck. There were four ugly scars on his chest, just above the nipples. Fresh. One of them was still weeping. They were odd, paired scars, each cut about four inches long, running parallel, one set about three inches above his right nipple, the other set over his left.
    “Jesus!” said Eustace, who always got a little sick around blood and wounds. “What the hell