Read Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard for Free Online Page A

to the touch. The only winter coat I had was gone, taken by the cops, Augie had said, from the scene of the accident. I had only a denim jacket on over my sweatshirt and jeans. Augie kept a change of clothes in his truck, in a mesh duffel bag behind his seat, for emergencies. He took out a spare jacket and gave it to me. It was much too big for me, but my denim jacket filled it out slightly, and anyway it would keep me warm. How I looked was the least of my worries now.
    I tried to remember if there were any papers in any of the pockets of my winter coat -- bank statements, old mail, pay stubs. I didn’t want the Chief’s boys to stumble upon anything like that and somehow use it against me. What I had told Tina back at my apartment was only partially true. The Chief would settle for public humiliation, but everyone knew what he really hungered for was to see me do time for something -- that and to keep me for a night in the basement of the police station, just him and his boys and me.
    Augie didn’t seem that much the worse for wear. He wasn’t tired, that much was for certain. He drove alertly, pushing the speed limit all the way. The girl we had tried to save was dead. He told me that right off. But the questions he now wanted answered fed his mind and occupied him in a way he hadn’t been since his beating last May. He was alive, back in business, his depression suddenly lifted. He felt useful again, vital. I could see it in everything about him as he drove.
    After he parked the truck, Augie climbed out into the cold night air, and I followed him. The motor was still running, the headlights still on. We stood within their influence and looked from the point where the car went over the bank, a little ahead and to the right of us, to where it had appeared around the curve.
    “I’ll tell you, Mac, things don’t add up here.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Our friends, the cops, they weren’t acting much like cops, you know. They seemed to me more like a clean-up crew than trained and experienced investigators. They towed the car out of the water, loaded it onto a flatbed, and then, boom, it was gone. Not so much as a roll of film or even a single measurement was taken. No one bothered to note the tire marks on the road, nothing. They took my statement fast, then put me in my truck and told me to drive myself to the emergency room. Of course I didn’t. I parked up the road and waited and watched the whole thing.” He paused. “They were almost acting scared.”
    I watched his face. His ears were red, and when white fog wasn’t bursting from his mouth, it lingered there, churning and then rising slowly past his face.
    “When you went over that bank there, did you come across anything on your way down that might slash a car tire to the rim?”
    I thought for a quick second, then shook my head and said, “No. Why?”
    “I saw the girl’s car when they pulled it out of the water. Then later I saw it when they loaded it onto the flatbed. All four tires were cut up, slashed to the rim. On one tire the rim was completely bare, no rubber at all.”
    “You sure about that?”
    “I’ve got pictures.”
    “Video?”
    “Stills. I crawled in from where I parked and shot a roll. These weren’t blowouts, Mac, I can tell you that. I mean, what are the chances of all four tires blowing out all at once? No, these tires were slashed, there’s no two ways about it.”
    “How?”
    “Follow me.”
    Augie led me down the road, toward the curve and the cluster of trees where we had seen someone run across the road just before the accident.
    When we were near the trees, Augie stopped and said to me, “Would you say this is where the car first lost control?”
    I looked around, nodded.
    He knelt suddenly, pulling me with him. He took a pocket light from his jacket pocket and shined it on the pavement between us.
    I looked closely and saw in the center of the circle of white light several fanglike punctures in the blacktop.
    I