The Blight Way by Patrick F. McManus Read Free Book Online

hear anybody talking.”
    â€œYeah. Pretty quiet. Move up real slow.”
    Tully expected an ambush at any moment. He was peering ahead through the trees and brush on each side of the road, and he was glad he had brought Pap along. Pap was old for this sort of thing but still better than most.
    Pap crossed over to him and whispered. “I don’t see nobody moving around.”
    Tully stopped and took a deep breath. “I hear birds and squirrels. I don’t think there’s anybody up there.”
    Tully and Pap moved cautiously into the clearing. The mountain reared straight up directly in front of a black Jeep Grand Cherokee. The Jeep’s front bumper rested against the berm, now grown over with brush.
    Bullet holes riddled the car on the right side. The back seat was empty. There was no sign of blood on the seat, but the right rear door was full of bullet holes. The glass had been shot out. No one could have avoided that spray of lead, Tully thought.
    â€œTwo dead guys in the front seat,” Pap said.
    He took out a handkerchief and used it to open the right front door.
    â€œThis one’s got a gun,” he whispered. “Never got it out of his shoulder holster.”
    Tully went around to the driver’s side of the car. He tucked the Glock in the rear waistband of his pants, wrapped his handkerchief around his hand and opened the front door a crack. The car was still in drive and had drifted ahead until stopped by the berm. The driver was slumped against the door. Tully pushed him back into the front seat. He too had a gun in a shoulder holster. The fuel gauge was on empty. He turned off the ignition key. The headlights were on. He wrapped the handkerchief around his left hand and turned the lights off. He walked around to the front of the vehicle and opened the hood. He lay his hand on the radiator cap. He leaped back, shaking his hand and bellowing.
    Pap smiled. “I thought you didn’t allow your department people to use any obscenities, particularly that one.”
    â€œWhen they burn themselves on a radiator cap, they can,” Tully said, examining his hand.
    â€œWe can stop whispering now,” Pap said. “These two fellas are dead. If the killers were still here, we’d probably be dead, too.”
    â€œI guess you’re right,” Tully said. Even their own voices sounded a bit spooky in the silence of the woods.
    The driver wore a white shirt and tie without a suit jacket.
    â€œYou think they’re feds?” Tully asked.
    Pap had opened the lift gate at the rear of the Jeep.
    â€œNaw,” Pap said. “Too well dressed for feds. There are two suit jackets folded up back here.”
    Tully was going through a billfold. “Here’s a driver’s license. He’s from L.A., too. Probably mob. Both these fellows are pretty beefy. I bet they were bodyguards.”
    â€œProbably,” Pap said.
    â€œThe guy at the fence, Holt, had to be riding in the back seat,” Tully said. “He probably came flying out of the car and made it into the woods. Then one or more of the shooters hunted him down. But with all the bullets sprayed into the back seat, I can’t figure out how he managed to get away.”
    â€œHe probably was a lot smarter, or more suspicious, than the guys in the front seat.”
    Tully shut the car door and worked his way into the woods to the left of the car. He came to where someone had stood back in the trees, matting down the dried ferns.
    A pool of blood glistened darkly next to the matted-down area.
    â€œGot a lot of blood over here,” Tully said.
    He knew the blood couldn’t have come from Holt. There was too much of it.
    Pap came around the rear of the Jeep. “The grass and ferns are all trampled down back in the woods over there,” he said. “You can see where the shooters stood. Two of them. They waited a good while for the Jeep to show up. I can see where they was sitting