Midnight Grinding by Ronald Kelly Read Free Book Online Page A

aside of flap of loose skin that hung above his left eye. “Well, hell, I lied. I’m sorry, buddy, but I’m gonna have to kill you, too. Can’t leave no loose ends, you know. Hope you understand.”
    But Mark didn’t understand. He leaped off the road and into the darkness. With a maniacal cackle, Clifford Lee was in hot pursuit. Unfortunately, there was no solid ground beyond the glow of the car’s high beams, only a steep drop-off into a wooded hollow below. The two tumbled head over heels, landing at the bottom of the grassy incline. Mark was the first one up and that was to his advantage. Clifford Lee was groggy from bashing his head against a rock on the way down. He crawled toward his lost blade, but didn’t quite make it. Mark reached the big knife first and, without a second’s hesitation, drove it between his traveling buddy’s heaving shoulder blades.
    “What’d you do that for?” croaked Clifford Lee, blood spraying from his mouth and nostrils. “I thought we were pals.”
    “I thought so, too,” replied Mark. “God help me, I really did.” He withdrew the knife and buried it to the hilt one more time, just to be on the safe side.
    Moments later, Mark was climbing back up the grassy face of the hollow for the interstate. His wild high of exhilaration and relief faded into confusion when he reached the lip of the thoroughfare. A dark form crouched beside the bloody body of A.J. Rudman, then stood and shucked a revolver from a side holster when he saw Mark stumble out of the darkness.
    “Killed him…” Mark managed, trying to explain, pointing back into the hollow. “I killed him…stabbed him…”
    The state trooper lifted his .357 magnum in a two-handed hold. “You just stop right there,” he barked. “Drop it and don’t move a muscle.”
    Mark couldn’t understand why the lawman refused to listen. “The Butcher…” he gasped. “Dead…I killed the…”
    “I said, drop the knife! This is my last warning!”
    “But you don’t understand…” Mark sputtered. He lifted his hands to reason with the man and there it was, the Bowie knife, completely forgotten until it flashed electric blue in the patrol car’s cascading lights.
    Three shots rang out. Three hollowpoint slugs obliterated the top of Mark Casey’s skull and sent his body sprawling across the white borderline of the median. Clumps of brain and splinters of skull littered the dark pavement, but they were soon washed away as the black rains of the storm soaked Interstate 53 and scrubbed it clean.
    Officer Hal Olsen holstered his revolver and walked back to the patrol car. He sat down heavily and picked up the mike of his radio. “Unit H-108 to headquarters. Send me additional back-up, will you? I’ve got one hell of a mess out here on I-53, two miles north of the Monteagle exit. I’ve just shot the Roadside Butcher, but not before he killed two others.” When he was assured that help was on its way, the officer replaced the mike and turned his radio off.
    He sat and stared at the body lying there in Army fatigue jacket and faded jeans. Shaking his head, he withdrew an object wrapped in canvas from beneath his car seat and walked over to where Mark Casey lay.
    “I don’t know who you were, fella, but you just got me off the hook.”
    Officer Olsen withdrew a long-bladed machete from the wrapping and hefted its comforting weight in his hand one last time, before tossing it as far as he could into the wet darkness of the backwoods hollow. Then he returned to the car and waited for his fellow officers to arrive.

 
 
 
    THE WEB OF
    LA SANGUINAIRE
     
     
 
 
 
Spiders are another type of critter I’m not particularly fond of. The South is crawling with them. Black widows, brown recluses—we call them “fiddlebacks” — and we even have an aggressive “jumping” spider that will literally chase you.
I hear tell there is a nasty breed of spider that frequents the dark swamps of Louisiana…one that the Cajun