Devil's Run by Frank Hughes

Author:Frank Hughes [Hughes, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2012-06-20T22:00:00+00:00

31.

The dining room was empty and lit only by the candles on the long banquet table in the center of the room. The other tables and chairs were pulled back against the wall near the kitchen doors. The windows here offered a nearly unobstructed view of the town below. At this distance it looked like a small galaxy, the lights spiraling out from a densely packed center, growing sparser and dimmer.

Someone came up behind me. I turned, expecting to see Boyd, but it was Catherine.

“Don’t like crowds much, do you?” she said.

“I think maybe it’s the other way around.”

“Could be. Quite a view, isn’t it?”

“Certainly is,” I said. “I can see my house from here.”

“I actually can, you know.”

“Really?”

She stepped forward and pointed with the hand holding the champagne flute. “See the blue light, off to the left?”

It took me a moment, but then I spotted it, near the outskirts of the town. “Yes.”

“My porch light.”

“Why blue? Because you’re a cop?”

“No. Tradition.”

“I know what a red porch light means, but this you need to explain.”

“I got lost once, in a blizzard, back in Illinois when I was a kid.” She got a faraway look. “It was not long after my mother died. We lived in one of those old postwar developments where the houses looked pretty much the same. I was walking home from a town skating pond – can’t skate there any more of course, too much liability - and the snow was so thick I couldn’t find my house. They were all just blurs. I kept knocking on doors. Finally, a man opened one, a complete stranger, and he invited me in.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not going there. Besides, I’d been properly taught. After some back and forth I consented to give him our phone number, which Dad had made me memorize. He went inside to call while I waited on the porch. Moments later my Dad came running out of our house.” She laughed. “It was just four doors down. I was nearly frozen, and my Dad was frantic.” She shrugged. “After that, he changed the front and back porch lights to bright blue bulbs, so I’d always know my own house. Silly”

“My Dad did something similar, except he changed the locks.”

“Everything’s a joke to you, isn’t it?”

“Not everything. Murder for one.”

“Murder’s no joke to me, either.”

“That’s good to know.”

She sipped some champagne. “I got a call from the county coroner today.”

“Was he prospecting for customers?”

“It seems one of our corpses has gone missing.”

“I’m not sure what that means.”

“Really? They discovered it because some smart ass named Somerset, whose description sounds pretty close to yours, showed up looking for an Army buddy.”

“Somerset?” I said. “I don’t believe I know the man.”

“You two make a nice couple,” said Richard Imperatrice.

We turned to see him striding towards us.

“People need to stop saying that,” said Catherine.

“Oh, Nick has his good points. I always found him a very straight arrow.” He smiled broadly. “His later slips were understandable, considering the circumstances. I heard he got that out of his system.

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