November Mourns by Tom Piccirilli Read Free Book Online Page B

hitched until he was almost snorting. His hands clasped into fists as if he were trying to grab hold of her, there on the ground, and pull her back toward him.
    He started to walk up the road and Dave fell in line beside him. They worked their way toward high ground that was dense with oak and heavy underbrush. Farther off, near the ridge, the willows loomed and swayed in the crosswinds.
    He’d missed too much in the two years he was gone, and it was hobbling him. There would’ve been more boys around, a part-time job, other activities. He didn’t know Megan well enough anymore, and nobody was filling him in.
    “She was seventeen,” he said. “She wouldn’t have come up this way alone.”
    “I talked to her friends, classmates, and the closest neighbors. They all said she wasn’t seeing anyone. Had no beau. Did she ever write you and say different?”
    “No. She never wrote me. I told her not to.”
    “Why?”
    “It would’ve only made it harder.”
    The closest neighbors were more than a mile off through the fields in any direction from Pa’s house. They wouldn’t know anything. Who were the girls she used to be friendly with? He couldn’t remember.
    “Maybe a new boy,” Shad said.
    “If so, nobody ever saw them together.”
    “A party?”
    “I checked with all the parents. No one was gone for the night. No parties. One of the kids would’ve mentioned it.”
    “A bonfire that night? In the fields?”
    “No signs of one at all. No fresh tire tracks, no ashes, no trash. Somebody would’ve said something.”
    “Even if they were trying to hide her death?”
    With a slow, heavy breath Dave tried to reach out with his own will and composure and calm Shad down. “What group of teenagers can keep their mouths shut about anything?”
    None. Shad realized it but was already grasping for whatever he could. In the can, locked down with assholes and killers everywhere, he never lost his confidence or ease. Now, standing here, he knew he was shaking apart inside. It was almost enough to scare him, but not quite.
    “Was she raped?”
    “No. There was no indication of a struggle.”
    “Did you . . . ?”
    “You need to stop acting like a private eye, Shad Jenkins. You’re not very good at it. Stop asking so many questions.”
    “You’re right,” Shad admitted, “but it’s not going to happen. Did you talk to Zeke Hester?”
    “He was in Dober’s Roadhouse, same as every night. Drunk and causing his usual misfortunes and woe. Had one altercation with the bartender, threw a pool cue across the room.”
    “He likes throwing things. The day I broke his arm he took off his boot and hurled it at my face.”
    “He’s a sniveler, but twenty witnesses put him there until closing at two A . M . His mother says he got home quarter after. He tripped over her loom and busted her paint-by-numbers picture of Elvis and Jesus smiling on a cloud.”
    “Not Conway Twitty?”
    “I know Elvis when I see him. So Old Lady Hester hit Zeke with an iron skillet and he passed out on the living room rug. And she’s not covering for him. His mama hates him even more than you do.”
    “Maybe.”
    Mags’s hand, waving to him from the corner of his eye, snagged his attention. If he turned his head, he’d lose her, so he froze, kept her in frame. Dave kept going for another yard, then stopped and looked at him. Shad tried to inspect her nails, see if they were broken or caked with grime, maybe somebody’s skin.
    It took a few seconds to slip into the shrouded, quiet place inside himself where he could handle whatever life threw at him. He couldn’t get all the way there, but the effort helped, even as Megan’s fingers flitted at the edges of his vision. Her hand looked clean. She drew it away.
    Much calmer now, he asked, “Anything else out there? In those woods?”
    “Not nearby. A few overgrown logging paths that lead to the old McMueller Mill. It’s only ruins now, even the stream has dried up. Some stunted orchards,