Read Iris Avenue for Free Online Page B

creek.
    “I’ll run up and call Hollis,” Hatch said. “If it’s his I’m sure he’ll come down and fetch him.”
    By the time Hatch returned Hannah had the dog on the lead, and was dragging him up the hill.
    “Come on, Randy!” Hatch said, and the dog leapt the rest of the way up the hillside, pulling Hannah toward Hatch.
    “Thanks,” Hannah said.
    “Hollis is on his way,” Hatch said. “He said he just left Friendsville, so he’ll be here in about a half hour. You want me to take him back to the station?”
    “I don’t mind to wait,” Hannah said. “I have to fill out a report to justify my mileage and I’ll need him to sign it.”
    “I’ll wait with you, if you don’t mind,” Hatch said. “It’ll give us a chance to catch up.”
    Hannah put the dog in one of the compartments on her truck, and then sat with Hatch in the cold sunshine, on top of a picnic table. Hatch pulled out a rolled up pouch of chewing tobacco and stuffed a little wad in between his cheek and gum.
    “I keep meaning to give this up, but at least it keeps me from smoking,” he said.
    Hatch told her what was going on with his sisters and brothers, and about keeping his nephew. He told her about Marvin dying, and wanting to buy the station.
    “I need twenty thousand dollars down to get the loan,” he said. “It might as well be twenty million. It seems a shame that an honest man can’t get ahead, and there’s my sister’s man covered up in money from selling drugs.”
    “You ever hear about some big drug ring involving Theo Eldridge and the man who used to live with Maggie?”
    “Sure have. They got this old lady what bankrolls the whole operation, likes to slit people’s throats and throw them in the river when they make her mad. Did you know your cousin Brian has a price tag on his head?”
    “Same old lady?”
    “One and the same. If he’s smart he’ll get as far away from here as possible, pretty dern quick.”
    “How did you know he’s escaped? I only heard that this morning.”
    “I hear stuff, you know,” he said, and shifted uncomfortably.
    Hannah looked at Hatch and saw the gawky sixteen-year-old kid he’d once been. He had long, silky black hair back then and now it was buzz cut. He looked older and tired.
    “You doin’ alright?” Hatch asked her. “Yer old man treatin’ you right?”
    “We’re fine,” Hannah said. “We still live on the family farm, and Sam works out of an office there, doing computer stuff. I keep busy rounding up these old dogs.”
    “You know I heard tell of a man raises dogs to fight over in Blacknell Furnace. I don’t cotton to that, no ways. You want the address?”
    Hannah got out her notebook and took down the information.
    “Now, don’t you go over there by yourself,” Hatch warned. “They’re a rotten bunch what tend to shoot first and ask questions later.”
    “I won’t be called in until after they’re arrested,” Hannah said. “I just take custody of the dogs when it’s all over.”
    “Well, like I said, I don’t cotton to it.”
    “Thanks, Hatch,” Hannah said.
    When the dog owner arrived, Hannah had him sign the official form before she brought Randy out of his container. The dog seemed glad to see him. She waved to Hatch and the dog owner and got back in her truck. She’d let herself get chilled, so she let the heater warm up the cab before she started back to Rose Hill.
    As she waited for the cab to warm up, she thought about Hatch, and wondered how it was Hatch knew Brian had escaped when it was still supposed to be a secret, and how he knew so much about the drug ring his sister’s boyfriend was involved with.
    She wondered what her life might have been like had she married him instead of Sam. She’d have helped him raise all those kids, for one thing. They may have had some of their own. She could easily picture him on the farm, and working for her dad, which was their plan before he broke up with her.
    Funny, she thought, how life can