Read Online Flashback by Ted Wood - Free Book Online Page A

Harbour parked at the Northont Motel. It's a cheap place, individual cabins about fifteen feet square, white paint peeling off them. A new guy took it over last spring but he's going quietly broke. Now, in peak season, there were cars outside only three of the places.  
    I went to the office and stepped into a museum of despair. Everything needed paint and there was dust on the furniture and drapes and tired old folders and the few tatty souvenirs of the area. The owner, a sour man in a T-shirt, came through a bead curtain behind the office and nodded. 'Need a room, Officer?'  
    'Not tonight, thanks. But I'm interested in the people whose car is outside unit three. Could I see who it's registered to?'
    'You gotta warrant?'
    'I don't need one. Haven't you read the Inn-keepers' Act?' I wasn't sure myself what it said but it figured he hadn't read it.  
    'I'm too goddamn busy to read everything I'm s'posed to,' he said and pulled out a box of cards. 'What unit was that?'
    'Three. The car's a Ford.'
    'Three. Yeah, Sidney Greenstreet, Niagara Falls.'
    I didn't laugh but it looked like I'd found my actor. 'Thanks.'
    He mumbled something but slapped the box shut and went back through the curtain. I paused outside to whistle Sam to my side, then walked over the unit. The light was on inside and rap music was jabbering away, loud, with lots of bass to it. Teen-gang opera.  
    I knocked but nobody answered so I used the heel of my hand, thumping even louder than the bass on the ghetto-blaster. Nobody came and I tried the door handle. The door swung open away from me and then a man hurled himself at me, screaming something.  
    Instinctively I stuck my left hand out, palm towards him catching him flat in the chest. He stumbled but recovered in a moment and came at me again, flailing and kicking, his face contorted with fury. I tried to hold him but he was too strong, too quick, and I knew he was zonked on something dangerous. I told Sam 'Fight' and he snarled and grabbed at the man's arm but the guy was too far gone to take any notice. He lashed out with his other hand and his feet, screaming non-stop. He landed a good clunk on the side of my head and I staggered, then drew my stick and hit him hard on the collar-bone of his free arm. It connected and his arm fell limp but he kept on closing on me and kicking, totally ignoring Sam. I knew I had to do put him down.  
    I slid my hand down the shaft of the stick until only four inches projected out of my fist and stabbed him in the gut. It would have stopped any normal man but he didn't pause and I had to do it again before the wind went out of him and he collapsed, still trying to kick, his legs moving feebly as he fought for breath.  
    'Easy,' I said and Sam released his arm and stood back, hovering over him as I rolled him on his face and cuffed his right wrist through his belt to his left ankle, bending him in half backwards.  
    'Keep,' I ordered and Sam stood, growling into the man's face as he struggled to breathe. I took a quick look around the cabin. There was nobody else there and from the single six-pack of Kronenbourg beer I figured he was alone. There was a plastic bag on the chest of drawers containing about three ounces of white powder. Angel dust, I figured, from the way he'd acted and I wondered if that was what he'd used to bait Sam, hoping he would turn on me and I'd have to shoot him.  
    In any case he was o.d.'d on something, and needed a hospital. It would take too long for an ambulance to reach us. I had to take him to Parry Sound.  
    I ran back to the office and reached over the desk to pick up the phone. The owner came blustering out of the back but I pulled out a dollar coin and tossed it to him. 'Police business.' I reached the Parry Sound police and told then what had happened. They were on the bit, they promised to have a man at the hospital by the time I got there and to send a narcotics guy to check the motel room.  
    'What's all