Open Season by Archer Mayor Read Free Book Online Page A

Commandments. I can’t say no; she’s put up with me through a lot. I told her it was her call, no arguments.”
    “Do you know where you’ll go?”
    “Yeah.” He glanced over at me and smiled. “Surprised, huh? You thought you knew everything.” The smile faded and he took a long swallow from his glass. “Maybe I was hoping that if I didn’t mention it, it might go away. It’s not too far from St. Petersburg—a trailer park, but fancy. You’d never guess to look at it. It’s near the water, has a bunch of tennis courts, a pool, stuff like that. It’s okay.”
    His voice was as flat as a board. If I’d had any doubts before, they were gone now. “I couldn’t do it, Frank. Florida’s not my style.”
    He leaned forward and punched the television off with a hard stab of his thumb. “Well, hell, I’m not surprised. Just thought I’d offer. You might have been nuts enough to say yes.”
    “What are you going to do down there? Do you know anybody?”
    “Naw. I suppose I’ll fish. There’s a lot of that down there. And suntans. I might work on one of those. There’s stuff to do—I just have to go down and find out about it.” He got up and freshened his drink and brought another bottle of tonic water over to me. “So what do you got on your mind? You didn’t come over here to shoot the shit.”
    I was more inclined to shoot the shit than he thought, but I respected his wish to change the subject. “I want to dig into the Harris case.”
    I sensed a palpable stiffening, fully expected. “Why?”
    “Because somebody else already has. It’s pretty evident Reitz, Phillips, and Wodiska were set up; I want to find out why.”
    His face darkened and he opened his mouth to say something but then closed it again. “Got any theories?” His voice was forcefully neutral, if that’s possible. I sensed he was doling out just enough rope for me to hang myself.
    “Not really. Maybe it’s revenge against the jury by some friend of Davis’s, or maybe one of the jury is after all the others. Or one is the target and the rest are a smoke screen. For damn sure the one man who stood out during the trial, and who dragged his feet when it came to convicting, is the only one dead so far.”
    “And what’s that tell you?”
    “Not a thing.”
    Murphy had been standing through all this, and he now settled in to his favorite position on the couch. “You weren’t here when we busted Davis, were you?”
    I shook my head. “I was on vacation, but I was here for all the rest.”
    “Seems to me a man who has to be held in solitary confinement for his own protection would have a rough time rounding up friends to settle his scores for him.”
    “Why’s he in solitary?”
    “Because in this state, he’s on the far side of the moon. There’s not a guy in that jail who doesn’t want to take a poke at him just for the novelty of it. I mean, let’s face it, where else are they going to be able to mess with a black guy? Last I heard, they’d left turds on his pillow, torn his mattress, destroyed his property, and given him as much trouble as they could get away with. Compared to that, solitary’s probably like vacation.”
    I was impressed with Frank’s knowledge. A man in prison was no concern of ours, and to find out about him, you had to go out of your way. Frank obviously had done just that, and I was curious to know why. “What’s he still doing in Vermont? Shouldn’t he be in some federal can by now?”
    “Red tape. Maybe it’s crowding or something. I do know the locals would love to get rid of him.”
    “Where’s he being held?”
    “Woodstock.”
    “How do you know all this?” He looked over at me. “Captain’s prerogative.” He paused, I was hoping to say more, but instead he turned to the television and punched it on again. A Muppet was being shot through a cannon.
    “You gotten any word on the insurance angle yet—for Phillips’s grieving widow?”
    “Yeah. He had life—a hundred