Read Online Bad Moon Rising by Ed Gorman - Free Book Online Page A

Turk. Somehow in the course of our years together she’d become my little sister and I’d be goddamned if anybody was going to hurt her or baby Laurie.
    Jamie’s typing skills had improved marginally and she’d learned how to answer the phone professionally and take down information without mistakes. She gave me my messages and a cup of coffee. That was another thing she handled capably. Our new automatic coffee brewer. Me being me, I still couldn’t make a decent cup of coffee, even with that new machine I’d bought on sale at Sears. But Jamie had triumphed.
    As I went through my phone messages, I glanced up once and saw the way Jamie straightened all four of the framed photographs of one-year-old Laurie she had on her desk. Not that they needed straightening. But touching them brought her peace you could see in her face. At these times I always wanted to kill Turk. He should honor her for her sweetness and loyalty. Maybe I could get him convicted as a Russki spy and get him deported. After I beat the shit out of him.

7
    I n grade school we always swapped comic books. Kenny Thibodeau tended to like Superman and The Flash. I went more for Batman and Captain Marvel. In junior high we swapped paperbacks. Mickey Spillane and Richard S. Prather were early favorites though soon enough I discovered Peter Rabe and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others. Kenny discovered John Steinbeck and Henry Miller. In high school I’d picked up on all the Gold Medal crime writers such as Charles Williams, while Kenny had discovered Jack Kerouac and the Beats. At none of these junctures was it possible to predict what Kenny would bring to the table—literally the table in the booth at Andy’s Donuts where I’d gone straight from jail—on this already hot and humid morning.
    Baby pictures.
    His daughter Melissa was two and a half years old. She wasn’t just the center of Kenny’s life, she was all of Kenny’s life. Yes, he still wrote his soft-core sex novels and he still wrote his men’s magazine “Die Nazi Die!” articles, but those he did almost unconsciously these days. Automatic pilot. His conscious attention was devoted to Melissa. All this was reflected in his attire. Not a vestige of the former Beat. Short, thinning brown hair. Pressed yellow short-sleeved cotton shirt and pressed brown trousers. I mention pressed by way of introducing his wife, Sue. As Kenny always joked, by marrying him Sue had inherited both a husband and a son. Kenny needed help and Sue, loving and amused, was there to provide it.
    â€œThis one’s of Melissa and the cocker spaniel we got her last week.”
    Even though we had gone past picture number twenty I had to admit this one of Melissa in her frilly sundress leaning down to kiss the puppy on the head was pretty damned cute.
    â€œAnd here’s one—”
    I held up my hand. “I don’t mean to be rude, Kenny, but I’ve got a lot to do today.”
    For only a moment he looked hurt, then he grinned. “Yeah, Sue says I drive people nuts with my pictures. Just be glad I haven’t invited you out to see the slide show I made of all the pictures we have of her.”
    â€œYou have a slide show? Seriously?”
    â€œWith music.” He sipped his coffee. “Don’t worry, you’ll get to see it one of these days.”
    â€œThat sounds like a threat.”
    The timbre of his laugh hadn’t changed since we were in fourth grade. “It is. But I’m sure you want to talk about the girl who got killed last night.”
    Kenny was the unofficial historian of Black River Falls for our generation. Every once in a while he’d talk about this huge novel he was going to write someday, a kind of Peyton Place about our own small city. Despite his reputation for writing smutty books, people liked Kenny and confided in him. He knew secrets nobody else did. He’d been helping me with cases since the day