Read The Circuit Rider for Free Online Page A

cover hers. Instantly the muzzle of her gun was firmly planted beneath
the chin of the man who had suddenly appeared behind her.
    “Easy now,” Van Osdol said.
    Bird holstered her gun. “Does your brain realize
how close it came to becoming a part of the chandelier?” she said.
    The attorney laughed.
    “Pretty close, I believe,” he said.
    He filled Bird’s glass, signaled the bartender to
bring another, and then filled his own. He raised his glass in a toast.
    “To the end of Corey Flom,” he said. “Your little
parade couldn’t be missed.”
    She raised her glass. “And to the prompt payment of
my remaining fifty dollars,” Bird added.
    They each tossed back their drink.
    “A job well done,” Van Osdol said, handing Bird the
second fifty dollars.
    Bird nodded and tucked the money into her pocket. “How
about a bonus for his buddy? Do you know if he helped kill that little girl? You
know, the five-year-old you said Flom murdered?”
    Van Osdol shook his head.
    “No, I’m positive that was Corey Flom all by
himself.”
    Attorneys are the best liars, Bird knew. And Van
Osdol was lying through his perfect teeth. The cabin had been a setup, she knew
that. Raines had wanted Bird out there, and hoped that Flom and Paulson would
kill her.
    “Hey,” Bird said. “They find her body yet? That
little girl’s? Five years old, you said?”
    A look of grief came across the attorney’s face. “No
such luck. And I get the feeling the authorities aren’t looking all that hard,”
he said. His voice filled with sadness and disgust. “She was the child of a
whore, and the whore is gone. No one cares.”
    “Except you,” Bird said.
    Van Osdol shrugged his shoulders. “Only me.”
    Bird glanced around the saloon. Everyone seemed
intent on what they were doing; drinking, playing cards, or negotiating with a prostitute.
    She stepped away from the bar, made a cross-hand draw,
and smashed the gun into the side of Van Osdol’s temple.
    He sank to the floor.
    Bird hopped over Van Osdol’s body so she faced the
room and the bartender, who had moved to the end of the bar.
    She slapped Van Osdol until his eyes opened.
    Bird put the muzzle of the gun against the man’s
temple and cocked the hammer.
    It was the only sound in the entire saloon.
    “Listen you filthy sonofabitch, I know there was no
girl,” Bird said, her voice calm and measured. “There is no body, and there is
no whore that left town. Toby Raines paid you to hire me to go out to Flom’s
place, foolishly hoping those two jackasses would take care of me. I want to
know where he is, and I want to know now.”
    Van Osdol made some dry clicking sounds in his
mouth before he was finally able to speak.
    “He . . . he didn’t, he didn’t tell me where he was
going,” he gasped. “But he may have mentioned to someone else that he was possibly
heading toward Lincoln. Nebraska.”
    Blood ran down the side of the attorney’s face, and
the eye nearest the point of impact with Bird’s gun began to cloud with pink
fluid.
    She slid the muzzle of the gun to the lawyer’s
injured eye. She pushed it underneath the eyelid he tried to clench together,
then ground it firmly against his bare eyeball.
    Van Osdol squirmed.
    “Always a pleasure doing business with an officer
of the courts,” Bird said. She stood and hauled Van Osdol to his feet.
    “Please,” he said.
    Bird pistol-whipped him again.
    He dropped to the floor, out cold.
    Bird snatched the bottle of whiskey from the bar,
tipped her hat to the bartender, and left.

Fifteen

    M ike Tower sat at one of the tables in the hotel’s
lobby. It was quiet, the only sound the faint clatter of dinnerware as the
kitchen staff prepared for the evening.
    Tower’s pen scratched furiously along the sheet of
paper as he composed the sermon he planned to deliver that evening to the folks
who would come to his service.
    Like most of his thoughts, the focus of his writing
was on redemption. On forgiving. And on healing.
    But