Purgatory Ridge by William Kent Krueger Read Free Book Online Page A

up, she’d’ve laid out the dough to cut back some on that honker of hers. Two amazing hooters and one hell of a honker. What a combination, huh?” He smiled at LePere and a lot of silver flashed among his teeth. “Got any cold beer?”
    LePere was watching the woman and the boy again. With Bridger there and making such a commotion, he kept the field glasses at his side. He needn’t have. Neither the woman nor the boy looked his way. “You know I don’t keep alcohol here. It’s too early to be drinking anyway.”
    “Fuck you, Mom. How about a Coke?”
    “In the fridge.”
    Bridger turned and headed toward the cabin whistling “Witchy Woman.”
    LePere sat back down on the canvas chair and brought the field glasses to his eyes again. The woman had a rope in her hand now and was showing the boy how to tie knots. When LePere was a boy, his father had taught him the same knots, probably.
    Bridger strode back onto the dock, guzzling a can of Coke. In his other hand, he held a paperback book.
    “Superior Blue,”
he said, holding the book up so that the shiny cover caught fire in the morning sunlight. He nodded toward the woman in the dinghy. “This is the book she wrote. You read it?”
    “Yeah. What of it?”
    “You’d better be careful, Chief. People are going to think you’re stalking her.”
    LePere didn’t answer. Bridger rolled the can of cold Coke across his forehead, which was already beginning to glisten with sweat from the heat.
    “Life’s full of irony, don’t you think, Chief? I mean, here she is, only a few hundred yards away, and she doesn’t even know who you are. Hell, she doesn’t even know you exist. Doesn’t even suspect that you hate her guts.”
    “I don’t hate her,” LePere said.
    “No?” Bridger shook his head. “You are one strange motherfucker, Chief.” He glanced across the water. “Show’s over.”
    The boy let go the mooring lines. The little engine began to sputter and the woman steered the boat toward the opening of the cove. Once they were on the main body of the lake, LePere knew she would cut the engine and lift the sail. And if there were wind, they would fly. But even the rich couldn’t command the wind.
    Bridger turned and started off the dock. “Well. You ready for another day at the salt mines?”
    Bridger drove, one arm resting in the open window of an old green Econoline van. They were headedtoward Aurora, driving along the state highway that edged the southern shoreline of Iron Lake. The trees there were mostly evergreen, and the air carried the sweet bite of pine pitch.
    “Hear what happened at Lindstrom’s mill?” Bridger called over the wind.
    “No.”
    “Somebody blew the fuck out of it.”
    “Protest?”
    “Got me, Chief. All I know is it woke me up before I was ready to be woke up. I was dreaming about this little bar I used to go to in San Diego—”
    “Anybody hurt?”
    “Who am I? Walter fucking Cronkite?”
    LePere settled back and let the air and the shadows of the trees and the smell of the pine wash over him. Lindstrom. More trouble for an already troubled man. LePere felt no pity.
    “So… Chief—you give any more thought to what we talked about yesterday?”
    “What
you
talked about.”
    “Whatever. You think about it?” Bridger watched the road.
    “No.”
    “Easy money, Chief.”
    “It’s crazy.”
    “Every great plan has some element of craziness to it. That’s what makes it great.”
    “You must’ve been reading that biography of Patton again.”
    “Great man,” Bridger said. “Look, I can tell you’ve been thinking about it.” He leaned near to LePere andwhispered like the voice of the devil. “A cool million.”
    “Only a million? Why not two?”
    Bridger straightened up and pounded the steering wheel, grinning. “Hells bells, why not? The risk is the same.”
    They passed a sign on the road that said CHIPPEWA GRAND CASINO 3/4 MILE TO A JACKPOT OF GOOD TIMES AND GOOD FOOD .
    “You see, that’s the