The Dead Past by Tom Piccirilli Read Free Book Online Page A

down.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Is that it?"
    "This morning I walked in on Broghin and he was folding up a water-stained piece of paper, you could see that ink had run. It made a connection, not much of one, but I guess it showed because he threw it in a drawer like a boy caught with his father's Playboy . That meant a whole lot more." He slowed for a red light. A couple holding hands, pushing a stroller, stepped into the crosswalk. "I've been on this job for eight years and I thought I'd seen that man in just about every mood there is. Happy as a kid at Christmas, proud, vengeful, even throwing up on himself. But I've never actually seen him rattled ."
    "Anna can do it to him easily. I want her protected.”
    “I don't think the note was for her."
    "Why?"
    "Because Broghin can be a jerk but he's still a good sheriff. If he thought she was in any kind of danger he would have had me or one of the other boys watching over her around the clock."
    "So you say."
    "It's the truth, and you know it, Jon."
    I wasn't certain what I knew anymore, except that I didn't know as much as I needed to; we drove around the park, nostalgia trying to work into my system and utterly failing. Felicity Grove wasn't as retrograde as I'd come to believe, and it lost more of its sleepy, peaceful milieu all the time—it seemed the town had caught up fast with the insanity of the cities. What was going to come next?
    "You think maybe he or his family was threatened?" I asked.
    "Yeah, I do." The world was being squeezed through his Clint Eastwood squint. "The sheriff's been on edge for two days. He barks at the people he's usually nice to and he's a genuine doll to everybody he always screams at."
    "I noticed. He actually called me Johnny."
    Lowell shook his head. "He's twisted ass over backwards, and the only thing that can do that is for something to prod the man where he breathes."
    "I promised not to get in the way and obstruct justice on this one if I could help it, but if you think that Broghin himself is hiding evidence . . .?"
    "I didn't say that."
    "No, but you came perilously close."
    "I know you don't get along with the man, and I can't say I blame you. You just think of him as a butterball who razzes you too much, but I've seen him put his life on the line. Whatever the hell is eating at him, I've got to give him time to work it out."
    "Why are you telling me this?" I said, staring out the window so I wouldn't have to look at him. "You know I'm not going to let it lie."
    He reached out and touched my arm gently, with his wrist hanging over my shoulder, the way we had posed for our football team yearbook pictures. I didn't like this pull of the past. "Because I'm asking you to let it lie."
    My turn to be in charge of the silence. We drove back to the police station and he pulled up in front of the Jeep. We sat there for another few minutes, watching the traffic lights change, people walking by. Between us, the shotgun's presence was disturbing and comforting.
    "Okay, Lowell," I said. "I'll let you run with it for now. I'll give Broghin the benefit of the doubt, but only for so long." We got out of the car. "If what he's hiding has anything to do with Anna I'm going to find out. And then there'll be hell and me to pay."
    "Good line," he said. "I like that. You're going to have knees knocking from here to Jacksonville."
    ~ * ~
    I drove up to the back hills, a sort of mystical area of the county where the structures of town faded away to sprawling copses and scattershot cabins and trailers. The ragged timberline took over the landscape. I lost control of the Jeep twice on the unpaved roads and nearly skidded off the mountain. Although there was an intoxicating natural beauty, this wasn't friendly country in the winter. If I didn't gather my concentration I might wind up as bad off as Richie.
    It wasn't that stupid a line, I thought. Pretty awful all right, but not as bad as "gamut of inquisitiveness" anyway.
    When I got in the general vicinity of Tons