Read Big Red Tiquila - Rick Riordan for Free Online Page A

wanted a piece of this. You want to find something that
nobody’s caught before, it isn’t going to happen."
    “ Does that mean you won’t help?"
    "I didn’t say that."
    I heard papers being moved around on the other end of
the line. Finally Larry swore under his breath.
    "Where’s a pen?" he asked somebody. Then
to me: "Let me have your number, Tres."
    I gave it to him.
    "Okay," he said. "Give me a couple of
days."
    "Thanks, Larry."
    "And, Tres—this is a personal favor. Let’s
just keep it personal."
    “ You got it."
    He cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, I owed your dad
a lot. It’s just that the Sheriff is sensitive to taxpayer dollars
being used on, let’s say, nonessential work. It also doesn’t help
if it’s about one of his predecessors who beat him in three
straight elections, you know what I mean?"
    I checked with SAPD next. After a few minutes of
being transferred from line to line, I finally got Detective
Schaeffer, who sounded like he’d just woken up from a nap. He told
me Ian Kingston, formerly with Criminal Investigations, had moved to
Seattle two years ago and was presently overseeing a large private
security firm. Kingston’s ex-partner, David Epcar, was presently
overseeing a small burial plot in the Sunset Cemetery.
    “ Wonderful," I said.
    Schaeffer yawned so loud it sounded like somebody was
vacuuming his mouth.
    "What was your name again?" he asked.
    I told him.
    “ Like in Jackson Navarre, the county sheriff that
got killed?"
    "Yeah."
    He grunted, evidently sitting up in his chair.
    "That was the biggest pain in the ass we’ve
had since Judge Woods took a hit," he said. "Fucking
circus."
    It wasn’t exactly a show of sympathetic interest.
    Seeing as I was out of other options, however, and
had to say something before the detective fell back asleep, I decided
to give Schaeffer my best song and dance.
    Much to my surprise, he didn’t hang up on me.
    “ Huh. Call me back in a week or so, Navarre. If I
get a chance to look at the files, maybe you can ask me some
questions."
    “ That’s mighty white of you, Detective."
    I think he was snoring before his receiver hit the
cradle.
    By sunset it still wasn’t cool enough to run
without getting heat stroke. I settled for fifty push—ups and
stomach crunches in the living room, then held horse stance and bow
stance for ten minutes each. Robert Johnson lounged across the cool
Linoleum in the kitchen and watched. Afterward I lay flat on my back
with my muscles burning, letting the air conditioner dry the sweat
off my body and listening to the dying hum of the cicadas outside.
Robert Johnson crawled onto my chest and sat there looking down at
me, his eyes half-closed.
    “ Good workout?" I asked.
    He yawned.
    I unpacked a few boxes, drank a few beers, watched
the fireflies floating around in Gary Hales’s backyard at dusk. I
tried to convince myself I wasn’t fighting any kind of compulsion
to call Lillian. Give her some time.
    No problem. It was just a coincidence that I kept
staring at the phone.
    I started digging through my box of books until I
found Lillian’s letters wedged in between the Snopes family and the
rest of Yoknapatawpha County. I read them all, from her first in May
to the one that had arrived last Thursday, just as I was packing.
Reading them made me feel much worse.
    Irritated, I dug around in the box some more, looking
for some lighter reading material—Kafka maybe, or an account of the
Black Plague. What I found instead was my father’s scrapbook.
    It was a huge canvas—covered three-ring binder
stuffed with just about every insignificant piece of writing he’d
ever scribbled but was too lazy to throw away. There were yellowed
drawings he’d done for me when I was live or six-stick figures of
armies and airplanes that he’d used to illustrate his drunken
Korean bedtime stories to me. There were letters that had never been
mailed to friends who had long since died. There were pages of notes
on old cases he’d