Read Online A Killing Night by Jonathon King - Free Book Online Page B

smiled, pleased with herself.
    The new girl nodded and smiled. She had blue eyes and curly blonde hair that didn’t have to be streaked to be pretty but was. He gave her his polite smile and said hello. While the other bartender cashed out and gathered her tips he watched the new girl. She had two studs in her left ear. Three rings on her hands, one with a blue stone. Her breasts were not large, but on such a small frame they appeared voluptuous. After the other girl left, she busied herself with rinsing and wiping and setting things up her own way and motioned to the empty bottle in front of him. When she extended her hand, he noted that her nails were bitten to the quick.
    “Another one?” she said, and her smile seemed easier.
    “Yes, please,” he said. “And a shot of Maker’s Mark on the side.”
    I was up at the beach before sunrise and out on the edge of the Everglades by breakfast. Dan Griggs, the park ranger assigned to the five hundred acres designated by the state as a registered wild and scenic area at Thompson’s Point, was cooking eggs.
    “I think I got that lunker snook you’ve been trying to hook over to the west side down by the shade turn,” he was saying from the back room.
    “Like hell,” I answered. I was pouring coffee from the ranger’s electric maker in the office section of his dockside station.
    “Yeah, I hate to say it. That crafty bastard been teasing you more’n a year now, right?”
    He would not meet my eyes when he carried the pan of eggs in and pushed them onto two paper plates at his desk.
    “Wasn’t my fish,” I said, setting his coffee in front of him and taking one plate. “He’s too damn wise for you, Danny.”
    The ranger leaned back in his metal office chair and propped his heels on the corner of his state-issued desk. He was lean and blond and smiling when he dragged the plate of eggs onto his lap.
    “He had to be twelve pounds.”
    “Liar.”
    He grinned and just looked at me over the rim of his cup.
    “Catch and release?” I finally said.
    “Of course, Mr. Freeman. I gotta leave you something to aspire to.”
    Griggs and I had gotten off to a shaky start when he’d taken the job several months ago. He was replacing an old and long-revered ranger who had been killed by a man whose presence on the river had been in part my responsibility. People who knew the story blamed me, and I had not argued the point. Then, government forces had been trying to evict me from the old research shack for which Billy had a ninety-nine-year lease. He was still in a paper fight with them by e-mail and Federal Express at my request. When someone tried to burn me out of the place I had put Griggs at the top of my suspect list, but the young man had spun my suspicion by helping to repair the damage with carpentry skills I sorely lacked. The camaraderie of the project and the guy’s obvious love of the Florida wilds had led to a friendship and an admiration. That, and he liked a cold beer on occasion.
    “Been pretty slow. Must be September,” Griggs said, looking up at the clock. He didn’t see me furrow my brow at the odd gesture.
    “Some kayakers up your way last few days. A few fishermen out here on the wide. I suppose you’ve been in the city.”
    It had long been a practice of mine not to answer rhetorical questions so I stayed quiet at first. He knew that I did P.I. work for a living and romanticized it.
    “I stayed at the beach,” I finally said, giving in.
    “Pretty girls?”
    “Some.”
    We both were quiet for a few moments.
    “Man. A vacation place at the beach and a residence in the swamp,” he said. “You’re a regular mogul, Mr. Freeman.”
    “Yeah, and I’ve got to get out to the mansion,” I said and got up. “Thanks for breakfast, son.”
    Down at the dock I flipped my Voyager canoe and wiped out the webs that a golden-silk spider had put up between the struts. I loaded in containers of fresh water and a canvas bag of clean clothes and then floated