Read Online Poachers Road by John Brady - Free Book Online

Hansi’s face. He was getting agitated.
    “Wah wah.”
    “Uh uh. Go on home, Hansi. Go home to the kitten.”
    For a moment Hansi’s frown had Felix thinking there’d be trouble.
    “Get some of your mutti’s strudel, okay? Yum yum?”
    How could he not take the big lug’s hand again. He wondered if Gebi had a digital camera he hadn’t let on about.
    “Sleep.”
    “Right, Hansi. A nice nap. Wouldn’t that be good?”
    But Hansi had stopped and he wasn’t going to budge. His grip had grown tighter. Felix looked over. Hansi was half turned toward the woods and the boggy uplands behind the barn.The look of concentration on his face could mean anything. Felix glanced down for any signs of a diaper.
    “Sleepy.”
    “Let’s go, Hansi.Your mother wants you.”
    “Komm.”
    The tug was more a yank. Felix pulled back. For a moment he saw Giuliana’s face: how she’d throw her head back and do that laugh that came from the back of her throat. The Italian Witch Laugh.
    “Hansi, you are getting annoying.You know? Now let’s get out of here.You’ve been cured, okay? Here you are, outdoors. I’ve done my duty. Everyone’s had a good laugh, okay?”
    “Sleep.”
    What it was exactly that made Felix Kimmel give in was something he would think about a great deal later that day, and into the evening after the detectives had arrived from the Kriminaldiest in Graz. He let himself be led on a 10-minute walk that began almost as a trot, and left him winded. Hansi had been babbling, or intoning, words that Felix could not understand, but he stopped abruptly near a clump of pines that edged out toward a path leading through the woods.

SEVEN
    T HE WAY BACK DOWN FELT LIKE IT TOOK BUT MOMENTS . Felix’s throat and his chest hurt from the spasms that had had him almost doubled up. There was still vomit on parts of his shoes. It was he who had grabbed Hansi by the hand hard to get him to return to the house. On the way up here, his annoyance had vanity for company. He had been proud to have gotten Hansi’s trust, even to cure him in some way. Hadn’t he won him over, when even his own parents hadn’t?
    Things skittered through his mind, and fear made him glance over his shoulder many times as he hurried down.
    What he said later, much later, to Gebhart was this:
    “I don’t know. I really don’t. I guess I felt sorry for him. Or maybe his parents, Christ, Gebi, they look so worn out. I don’t know. Maybe the air up here got to my brain.”
    Gebhart had made the call, and was soon a panting, red-faced, out-of-shape policeman with a bauch full of strudel and coffee, his chest going in and out as he stood there after the climb.
    Himmelfarb, hardly noticing the steep climb, was standing there too, with a face full of alarm and bewilderment.
    “The boy wanted to go for a walk,” Felix said, uselessly.
    “A walk,” said Gebhart, his breath whistling. “And look what you got. Holy shit.”
    Gebhart took only a few steps, with his hand on his pistol, standing on tiptoe to get another look at the bodies. Felix watched the vein throbbing along his neck.
    “This is a crime scene,” he muttered more than once, his voice barely above a whisper. “Be careful.”
    “Jesus and Mary,” Himmelfarb said, many times. He had blessed himself a half-dozen times. “Are there more, farther in?”
    The blood on their faces was black and brown. One of the men’s heads was swollen at the forehead, and though Felix didn’t’ want to look, there was that slight grin, and a tiny parting between the eyelids.
    “When’s the last time you came by here, Karl?” said Gebhart.
    Felix had his notebook out. He felt stupid with it hanging there, so he wrote down the time. Then he wrote that Karl Himmelfarb didn’t give a direct answer but merely shook his head.
    “Ausländers,” said Himmelfarb. “Look. The shoes. And the schwarzkopfs on them, the black hair? The jackets? Where do you see these in Styria, or anywhere else? Foreigners, for