The Brat by Gil Brewer Read Free Book Online Page A

wall beside the sink, his eyes bright and wide under the straw brim of his hat. Time was running out.
    “One,” he said. “Said she was his wife.”
    “Oh.”
    “Said they were visiting her folks in town. Only he couldn’t stand her folks, so he stayed out here. He was a writer. She’d stay with him once in a while. They swum a lot.”
    “What’d she look like?”
    He began to relax. But he didn’t forget about the drawer. He moved a scant inch toward it. You could read the eagerness in his eyes again.
    “She was some looker. One of these blondies you see in the newsreels. Moved like a cat, she did.”
    I heard Marjorie running across the shell driveway, heavily. “I called ‘em, Henry!” she shouted, from out there.
    “I’m leaving,” I told Henry Pearson. “I don’t advise you to try and stop me.”
    He let go a tiny sob and came at me head down. I hated to do it, but there was no other way. Then I wanted to do it. I let him come and swung. He caught my right fist with his left arm and swung at me, a roundhouse that struck my shoulder and bounced off. He didn’t have much. I grabbed the front of his overalls and pushed one into his chin with everything I had. His head cracked back and I hung onto the overalls and did it again. There was a lot of anger at everything behind the blow, and it took the spit out of Henry Pearson. He sank limply back against the wall, slid down, and sat on the floor, softly moaning.
    I went on out the back door, as nervous as hell, and loaded with a wild urgency. Marjorie was at the corner of the house. I turned and ran at her, bulling at her—she went gallumphing off across the shell toward the office. I headed back across the springy turf of the lawn into the dunes, with the sand spurs snapping at me, toward the convertible under the pines.
    • • •
    I drove through St. Petersburg Beach like an antagonized beetle, without flushing a police cruiser. Then I look the causeway, wide open, heading back toward town.
    They might not have out an alarm for the car. I had no way of telling. It all depended on who they got to first, who they questioned. One thing was certain—those notes had them after me.
    It was as if my mind focused on her, beamed on her. And mixed up with all the hate, fused with it, was what she did to me—When I found her I’d have to be close to her again.
    I had to get out of this section. Whether I ever found her, or not, I had to run. Sure, I thought. Try telling them Try explaining how you didn’t shoot Jefferies. You didn’t know anything about that. Or the money. Or anything.
    I could almost hear her laughter. How many times had she laughed at me during the last two years? With me not knowing it.
    That’s what heat can do to you, Sullivan. That’s what she started that day on the wharf at Hager’s Point. She wriggled just right, and when you touched her, you died….
    What was inside her? What was it you missed?
    Hell, Sullivan. Hell. That’s what’s inside her.
    I’d need some clothes. I wanted another look at the house. She wouldn’t be there—not her—but I had to know how far the Law was on this thing.
    I kept breathing as if I were tied up, with somebody kicking me in the chest. Over the heart. I couldn’t stop breathing that way. I thought of the miles she was putting between us. It was black thinking.
    Ray Jefferies’ dead body … Ed Fowler and my wife back in that bedroom. How in hell had they been able to face me. No, not her—him. She could do anything. I knew that now. Only how had she been able to say and do all the things she had. How long had it been going on?
    What difference, Sullivan?
    And I’d talked with Ed this afternoon. No wonder he hadn’t liked Ray Jefferies.
    But how could you blame Ed? Because when Evis wanted her way, she got it. Sure. And what man could deny her?

Chapter 6
    T HEY were there.
    It was like a carnival grounds, the way it was lit up. The bright yellow porch light glared out across the soaking