The Hunting Wind: An Alex McKnight Mystery by Steve Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page A

batter rounded the bases, and Randy would have that look on his face. Most guys are mad at themselves then. Hell,
every
other pitcher who ever played the game is mad at himself then. But Randy would just look at me like the dog who’d crapped on the new carpeting.
    “Sorry, partner,” he said. “I got on a little roll there.”
    “How much did you win?” I said.
    “I was up three thousand dollars,” he said. “And then I gave it all back.”
    “Ouch.”
    “No problem, right? It’s house money.”
    “Let’s get out of here,” I said.
    He was quiet for a while, all the way down 1-75 to M-28. When we got into the heavy pine trees, he started humming again. A few minutes later, he was laughing. “This is gonna be so great,” he said. “It’s like a big adventure.”
    “Randy, let me ask you something,” I said. “Have you thought this through all the way to the end? Let’s say you find out where she lives now. You go up to her door and knock on it. With what, flowers in your hand? She opens the door, and behind her you see her three kids, and her husband at the table, eating dinner. What are you gonna say?”
    He looked out the window at a large doe that was standing beside the road. The white on her tail flashed in the headlights. “Hey, a deer,” he said.
    “Randy, what are you gonna say?”
    “If she opens the door and I see three kids and a husband, I’m gonna say, ‘Hello, remember me? I never got to give you these flowers at your wedding.’ And then I’ll ask her to introduce me to him, and to her kids.”
    “Okay,” I said. “Good.”
    “But you know what?” he said.
    “What.”
    “It’s not gonna be like that. She’s gonna be alone.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “I just know it.”
    “Oh Randy. For God’s sake.”
    “I’ll bet you,” he said. “That three grand I just lost. I’ll bet you she’s alone right now.”
    I shook my head. There was nothing else to say.
    “You want to stop at Jackie’s place for a nightcap?” he said.
    “We gotta get up early,” I said. “And I want to take this snowplow off before we go.”
    “Why do you leave it on so long?” he said. “When’s the last time it snowed?”
    “The day I take it off,” I said. “It’ll snow within twenty-four hours. Guaranteed.”
    “So leave it on.”
    “I’m not hauling a twelve-hundred-pound snow-plow all the way to Detroit and back.”
    “So take it off.”
    We took the snowplow off. In the light from a single bulb outside my cabin, we took the snowplow off and left it sitting there in its springtime resting place behind the little utility shed, a block of wood holding the mount off the ground and a big plastic tarpaulin covering the whole thing.
    By the time we got to bed, the snowflakes were already flying.

CHAPTER 5
    The next morning, eight inches of new snow lay on the ground. After Randy got done rolling around in it, he helped me put the plow back on the truck, which only takes about forty times as much effort as taking the damned thing
off the
truck. You have to line it up just right, because technically I don’t have the right kind of front mount to carry that plow. After an hour of monkeying around with it, we got the stupid thing on and plowed the road. Then we tore the stupid thing off again and put it back in its spot behind the shed. The sun was just coming up by then.
    “Come on,” I said when we were all done. “Let’s get out of here before it starts snowing again.”
    “Don’t you want some breakfast?”
    “We’ll grab some on the way,” I said. “We got old flames to find, remember?”
    We jumped in the truck and gunned it through Paradise. The sun shone on the new snow and blinded us. “Snow in April!” Randy said. “I love it!” And then he started singing again.
“L’amour, l’amour . . . Oui, son ardeur . . .
Damn it, Alex, what is the next line to that song?”
    “You just keep singing the one line you know,” I said. “All the way down to