Read Online Revenant Rising by M. M. Mayle - Free Book Online

finding Grant’s place. When he does, he concentrates on what he wants to have happen there. It’s not like the evidence won’t stand alone, he tells himself as he steps up to the porch of a neat-enough-looking bungalow. And it’s not like he needs a prepared speech. He already spoke his piece on the phone, way back when he first called Grant to say he had something of interest without saying exactly what. He’s as ready as he’s ever going to be in that department.
    He doesn’t see a doorbell button, so he raps on the door. After a half-minute or so the door opens. The short bald reporter, dressed in cutoff pants and a sleeveless undershirt, is recognizable from the many times Grant himself was target of photographers for defying one restraining order or another.
    “Jakeway?” Grant says, and without waiting for an answer, signals Hoop to follow along. Grant leads the way through a nice-enough-looking sitting room to the back of the house, where it’s hard to tell where the kitchen ends and the glassed-in porch begins because the whole area is crowded with metal filing cabinets and camera equipment. No pleasantries are exchanged; no hand is offered for shaking and that’s fine. This isn’t a social call, after all.
    “Lemme see if I got this right.” Grant digs at his crotch then scratches an armpit. “We go back a coupla years to when you tipped me that the runaway Aurora Elliot was holed up in a hunting cabin somewhere and about to drop her kid.”
    Hoop nods and sets down the bucket and tool chest without being asked.
    “And that woulda been when I conveniently made my deal with Elliot that went to shit when the bitch got herself killed.”
    The crude language and distorted fact give Hoop a twinge that he doesn’t let show on the outside.
    “Did I ever know what your interest in all this was?” Grant busies himself at the far end of the porch section, unclipping photographs from a wire strung from kitchen wall to a window frame. He goes at it like he’s taking down wash, except he’s careful not to fold anything.
    “Didn’t you have a beef with Elliot or somethin’?” Grant asks, then answers his own question: “Oh yeah, now I remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re the one that blamed Elliot for Aurora’s carryings-on and there’s a case where you coulda believed the tabs because the cunt was every bit as bad as claimed—and I oughta know—and you oughta know, because reliable sources tell me she was seriously bad news before she ever left the fuckin’ north woods.”
    Grant gathers together the photographs and moves back to the kitchen area. His rubber gook shoes make slapping noises on the clay-tile floor. “Y’know though,” he says, “you shouldn’t be out to get Elliot—the two of ya oughta be best buddies because you’re the only two jerks in the world that ever saw anything good in Aurora—good other than for cadgin’ headlines, I’m sayin’.”
    Hoop holds back a grimace and lifts up the tool chest. He makes room for it on a kitchen counter, then moves the paint bucket into full view.
    Grant sets the stack of photographs down next to the tool chest where Hoop can’t miss seeing the subject matter. He looks away as fast as he can, but he’s not fast enough; the image is burned onto his eyeballs. He blinks several times like that would do any good and when he looks again it’s out of the corners of his eyes.
    The swine that dares call himself a photojournalist, fans the pictures out like a giant deck of filthy playing cards, and indicates with flicking finger and droning voice which of these views of Audrey will bring the most money from porn collectors.
    “These’ll be hot again because Colin Elliot’s hot again,” Cliff Grant says as he moves his attention from the wicked display back to Hoop. “Not ten minutes ago I got a call from one of my regulars that Elliot and a bodyguard’ll be checkin’ into the Royal Poinciana within the hour. That tells me he’s