The Accused and the Damned: Book Three, the Eddie McCloskey Series (The Unearthed 3) by Evan Ronan Read Free Book Online Page B

get here?”
    “Upstate New York?” Eddie thought about it. “I need to eat something, pack, then drive. Seven hours.”
    “Could you get here any sooner?”
    “Faster than light travel hasn’t been invented yet. And I don’t own a DeLorean.”
    “Please hurry. I hate to call in a favor like this but I need your help. It’s—”
    “I know. It’s about that guy that claimed a ghost killed his wife.”
    If Giles was surprised, he didn’t show it. “Yes. Anson will be convicted, unless you help him.”
    Eddie laughed. “Guess there’s a first time for everything.”
    * * * *
    Eddie had read about it online when it first came to light. Some clown from upstate New York had been arrested following his wife’s murder and told police that a ghost had done the deed. Eddie would have forgotten all about it but for the fact that said clown’s friend was referenced in the article: Giles Tyson.
    Eddie got his things together quickly and jumped in the car.
    During the drive, Giles gave Eddie the background on the situation, the deceased, and the accused. It took three hours. They hung up and Eddie still had another two plus hours to drive. All told he traveled two-hundred and seventy miles by the time he exited I-87. He’d been to Giles’s house once before years ago and the terrain was still familiar to him. He followed his GPS and drove another thirty minutes through beautiful country.
    Another town, another state, another job. He’d pushed hard the last eight months and had hustled six ways to Sunday to get his business up and running. A couple of months of smooth sailing, but now the bills were piling up.
    Not good.
    He was experiencing an acute case of Good Samaritan remorse and now questioned his decision to forego payment from the Chins a few weeks ago. The two hundred bucks from the last job would have at least covered travel expenses and food for a couple days. And now here he was, racking up the mileage, paying New York tolls, on what would probably be another charity job that offered the added bonus of endangering his professional reputation. All because he owed Giles Tyson a favor.
    Eddie knew enough about himself to know he had to learn a lot more about business.
    But Eddie had developed the good habit of repaying old debts, both financial and moral. And he reminded himself that it was another job. He’d worked steadily for seven months, which was saying something.
    New town to explore, different mentality. He could add this experience to that ever-expanding autobiography. It would broaden him, stretch him.
    The fields zipped past and the cows and horses couldn’t be bothered to turn around and watch him as he drove by. He’d call Giles’s town backwoods but that would sound derogatory. These people might not have had the culture of the hipsters strutting around the theater district in the Big Apple, but they had their own mores. Their own unique collective spin on the world and politics and customs.
    The three Cs on the radio. Country, classic rock, Christian. Some crossover between the three, but nothing else. Eddie wasn’t religious. He didn’t believe in the all-powerful invisible man in the sky even though he’d experienced the paranormal. He didn’t mind other people being religious. So long as they weren’t flying planes into buildings or telling him what to do in his bedroom or blatantly ignoring the fossil record.
    To his right, the trees broke and an old cast iron fence began. Eddie slowed and in the mid afternoon sun could make out the scores of tombstones, standing up like crooked rows of teeth that had never been braced. Many of them old, weather-worn, made illegible by time. This cemetery reminded him of the place his parents had been laid to rest over twenty years ago. The grounds consisted of a big, sweeping plain surrounded by forest off a quiet road. Big woods all around where a guy could get lost for days.
    The cemetery gate was open. It looked like it had been left open fifty