Read Online A Welcome Grave by Michael Koryta - Free Book Online Page B

engagement, you beat the shit out of her future husband and lapse into years of silence with her. Then the husband gets murdered and suddenly you’re a friend of the family?”
    “I’m not a friend of the family. I’m a guy who’s doing a job.”
    “Notification of death, that was your job?”
    “I had to find him, too. Nobody knew where he was.”
    “Except his father.”
    I shrugged.
    “Yeah,” Brewer said. “The father knew where the son lived, because he’d been in contact with the son. Or somebody from that house in Pepper Pike had been. And if the father has been talking to the son, well, shit, doesn’t it seem odd he wouldn’t have mentioned that to his wife? ‘Hey, hon, remember that kid I lost track of for a few years? Well, the boy’s living in Indiana now, works at an apple orchard . . . ’”
    We sat in silence and traded stares for a few minutes, Brewer tapping that pencil off the table again.
    “Last night you told me the dead guy had been estranged from his father, and that turned out to be untrue. Today you tell me you’ve been estrangedfrom the soon-to-be-rich widow. I wonder if that’s true? I’m just thinking out loud, is all.”
    “As flattered as I am to be included in your thought process, I’d really like to be on my way.”
    “Like I said, don’t be in such a hurry.”
    I stood up. “Release me or charge me with something, Brewer. Something a little better than operating without an Indiana PI license. Or get me an attorney and a telephone so I can start making calls to the media about how you’re holding me without charges.”
    He sat there and looked at me, neither friendly nor unfriendly, just thoughtful. “You think we’re all a bunch of hicks, don’t you? Think I’m some redneck cop without a clue, bored of busting up meth labs in barns?”
    “No, I don’t, Brewer. I actually think—had been thinking, at least—that you’re probably a pretty good cop. Pretty smart. But I hate to see a good cop and a smart man waste his time.”
    He got to his feet and unlocked the door, held it open for me. I was halfway through it when he reached out and took me by the arm. It was a slow motion, almost gentle, but his grip was like a pair of forceps. His slender fingers closed around my elbow, his thumb finding a pressure point there and grinding against it. He held me like that and leaned his face sideways, looking up at mine.
    “Last night you suggested I check the dead man’s thumbs for hammer impressions.”
    “Did you?”
    “Uh-huh. And they were there. I found that out, and I thought, shoot, that is one smart guy we’ve got sitting in the jail. Started to feel bad, you know? Then I began to wonder if it wasn’t
too
smart. Hammer impressions on the thumb. Hell of a thing to think of in the first hour after witnessing a traumatic event like that.”
    “I’m a detective, Brewer. It’s kind of ingrained in me by now.”
    “Coroner tells me that the hammer impressions could have been left by someone placing the gun in the victim’s hand and using his thumb to pull the hammer back. Said it would have had to be done very fast, immediately after the shot was fired, but that it might be possible to leave those impressions and then freeze them when circulation stopped.”
    I reached down and wrapped my fingers around his wrist, pulled his hand from my elbow, and then used my forearm against his chest to push him back. I moved just as he had—aggressive disguised as slow and gentle. He kept hiseyes on me and didn’t attempt to resist. I turned away from him and walked through the little hallway to the next locked door. Then I looked back at him expectantly. After a moment’s pause, he walked down and unlocked this door, too.
    “It’s been a blast, Brewer. Damn shame we’re never going to see each other again.”
    “Oh, we most certainly will. I intend to be present at your murder trial.”
    He had those eyes that never told whether he was kidding or serious.

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