Read Online Justice by Larry Watson - Free Book Online Page A

him.”
    â€œI ain’t putting my hand in his drawers. No sir,” Rozinski said.
    Sheriff Cooke didn’t ask Rawlins. He said, “Just get his face in there then. Get him cold first.”
    Rozinski picked up his shovel again. As if he were working
a lever, Rawlins pitched Lester face forward into the snowbank. As soon as Lester’s body hit, Rozinski had his shovel drawn back and began to administer the ringing blows, these harder, faster, and more numerous than Tommy received, perhaps to make up for the layer of cloth covering Lester’s backside.
    Lester lay perfectly still under the beating. Wesley wondered if he was unconscious, if something in his head had been knocked loose when he collided face first with the shovel.
    Rozinski swung even harder, and Wesley hoped the deputy could keep control of his shovel. If the blade angled at all and an edge came down onto Lester it could cut into his flesh like an axe.
    â€œThat’ll do,” the sheriff said.
    As Tommy had done, Lester crawled backwards off the snow pile, but he just kept crawling backward until he came to his place among his friends.
    With Lester this close, Wesley could see the black drops in the snow from Lester’s bleeding nose. Wesley traced Lester’s path back to the snowdrift; yes, a trail of blood marked Lester’s progress. Wesley remembered the look of Beverly Tuttle’s blood staining the floor of the Buffalo Cafe. Blood for blood, Wesley thought. Was that in the Bible? No, there it was an eye for an eye.... Blood for blood. Where had he heard that before? He couldn’t place it, yet it seemed as though he had been hearing it all his life, a saying as old as any Bible verse. Or perhaps it was not a phrase that had ever fallen on his ears. Perhaps he simply breathed it in, an attitude that
was as much a part of the Montana air as the smell of sage, the feel of wind.
    Lester was still on his hands and knees when he coughed twice, then vomited. He bucked hard with the force of his retching.
    Wesley turned away until he could be sure Lester was finished. When he looked down he saw steam rising from the fetid pool, like a campfire just extinguished.
    Sheriff Cooke put his mitten to his nose. “Whew! Throw a little snow on that, Clarence.”
    Clarence scooped two shovelsful of snow on top of Lester’s vomit. He packed the snow down with the back of the shovel.
    As he stood up, Lester staggered backward, reeling with the effort of getting his weakened body upright and his suspenders looped back over his shoulders. He kept his head tilted back to try to stanch the blood flowing from his nose.
    Wesley felt something brush the front of his leg, but before he could look down to see what it was, he knew: Frank had stepped in front of him, putting his body between Sheriff Cooke and his younger brother.
    The sheriff clapped his mittened hands together and let out a long cloudy breath, as if he were exhaling smoke from a cigar. “When you boys tell your daddy what went on here in McCoy, make sure you tell it right. And tell it all. He’s already heard me tell the story, so you want to be damn sure your version matches up with mine. You don’t want to add lying to your troubles.”
    Wesley realized he had been drawing such shallow breaths
that he was winded from simply standing in place. Nothing was going to happen to them. Somehow Sheriff Cooke knew—or had found out—that their father was a sheriff, another peace officer, and Cooke was letting them go. Wesley inhaled deeply, filling his lungs with air so cold it felt as though something inside him would crack.
    â€œIf you were my sons,” Sheriff Cooke said to them, “I’d sit you down and give you some advice about choosing friends. Look at the trouble these two galoots got you into.”
    They began walking out of the alley in single file again. Lester still had his head back and his hands cupped to his nose, but Tommy had