Poison Heart by Mary Logue Read Free Book Online Page A

was obvious the wires had been cut. The breaks were clean and right on top of one another, and the wires weren’t pulled away from the fence. “Did whoever did this leave anything here?”
    “I didn’t find a thing. Not even a footprint. They were plenty careful.”
    “When did it happen?”
    “Must have been late Friday night, early Saturday morning.”
    “Did you hear anything?”
    “I was gone Friday night—didn’t get home till late and didn’t check on the animals before I went to bed. I had settled them before I went out. It wasn’t until Saturday morning that I noticed the elk was gone. I called Reiner, but he was up in the Cities. I was thinking of calling the sheriff when you called Mrs. Reiner and she called me.”
    “All the other elk okay?”
    “Yeah, I went out and counted heads right after the call. They all appear fine.”
    Claire looked around. “Not everyone in this community is real happy about what Mr. Reiner is doing here. This whole setup. Buying up all this land.”
    “Sure, people are jealous.”
    “You think that’s all?”
    A little anger showed in his face. “What do I know? It’s not my business to think about it. It’s just my job. A man’s gotta make a living.”
    “Sure. I know.”
    He looked at her, then reflected. “You know what’s weird, though? There’s no blood anywhere. Not in the pen, not outside the pen. You said it was dripping off his neck. Whoever shot him didn’t do it here.”
     
    Walter couldn’t see very well anymore. He looked and looked out the window, but all he could make out were lumps of color floating in a sea of light. The lumps moved sometimes, and he followed them with his eyes—if he wasn’t sleeping. What he did was not really even sleeping; it was not being awake. When he went deep, sometimes it felt like not being alive.
    A nurse came in and talked to him. “Hi, Walter. How’re you feeling?”
    He could hear her words, he could even understand them. But he couldn’t make any words himself. When he tried, his tongue tripped him up, and the sounds that came out of his mouth were garbage. He had quit trying. He knew the words, but they didn’t travel through him the way they used to.
    He nodded, and the nurse stuck a thermometer in his mouth. He had never been sick a day in his life. That’s what good hard work did for you. Until this complete disintegration of his body. Now nothing worked right. His one hand tried to keep at it, but the rest of his body had gone kaflooey.
    She pulled the thermometer out of his mouth and looked at it. “Normal.” Then she leaned in close to him, and he could see that she was young and pretty. “Do you want anything?”
    He wanted so much. But he shook his head. Better not to try.
    “Oh, look who’s here. Your wife.”
    For a crazy moment, he thought Florence had finally come to get him. He felt as though he was waiting so hard for her. But then he saw that it was Patty Jo. Could get a little snappy sometimes, but she had been there for him.
    “Hi, Walter.” She sat down in front of him and talked loud. Patty Jo had always had a voice on her, and since his stroke, she insisted on shouting at him.
    He nodded to her.
    “I had a visitor yesterday. That daughter of yours.”
    Margaret and Patty Jo had never gotten along. Or at least not after he had married Patty Jo. He wasn’t sure why. Patty Jo had explained to him that Margaret was jealous, thought she could keep her dad to herself. “You spoiled her, Walter. It’s your own fault.”
    Somehow so much was his fault. Patty Jo delighted in pointing out his mistakes. But she had helped him out so much when Florence died. He didn’t know what he would do without her.
    Patty Jo tapped him on the knee. “Margaret is trying to tell me what to do, Walter, and I don’t care for her tone. She seems to think she knows better than me. I’m your wife, after all. I make the decisions. She can’t seem to understand that.”
    Walter felt very tired. The