Purgatory Ridge by William Kent Krueger Read Free Book Online

the long shadows of spruce and birch, and LePere, although he hated to admit it, liked the look of the place, especially on cool mornings when it seemed to rise out of the mist of the cove like something from a dream.
    There was no mist on the lake that morning. As with every morning for weeks, the air was already warm. The water was a perfect mirror of the hazy blue sky, and across the real and the reflected ran a black smudge rising up from somewhere far across the lake, beyond Aurora.
    When the woman came from the house with her boy, LePere lifted his field glasses to watch. She was dressed for sailing, in a white top, khaki shorts, canvas deck shoes, and a red visor pulled over her long, honeycolored hair. The boy wore a light blue polo shirt, jean cutoffs, and black Converse tennis shoes. A few feet out the back door, the woman stopped, smiled, and said something to the boy. They started racing toward the dock. The boy was awkward, a graceless runner. The woman, LePere could tell, let him win. There were never any other children about. The boy seemed to have no friends. Because of the time the boy’s mother spent with him, LePere guessed she understood this, too. Maybe she contributed to it. Sometimes the people you loved were the ones you most betrayed with your weakness, something LePere understood well.
    They went to the dock where two boats were tied up—an expensive twenty-eight-foot sloop named
Amazing Grace
and a small dinghy with a sail. They stepped aboard the dinghy. The woman pointed toward the stern and began talking to the boy, giving him a sailing lesson, LePere guessed.
    At that moment, LePere heard at his back the creak of the springy boards on his own ancient dock. He lowered the field glasses, but before he could turn, a nylon cord looped around his neck and drew taut.
    “‘Round here,” the voice growled into his ear, “this is what we do to an Injun who stares at a white woman.”
    The cord cut off LePere’s breathing. He shoved himself up and back, stumbling against the man who’d grabbed him from behind. LePere tried to twist, feeling the blood gather in his head, pounding in his ears, but the grip that held him was too powerful. He swept his left leg around, hoping to knock his assailant off balance. No good. Lightning flashed across his vision. Then, as suddenly as it had been drawn about him, the rope was loosed. LePere felt himself pushed free.
    Wesley Bridger laughed, whooping hard. “Goddamn, Chief, you gotta be careful. Hell, you were so intent on that broad’s hooters the U.S. Cavalry could’ve galloped up behind you and you never would’ve heard ‘em.”
    LePere rubbed at the raw skin over his throat. “Wha—” His throat felt all kinked up. He forced down a swallow. “What the hell, Wes?”
    Bridger picked up the field glasses that had fallen on the dock and peered through them at the dinghy. “You know, Chief, in the SEALs we learned more’n forty ways to kill a man. I could’ve employed a good three dozen on you just now. Here.” He handed the field glasses back.
    Wesley Bridger was tall, and although he was lean, every inch of him was taut. He was like a man constructed of steel cable with a thin layer of suntan slapped over it. LePere didn’t know how old Bridger was, but there were more than a few gray hairs in hisblack mustache and he’d made reference once to losing his virginity in high school while he listened to Pablo Cruise. His age didn’t matter. There was a part of the man that age, and the wisdom that went with it, would never touch.
    Bridger shoved the cord into the back pocket of his Wranglers and watched the woman and the boy step back onto the deck of the sloop. “You know, Chief, the rich are different from you and me. I think it was Scott Fitzgerald said that. He sure knew whereof he spoke. You ever seen her up real close? I always wondered if those hooters were real. But I guess they must be. If she’d laid out the money to pump them hooters