The Cold Spot by Tom Piccirilli Read Free Book Online Page A

awake. Her teeth were smeared with red lipstick.
    Chase looked at Jonah and realized his grandfather, who never drank on a job, was stone sober.
    It was only when cute Lou was about to dance off to the bedroom with Chase that Jonah put his arm around her in a blatant territorial gesture. No subtlety there, no mistaking the meaning. He held up a hand to Chase’s chest, not quite touching him, grasping the girl tightly under his wing.
    So there it was. Chase got the chick who was nearly out cold for his first lay. Before he could do anything he made her brush her teeth and gargle. It still didn’t kill the whiskey smell, and for the eight minutes he was in the saddle he had to keep his face turned away from hers.
    It was terrible, but at least he didn’t have to take the blame for the general lack of success all by himself. In the morning, it didn’t seem to matter. Lulu didn’t remember much. They went for a second bout on the couch that was much better than the first go-around.
    At Lila’s dinner table, thinking of Lulu made him realize all the more what he’d been missing for so long.
    After they’d finished eating she said, “Let’s have wine in the den.”
    He looked around the place. “You don’t have a den.”
    “Sure I do, there’s even a fireplace.”
    “Most folks call that the bedroom,” he told her.
    Holding up the bottle of wine, easing him along as she pressed forward, she said,” That right?”
             
    Afterward, while he was catching his breath, she asked him again about his past.
    It was getting a little spooky now, always talking about the worst things that had ever happened to him while her chest was powdered with salt and his neck burned with her teeth marks.
    He slid aside and stared into the cold fireplace, wondering why anybody in Mississippi would ever need one in their house, much less in the bedroom. It was October and nearly eighty degrees outside.
    “I always wondered what it would’ve been like,” he said, “if my old man had been able to hold on. If he could’ve ever bounced back from being so broken. But Jonah told me I would be better off without my father. Maybe he was right.”
    Lila tensed and reared up, giving him the pout, and brought her small, hard fist down on his belly. It hurt and he gasped.
    “Don’t you say that.”
    “Ouch.”
    “Don’t you ever say such a thing, you hear me now?”
    “All right.”
    “Fathers are important.”
    She was so powerful in her presence, standing up for people she’d never meet, who were already nearly ten years dead. He’d never shared so much with anyone before.
    As the sun went down, the shadows lanced the bedroom, growing thicker second by second, stabbing across the sheets. The window was open, a breeze stirring the lace curtains. Despite having shoved his childhood behind locked doors, he could still hear an occasional noise come through. Now he heard the sound of his old man chopping at the ice with an ax, needing to die so badly.
    “I hope he’s not dead,” Chase said.
    “Your daddy?”
    He let out a small snort of surprise. “No, the man who murdered my mother and the baby. I can’t let go of the idea that one of these days I might get a chance to kill him.”



L ila introduced her father as Sheriff Bodeen. A woman introduces her father as something other than Dad or Daddy and you know you’ve got a situation on your hands.
    Sheriff Bodeen hated Chase’s guts from the first minute. Bodeen smiled like a three-day-old corpse and kept chuckling under his breath, trying to be a good ole boy. Going, Heh heh heh. Eh heh heh. The sound lifted the hair on Chase’s neck.
    Bodeen stood about five-foot-two and had short-guy syndrome, needed to prove he was the toughest son of a bitch in any room he walked into. He had arms thick as tree trunks and with every step he sort of exploded across the room. All rip-tide energy.
    His brown uniform was immaculately clean and pressed, buttoned to the throat. He kept