Valknut: The Binding by Marie Loughin Read Free Book Online

for
the file folder.
    Inside, a dozen photographs of the crime
scene told him a story that he could never have learned from a
visit to the morgue. Image after image fired into his brain. Austin
had been cocooned in white string. Yards of the stuff pinned his
arms and legs to his body in a fetal position. His eyes, frozen
wide with terror, stared from a mask of blood. Out of his gaping
mouth protruded the black handle of a knife.
    His stomach churned. How could that be his
brother? He shoved the pictures away and launched to his feet,
knocking his chair over with a crash. He stared at the chair
wildly, wanting to pick it up and smash it against the wall, to
smash everything in sight. But one thought stopped him.
    Someone had done this to Austin.
    The idea hit him like ice water. His jumbled
up mind fixed on that one thought. Someone had done this to
Austin.
    With deliberate care, he righted the chair,
sat down, and pulled the pictures close. One by one, he paged
through them again, slowly this time, memorizing every injury,
every clot of blood, every fear-twisted muscle locked in eternal
paralysis. When he was finished, he stacked the pictures with
precise, controlled movements. Then he began to read.
    Ten minutes later, he shuffled the pages
neatly into place, closed the folder, and returned it to the center
of the table. There were no suspects. The police had found nothing
but a collection of useless facts and no leads. The only thing Doug
had learned with certainty was that, even with the help of every
police department in his territory, Briggs couldn’t track a killer
who could be hundreds of miles from a crime scene in a matter of
hours. By the time Briggs returned to the interview room, steaming
coffee in hand, Doug knew with cold certainty what he must do.
    The next day, he hopped his first train. That
night was the first of many spent in a hobo jungle. His forty days
of leave flew by and he resigned his commission. His disguise
became a way of life as he joined the hobo community. And after
nearly a year, he was no closer to finding the killer.
    Meanwhile, rumors of new murders reached him
through railroad gossip. And they seemed to be growing more
frequent.
    He looked down at Lennie, now curled in sleep
and shivering against the night’s chill. Her naiveté was likely to
get her wrapped in a cocoon, a knife ventilating her palate. He
couldn’t let that happen. He took off his brother’s jacket and laid
it over her, then settled next to his pack for a long sleepless
night.
    A moment later, a raven burst from a hidden
perch overhead and flew out the open door.
     
     

Chapter 3
     
    September 1893
    Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming
     
    Walter “Red” Galloway poured a charge of mica
powder into a round hole in a granite boulder, lit the fuse, and
ran like hell for the shelter of a rock outcropping. He barely had
time to throw himself down next to his partner, Angus Cook, before
the charge blew. The blast shook the mountain. Fragments of granite
ricocheted like bullets off the surrounding rubble and trees.
Pebbles and sand showered down on the two men, and a rock the size
of a boot dropped between Angus’s feet. Angus jerked his legs back
and huddled tighter against the outcropping.
    “Damn, Red,” he said, eyes popping. “Yer
makin’ them fuses shorter’n my mornin’ shit! One of these days
it’ll be yer head bouncin’ at my feet, and I’ll be scrapin’ the
rest of ya off a rock.”
    Stuck laying track in the wilderness, with no
women and not enough whiskey, Red had been amusing himself by
cutting fuses shorter and shorter just for the fun of seeing that
look on Angus’s face. But that last one was a bit close even for
him. Not that he would admit it. He took off his hat and casually
shook the granite flakes from it. “And I s’pose you’d rather be
back in Homestead, rioting at the steel mill again and havin’ your
head broke open by the Pinkertons.”
    Angus’s hairy, sunburned face knotted up