Read Online Gray Ghost by William G. Tapply - Free Book Online Page B

Stoney.”
    “Oh, Christ. You gonna burst into song?”
    The Man in the Suit smiled. “The sheriff could use you. It’d be good for you. You’ve got talents, you know. You shouldn’t let them go to waste.”
    “I got talents, all right,” said Calhoun. “I can steer a boat in the fog. I can smell bluefish from a mile away. I can cast a whole fly line with just one backcast. And if you don’t get the hell out of here, you’ll see how accurate I can be with that twelve-gauge of mine.”
    The Man in the Suit held up both hands. “You’ll do what you want. I know that. I’m just saying, as a friend, you ought to reconsider working with the sheriff. Just give it some thought.”
    “If I say okay, will you go?”
    “Sure.”
    “Okay. I’ll give it some thought.”
    The Man in the Suit drained his Coke, then stood up. He held out his hand. “Shake on it, then.”
    Calhoun shook his hand.
    “That’s smart, Stoney.”
    “I only said I’d think about it. I didn’t say I’d do it.”
    “But,” said the Man in the Suit, “you will think about it, because whatever else you are, you’re a man of your word.”
    “I don’t expect to change my mind.”
    “Oh, I expect you will.” The Man in the Suit bent down, patted Ralph, who was snoozing on the deck, then straightened up and went down the steps to his car.
    Calhoun didn’t bother waving as he turned and drove out the driveway.
    Calhoun opened the shop at eight thirty the next morning. He’d left Ralph home to bark at the chipmunks and sleep under the deck. Ralph got restless if he had to spend the whole day cooped up in the shop. Kate was off on a guide trip, so except for a few customers, Calhoun had a quiet day for listening to the radio, tying flies, and thinking about things.
    A little after three in the afternoon Kate pulled her truck with her boat trailered behind it into the side lot.
    Calhoun went out to help her unload the boat and get the trailer off her truck.
    He asked her how it went.
    She said good. They caught some fish. The clients seemed to enjoy it. Anything happen in the shop?
    Calhoun said nothing special.
    Then some customers showed up, and he went back inside to wait on them.
    Kate hosed out her boat, then came into the shop. She went to her office and turned on her computer.
    At five, Calhoun went back to say he was leaving.
    She looked up, smiled, and said have a nice evening.
    You, too, he said.
    Business partners. It was going to take some getting used to, he could see that.
    Something was wrong. He sensed it just about the time he turned into his driveway. He didn’t know what it was, and he didn’t know where that spooky feeling of unease came from. He’d felt it before, though, and he knew enough to trust it.
    So instead of continuing to drive his truck down the rutted driveway to his house, he pulled off the side into the bushes. He got out, pulled his .30-30 Winchester Model 94 lever-action deer rifle out from the floor behind the seat, jacked a cartridge into the chamber, and walked. He went slowly, holding the rifle at port arms, careful not to snap a twig or rustle a branch, and when he knew his house was just around the next bend, he slipped off the roadway into the woods.
    He took a curving route that brought him to the rear of his house. He paused there behind the bushes that bordered the yard. He saw no movement except the rustle of leaves in the breeze. He heard nothing except the caw of a distant crow. He smelled nothing except pine needles.
    He slipped around through the woods to the front of the cabin, and that’s when he saw the strange vehicle parked in the turnaround next to his boat.
    It was a small green SUV, a Subaru Forester. Calhoun went to the place in his brain that remembered all the vehicles he’d noticed in the past six years, scanned down through the images, and identified this one. He’d seen it just a few days earlier, in the parking area at the landing in Portland. The area had been dimly lit,