Chill Factor by Chris Rogers

Author:Chris Rogers [Rogers, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780553580730
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2000-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-eight

Saturday, 4:30 A.M.

By habit, Dixie wasn’t a runner. She preferred bending-lifting-stretching exercises, reserved running for the racquetball court, where it actually accomplished something—when a ball went high and wide—but she awoke knowing she had to exercise yesterday’s frustrations out of her muscles.

She pulled on baggy shorts and athletic shoes, drew a comb through her hair, not even taking time to brush the sleep off her teeth, and called to Mud as she ran down the driveway, through the gate, out to the main road, and away from town. The air felt heavy with overnight moisture. Clouds in the west promised a chance of rain later.

Mud, delighted with this new game, sprinted alongside for a while, then dashed ahead to scare out a squirrel. Dixie sprinted past the Pine house without looking and continued to a gravel road that cut back into undeveloped acreage. So much had happened last night that she hadn’t had time to think about. Not consciously. While she slept, her brain had whittled at the information, trying to shape it. Several times during the night she’d awakened with a half-formed idea, but as she tried to bring it closer, to see it, the image dissolved like wet rice paper. Once she’d grasped a picture of Parker, strikingly handsome in his white shorts on a fine sailboat, his laughter whipping in the wind like the sails. An instant later the image vanished.

Dixie had no desire to analyze that one.

The image she awoke with was of Marty on a golf course, chasing balls for Derry Hager. Derry, four years older, could get kids to do things. His family had money, but that wasn’t it—Derry never paid for favors. He simply expected and received. Dixie hadn’t liked him and had steered clear when he visited. Marty seemed to prefer that, anyway, almost picking a fight at times so Dixie wouldn’t horn in on his fun with Derry Hager.

And twenty years later, it had been Derry who set Marty up with a friend in Dallas wanting to open a gallery.

Already winded from the unaccustomed pace, Dixie slowed past a weathered shack, windows long gone, shingles curling, and wondered briefly who’d lived there and if their lives had wasted away like the house. Dewberry vines covered the fence in mounds, dark ripe fruit thick among the paler leaves. Mud stopped to snuffle around the roots, but Dixie ran on.

Another image from her restless night had been sparked by a late-night newscast featuring the two slain HPD officers. Dixie recognized the photo of Theodore Tally from the circle of blue uniforms gathered around Edna’s body after the shooting. Ted and a female officer had been standing nearby when Dixie yelled at Arthur Harris.

If she could see head shots of the other seven officers at the scene, Dixie thought she might recognize all of them—the terrible event had etched their faces in her memory—but how could the sniper know that both Art Harris and Ted Tally had taken part in Edna’s death?

Unless the assassin was among the rubberneckers who stopped to watch.

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