Read Summer of the Dead for Free Online

that into his byline, so he didn’t mind if people just referred to him as the editor. He was a gangling, sandy-haired fifty-four-year-old veteran of three marriages and father of six children spread evenly amongst those relationships, a recovering alcoholic whose occasional lapses were easily charted by subscribers—the paper’s usually reliable publication day would be pushed back for at least twenty-four hours, a period of time referred to as the “hangover delay”—and he operated out of a cramped storefront that served as the Gazette ’s office.
    â€œJust doing his job,” Bell said, frowning at her cell, “but still a damned nuisance. Can’t wait till Nick’s back in town. He’s got a lot more patience with Donnie Frazey than I do.”
    A month ago, Sheriff Fogelsong had taken his wife to a psychiatric facility in Chicago, where doctors sought to find a combination of medications to stabilize her, to help her deal with the symptoms of her schizophrenia. Nick and Mary Sue would be returning to Acker’s Gap on Tuesday.
    Bell put a hand flat on the yellow legal pad and looked up at Mathers, hoping he would take her meaning: She had work to do. “Anything else?”
    The deputy moved his tongue around the inside of his mouth as if he were searching for a lost kernel of last night’s popcorn. “Well,” he said, “I thought maybe you’d want a few more details about that stabbing at Tommy’s.” Mathers was a born storyteller, and Bell’s lack of interest in his harvest of data had disappointed him.
    â€œOkay,” she said. It came out as more of a sigh than a word. “Sure, Charlie.” She sat back in her chair. She needed a break, anyway.
    â€œSo it happens like this.” The deputy untucked one of his thumbs from his belt and used the thumbnail to scratch the top of his left ear. “Mandy Sturm questions this McCoy character in the bar for an hour or so this morning. Knows what she’s doing, too. She’s a damned good deputy. So McCoy confesses. Says he just got sick and tired of Jed Stark bothering his lady, and so he goes out to his pickup in the parking lot and he gets in the Craftsman toolbox that he keeps in the truck bed and he lightens the load by the weight of one Phillips-head screwdriver. Barges back in and sits right down beside Stark and strikes up a conversation. Bides his time. Right after the band plays the first chorus of “Sweet Home Alabama,” seeing that Stark’s relaxed and all, McCoy leans over and takes care of our little redneck Romeo, good and proper. Now, soon as he comes clean to Deputy Sturm about what he did, nine-tenths of the folks who’ve been sitting at the surrounding tables are suddenly able to verify it. When it first happened, nobody said a word. Not even the gal who’d started the whole fuss in the first place. Everybody just sat there, tapping their feet to the damned music while Jed Stark’s life was dripping out of him like gas from a leaky fuel line.”
    â€œMust be nice,” Bell muttered, “to have friends like that.” She pushed her chair away from the desk and stood up.
    Mathers gave a little snicker. “Guys like Stark don’t have friends. Oh, they may think they do—they might run with some other bad boys from time to time, raising hell and sharing a bottle or a joint or both—but in the end, nobody cares about ’em. They’re alone, really.” He shrugged. “No telling how long Stark was propped up there in his seat, dead as a post, until he just tumbled out of that chair onto the floor—which musta happened shortly after you and Deputy Sturm got there.
    â€œMcCoy’s being held in the Collier County Jail,” Mathers added, winding up his narrative with a Don’t that beat all nod. “This one’ll be easy. No muss, no fuss.”
    â€œGood. Enough on our plates around here