Behind the Wall of Sleep by James D.F. Hannah

Author:James D.F. Hannah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Down & Out Books

Chapter 24

“I’m glad we haven’t forgotten about the dead guy,” Woody said. “Sometimes it’s details like that, they get lost in the middle of everything else.”

“Kind of difficult to forget something like that,” I said. “Whoever killed Ralph Cole killed him up real good.”

“I think if Chandler can forget about who killed the chauffeur, you could manage to forget about who killed Ralph Cole.”

“Sure thing. Whatever that means.”

“You never finished reading The Big Sleep, did you?”

“That may have been around a time I got distracted by other things.”

We sat in Woody’s kitchen with coffee cups in front of us and Miles Davis playing from the other room. I had brought Izzy over with me, and she had found herself a spot underneath the kitchen table to sleep, curled up with two or three smaller dogs who, after sniffing her and deciding she was big enough to eat them, opted to doze off with her.

Woody drank some of his coffee. “Barlow strike you as the killing kind?”

“Barlow strikes me as the kind to stick a pen spring into a light socket and think he’s discovered electricity. He’s a tough guy as long as it’s an easy fight, and Ralph Cole didn’t strike me as a hard fight to win.”

“If you’d found Cole dead in his car, or shot there in the kitchen, I’d give you that one. But he was executed. Whoever did that was making a point.”

“You think someone’s getting revenge?”

“Cole undoubtedly pissed off an endless supply of people when he was a deputy, so there’s got to be no short supply of people who’d want him dead, even after all these years. But how everything went down afterward, with the air conditioning, with someone stealing his car—stops feeling personal that way.” Woody nodded. “The personal is passionate. This feels professional.”

“Someone who knows the money, then. Means it could still be Barlow, or one of his crew. Fuck, it could be Diego.”

“Not the kid. Unless he’s a sociopath. Whoever killed Cole, this wasn’t their first murder. They’ve danced this dance before. They know all the right steps.”

“How do you manage to make homicide sound romantic?”

“It’s a gift, Henry. It’s a gift.”

Woody and I took our coffee and a couple of dogs onto the front porch so we could pollute our lungs. The sun rested high in the sky, and it was warm without being muggy. I sat in a wicker rocker and lit a cigarette and stared at the barren fields that constituted much of Woody’s property.

All of that land had been a farm once, owned by this Parker County family that had raised their own food, kept chickens toward the back, had a few cows on the edge of the property. The family had owned the land for five generations, passing it down the line. When Woody bought it, there had been a satellite dish behind the house. One of those big ones, the size of what you’d expect if you were hailing the mothership. He said he wasn’t

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.