The Angry Dream by Gil Brewer Read Free Book Online

carried him out beyond the garage and dug a hole in the hard ground and buried him.
    In the house, I got the cartons I’d used to carry things from the store, measured the broken windows, and sealed them with the pieces of carton. Then I managed to get the stove back in place, straighten out the buckled pipe and put that back up. I cleaned the house with a quick once-over, spending most of the time in the dining room and kitchen. Then I nailed the front door back on, deciding to use the back door. All the time I kept getting hotter and hotter about what they had done.
    After getting rid of the destroyed food, binding a couple mattresses in the corner for a bunk, unpacking my clothes and hanging them again, I went outside and brought wood into the house, started a fire in the stove. The place began to warm up. I washed, dressed in dark woolen trousers, flannel shirt and my topcoat. Then I went out to the car and started for the sheriff’s office.
    I could not get it out of my mind that Lois had watched through the window and seen them down there. She must have known what they were doing, yet she’d told me nothing.
    He was alone in the office when I got there, his gray sedan parked outside in the snowy street. There was a plate-glass window, and before entering, I looked inside through the steaming glass. There was a large roll-top desk, and he sat leaning far back in a big desk chair, his feet on the desk. I went inside. It was like stepping into a furnace. There was a red-glowing potbellied stove in the center of the room, a few chairs, a small table, two brass spittoons, a pile of magazines on the floor under an enormous calendar carrying an air-brush painting of a lush bathing beauty.
    “Hello?”
    “My name’s Harper. I’ve got a complaint.”
    “I see,” he said, not looking up. “I’m Tom Luckham, Harper. Heard about you.”
    He still did not look up. He was working on his left thumb with a small pearl-handled pocket knife. His hair was thin and red, his face an enormous blossom of health that heavy white pouches beneath the eyes belied. He wore khaki shirt and pants, low leather high-tops over the pants, and a white and blue striped mackinaw hung from the back of the chair he sat in. On top of the desk was a Stetson hat that looked new. He was a huge man, his breathing harsh and rapid with concentration above the thumb. A heavy over-oiled gun belt and holstered  .38 lay dully gleaming on the desk top beside his booted feet.
    Heat was flowing in waves from the potbellied stove. I began to sweat. Luckham’s face was red and dry.
    “Complaint, eh?”
    “That’s right.”
    He grunted, snapped the knife closed and tossed it to the desk. He dropped his feet, whirled the chair, looked up at me with muddy gray eyes.
    “Let’s hear it, Harper.” The pouches beneath his eyes crinkled. He was a man of perhaps forty, a sick man, riding on old strength and much nerve. His pale-lipped mouth turned up at the corners. “Let’s hear this complaint.”
    I told him. “They killed a dog,” I said. “Not alone killed him—they nailed him to the side of the house!”
    “Your dog, Harper?”
    “Not exactly, no.” I told him how Bunk had been hanging around.
    “What you so all-fired riled up about somebody else’s dog for? He wasn’t your dog: what do you care?”
    I looked at him for a time.
    “What do you want
me
to do?” He hadn’t changed expression. It was almost as if I were telling him a story he’d heard over and over long before.
    “Don’t you believe me?”
    “Sure, I believe you, Harper.”
    “Well, what do you mean—what do
I
want
you
to do?”
    “Exactly.”
    He sat there watching me. When he spoke, his voice was very soft.
    “Who did all this, Harper?”
    “If I knew, I wouldn’t be here.”
    “If you don’t know who did it, I don’t see what I can do. Did you see them do it?”
    “No, I–”
    He scratched his head with the fingers of his right hand, then shook his head.
    “That