Read Online Dead Ringer by Ken Douglas - Free Book Online

hand out in front of himself. Not so steady.
    Any minute Virgil would be back with the van and he’d have to make a decision. He was supposed to kill the woman, make it look like an accident. It was going to be hard enough doing her. Horace fought the vomit that threatened when he thought about it. How in the world he could do it with Virgil around was anybody’s guess.
    “ Stupid,” he muttered. No way should he have his brother with him, but Ma had insisted. She thought he was a process server. Maybe if she knew what he really was, she’d have kept her darling at home. But she didn’t and she didn’t. Virgil needed to spend time with his brother, she’d said. He needed to know what it was like to work for a living. The man was thirty-nine years old for fuck’s sake and now she wants him to see what it’s like to have a job.
    He closed his eyes. A cricket chirped in the distance. It reminded him of Yuma, where he’d grown up. He used to make up games with big brother Virgil outside in the dry desert air. Make something up, that’s it. An idea started to take shape.
    He opened his eyes, looked around, felt the night. The gay bar across the street was quiet. Every now and then cars came by, but their occupants wouldn’t be looking out to the beach, not at this time of night, and they’d most likely have their radios on.
    Tires screeched around a corner.
    Horace turned toward the sound. Damn, Virgil had the brights on. Was he trying to wake up every cop in Long Beach? The breeze picked up, tickling the back of his neck. The blue-grey light of a television flickered in the house next to the bar. The porch light came on as Virgil pulled up to the curb.
    “ The fuck’s the matter with you?” Horace said when he got in the van.
    “ You said you were in a hurry.”
    “ Turn off the brights.”
    “ Yeah, sorry.”
    “ You made so much noise, you got some couch potato across the street to get off his ass and turn on his porch light. Probably watching us right now.”
    “ I won’t do it again. I’ll be careful. You’ll see.”
    “ Okay, okay.” He paused. “Look, I gotta get the woman with her husband, so I can serve them the subpoena at the same time, otherwise it don’t count. But she knows that, see. That’s why they never get together.” Horace was making up his story as he went along.
    “ So, what are we gonna do?”
    “ We’re gonna grab her, handcuff her and put her in the van. I got cuffs in the glove box. Then we drive to her husband’s place where I serve them the subpoena.”
    “ Isn’t that kidnapping or something?”
    “ Not really. Process servers got special powers. We’re allowed to do stuff like that, because we’re acting for the law. Without us, nobody could ever get sued, then where would America be? All the lawyers would be out of work.”
    “ How we gonna get her?” Virgil didn’t even think of questioning what Horace said. He believed it just as if he’d seen it on TV.
    “ You get down to the water and scare her, so she goes the other way. Think you can keep up with her?”
    “ She’s a girl, Horace.”
    “ Right. Chase her back to the pier. She’s gonna have to turn right after she passes the pool. I’ll be waiting there with the van. Then we got her.”
     
    * * *
    The effects of the alcohol seemed gone now. Sweat rippled through her hair, down her neck. She was a train, her bare feet on the wet sand the wheels going over the tracks, her breath a steam engine chugging through a canyon. She could go forever.
    Someone was up ahead. A man. She noted his size as she closed the distance between them. The white of his T-shirt stood out like a beacon even on this dark night. All of a sudden she knew who it was. She flashed on the image of the big man in the supermarket. Ferret Face coming into the Lounge had been no coincidence.
    Maggie stopped, panting. Breeze cooled her sweat, prickly rivulets of cold. She looked around. A pair of joggers were behind the man, going