Read Online Spider Season by John Morgan Wilson - Free Book Online Page B

The neighborhood, alive with the laughter of departing guests such a short time ago, had grown as still and quiet as a funeral parlor after hours.
    I drew the curtains, turned the music up, and retreated to the kitchen to help Maurice finish the dishes.
    “Be sure to lock your doors tonight,” I said.
    “I always lock up, Benjamin. You know that.”
    “I know.” I kissed him on the cheek. “Just be sure, that’s all.”

EIGHT
    Several days passed without incident—no violent confrontations, no hate mail, no mysterious phone calls—and the unpleasantness of the previous week began to recede in my mind. With the publicity push for my book winding down and Judith Zeitler on to her next author, my life felt like it was returning to its usual aimlessness.
    That’s one reason, I suppose, why Ismael Aragon carried so much weight in my thoughts. There wasn’t much going on in my life, nothing to give it focus or purpose. Ismael’s job as a social worker had taken him to Mexico, where he was trying to reunite immigrant families torn apart by deportation, the foreign-born parents forcibly separated from their American-born children by the laws, politicians, and courts. While he was away, I couldn’t stop thinking about him, couldn’t stop hearing his voice and seeing his face, and remembering how it had felt to hold him close in that brief moment when we’d hugged good night. Before leaving, he’d told me he’d be gone for at least a week, possibly longer. The days stretched ahead like a gaping chasm, so unnervingly that I applied for a new passport so I might accompany him if his work were to take him out of the country again. It was a silly notion—we barely knew each other, after all—but that’s how desperately I needed someone like Ismael in my life.
    As I waited to see him again, I kept myself as busy as possible, helping Maurice tend to the yard and house and get Fred to his medical appointments, which were becoming more frequent.
    Then there was the nest under the eave to keep watch over. Two dove chicks appeared, their eyes still closed, their bodies scrawny, their downy feathers matted with mucus from their gestation period inside their shells. By stretching up on our tiptoes at the top of the stairs, Maurice and I could look over the edge of the nest and see them beginning to stir and discover the world. During the day, the mother disappeared from time to time, returning to drop food into their gaping mouths. At dusk, she settled over them, patient and alert, to protect them and keep them warm through the night. The nest was up high enough, and far enough away from the railing, to keep it safe from marauding rats and cats. It was like Templeton had pointed out: Location is everything.
    At midweek, I spotted the skinhead again. He was astride a big motorcycle, an older Harley-Davidson, as I walked home from the supermarket with a bag of groceries in each hand. He was there only long enough for me to see him before he hit the throttle and rumbled off, quickly disappearing into the narrow residential streets of the Norma Triangle. It bothered me enough that after delivering the groceries to Maurice I sauntered back down the hill to the sheriff’s substation to have a chat with Detective Haukness. I asked for him at the front desk and got lucky; he’d just returned from the field. He kept me waiting a few minutes but finally appeared from a back room, the ends of his big mustache twitching as he strode to the counter in his snakeskin boots.
    “What can I do for you, Mr. Justice?”
    He was as laconic as ever, his taciturn manner seemingly at odds with his good-old-boy attire and Texas drawl. I mentioned that I’d seen the skinhead outside the bookstore the previous Saturday night and again this morning in my neighborhood, and wondered how he’d gotten sprung so fast from county jail. Haukness provided some basic information, cut-and-dried: Given the witness statements and the suspect’s clean record,