06 In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke

Author:James Lee Burke
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: General, Fiction, Suspense, Hard-Boiled, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9781439167601
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1993-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

The sheriff called me personally at 5 a.m. the next morning so there would be no mistake about my status with the department: I was suspended without pay. Indefinitely.

It was 7 a.m. and already hot and muggy when Rosie Gomez and I pulled up in front of Red’s Bar in her automobile. The white Buick was still parked across the street. The bar was locked, the blinds closed, the silver sides of the house-trailer entrance creaking with heat.

We walked back and forth in front of the building, feeling dents in the tin, scanning the improvised rain gutters, even studying the woodwork inside the door jamb.

“Could the bullets have struck a car or the pickup truck you took cover behind?” she said.

“Maybe. But I didn’t hear them.”

She put her hands on her hips and let her eyes rove over the front of the bar again. Then she lifted her hair off the back of her neck. There was a sheen of sweat above the collar of her blouse.

“Well, let’s take a look at the Buick before they tow it out of here,” she said.

“I really appreciate your doing this, Rosie.”

“You’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you?”

“Who knows?”

“Yeah, you would.” She punched me on the arm with her little fist.

We walked across the dirt street to the Buick. On the other side of the vacant lot I could hear freight cars knocking together. I opened all four doors of the Buick and began throwing out the floor mats, tearing up the carpet, raking trash out from under the seats while Rosie hunted in the grass along the rain ditch.

Nothing.

I sat on the edge of the backseat and wiped the sweat out of my eyes. I felt tired all over and my hands were stiff and hard to open and close. In fact, I felt just like I had a hangover. I couldn’t keep my thoughts straight, and torn pieces of color kept floating behind my eyes.

“Dave, listen to me,” she said. “What you say happened is what happened. Otherwise you would have taken up your friend on his offer.”

“Maybe I should have.”

“You’re not that kind of cop. You never will be, either.”

I didn’t answer.

“What’d your friend call it?” she asked.

“A ‘throw-down.’ Sometimes cops call it a ‘drop.’ It’s usually a .22 or some other piece of junk with the registration numbers filed off.” I got up off the seat and popped the trunk. Inside, I found a jack handle. I drove the tapered end into the inside panel of the back door on the driver’s side.

“What are you doing?” Rosie said.

I ripped the paneling away to expose the sliding frame and mechanism on which the window glass had been mounted.

“Let me show you something,” I said and did the same to the inside panel on the driver’s door. “See, both windows on this side of the car were rolled partially up. That’s why my first rounds blew glass all over the place.”

“Yes?”

“Why would the shooter try to fire through a partially opened window?”

“Good question.

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