Read Online Snake Eater by William G. Tapply - Free Book Online

his body. I drove up from Boston.”
    “Boston, huh? What’s that, two hours on the pike?”
    “I made it in an hour-forty.”
    “How come she didn’t call us right away?”
    I shrugged. “I guess she was pretty upset. Confused, you know?”
    “She should’ve called right away.”
    “I know.”
    “She see anything?”
    “She says no.”
    “And you?”
    “I went in and looked at his body. He’s dead.”
    “Shot with an arrow, huh?”
    I nodded.
    “Well,” said the cop, “we’ll just sit tight until the detectives get here and try not to mess up the crime scene.”
    At that moment I heard another siren, and a moment later an unmarked sedan pulled in beside the cruiser. It was followed shortly by an ambulance, then a state police cruiser, then another unmarked sedan.
    For the next hour or so, state and local police, forensic experts, EMTs, photographers, and medical examiners swarmed around Daniel’s place. Cammie, Terri, and I each had our own detective to question us. Mine was Lieutenant Dominick Fusco, a tall swarthy guy with thick, curly iron-gray hair. He told me he knew my friend Horowitz, a state cop from the Boston area.
    I told Fusco that Daniel was both my client and my friend and I couldn’t think of anybody—aside, possibly, from Sergeant Oakley of the Wilson Falls Police Department—who didn’t like him. I said that I didn’t think the bait and tackle business was likely to create murderous competition.
    I also told him that Daniel used marijuana for medicine, and that his homegrown year’s supply had been confiscated by the police in July, although the case against Daniel had been dismissed. Fusco said he knew all about that, and the implication was clear. They’d be checking out all the local drug sources closely.
    Fusco told me that it looked as if Daniel’s killer had ransacked the little office in back of the shop. He asked me if that suggested anything to me. I said robbery, obviously. He said there was still money in the cash register and it didn’t look as if anything had been stolen from the shop.
    If it wasn’t robbery, then nothing suggested itself to me.
    Otherwise, Fusco didn’t tell me anything. And I didn’t have much to tell him, either.
    After a while the EMTs wheeled a stretcher out of the shop. A lumpy black bag was on the stretcher. It was loaded into the back of the ambulance, which then drove away. It didn’t bother to sound its siren.
    And, one by one, the various police cruisers and sedans pulled away. Fusco was the last to leave. He had taken notes as we talked. I had given him both my office and home phone numbers.
    He tucked his notebook into his jacket pocket. “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Coyne,” he said.
    “Anything I can do, let me know.”
    “You can count on it.”
    He turned to go to his car. I said, “I’ve been thinking.”
    He stopped. “Yeah?”
    “I don’t think he was shot with a bow.”
    Fusco smiled. “No?”
    “No. The angle of that arrow. Assuming he was standing up, to shoot him, you’d have to be lying on the floor.”
    “That’s pretty elementary, Mr. Coyne.”
    I shrugged. “Guess so.”
    “They didn’t shoot him,” he said. “Somebody rammed that arrow into him.”
    “That’s what I was thinking,” I said. “He was standing there in front of him, or maybe beside him, and he grabbed that arrow with both hands and just shoved it in as hard as he could.”
    Fusco nodded. “Raises all kinds of questions, once you think of it that way, huh?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Well,” he said, “you have any further insights, or hypotheses, or questions, or anything, you be sure to let me know, okay?”
    “You bet,” I said.

8
    W E WERE STILL STANDING there, a few minutes after the last official vehicle had left, when a banged-up old Ford pickup chugged to a stop in the driveway.
    “Oh, gee,” muttered Cammie.
    A vastly overweight black man climbed out the passenger side and a powerful-looking swarthy guy got out from