Read Online Bluetick Revenge by Mark Cohen - Free Book Online Page B

as he handed me the photo. I studied the photo,
     pretending I’d never before seen the woman. Karlynn’s smile was forced.
    “Is this recent?” I asked.
    “This summer,” he said. “Go ahead and keep it.”
    “You have any idea why she took off?” I asked.
    “Who knows?” he replied. He rolled his head around several times as if bothered by neck pain. The dreadlocked waitress appeared
     with his pancakes and my bagel. He poured a generous portion of maple syrup over them and began to eat. After she’d left,
     he said, “Christ, I don’t understand why the girls in this town wear their hair like that.” I shrugged and spread some cream
     cheese over the bagel. I don’t understand dreadlocks either, but I thought it funny someone like Bugg considered it a sign
     of the decline of Western civilization.
    “She must’ve had a reason for leaving,” I said. “If you want me to find her, you have to be honest with me.”
    “Things ain’t been so good between us,” was all he said.
    “Then why do you want her back?” I asked. The question annoyed him.
    “We’ve got some things to settle,” he said. This time he slowly swiveled his massive head from left to right several times.
     Were it not for the fact that he wanted me dead, I might have given him the name of Nancy’s chiropractor boyfriend.
    “Does she have any family?” I asked.
    “She’s got a brother in prison in Nebraska. Her father lives in McCook. You know where that is?”
    “Yeah.”
    “She wouldn’t go there, though.”
    “Why not?” I asked.
    “He molested her when she was a kid,” he said as he lifted another forkful of pancakes to his mouth. “All the fuckin’ time.
     That’d be the last place she’d go.”
    “She have any friends I might want to talk to?”
    “Her only friends are bikers. I’ve got that covered.”
    “Girlfriends?”
    “Just some women we ride with. They’d tell me if they’d seen her.” I didn’t necessarily buy that, but I let it go.
    “What about a rival gang?” I asked. He paused to consider it.
    “Maybe,” he said. “She likes meth.”
    “Does she have any money?” I asked.
    “Why do you want to know?”
    “A woman with money behaves differently than one without it,” I said. He nodded.
    “She’s got more than enough to get by,” he said. “She took a lot of cash when she left.”
    “I can’t make any promises,” I said.
    “Hey, look,” he said. “I understand you can’t make any promises. All’s I’m asking is that you give it your best shot.”
    “Five thousand up front,” I said.
    “That’s a lot of jack,” he said. “How you gonna earn it?”
    “I’ll talk to some friends in law enforcement, see if she’s been picked up anywhere, see if they’ve heard anything. Then I’ll
     circulate some posters with her picture and my phone number on them. After that I’ll look at the meth angle, see if she’s
     tried to score any.”
    “You best be careful if you’re gonna ask questions in those circles,” he said.
    “I can take care of myself,” I said. I said it in a way that left no doubt I was confident I could lick any man in a fifteen-mile
     radius, including him. He looked at me as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard, then allowed a trace of a smile
     and plunged his fork back into his pancakes.
    “Something else you should know,” he said.
    “What’s that?”
    “Me and her, we had a dog. A purebred bluetick. Best hunting dog I ever had. Really good tracking dog, too.”
    “Yeah.”
    “My wife really loves this dog,” he said. “More than she loves me.” I nodded. “’Bout four days ago some fucker walks right
     up to my house, steals the dog. Damn near kills one of my guys.” I asked him to relate the details and he did. Fortunately
     for me, none of his men had gotten a good look at me or my truck.
    “You think she was behind it?” I asked.
    “Had to be,” he said. “I don’t know who she got to do it, but I’d love to