Gator Kill by Bill Crider

Author:Bill Crider [Bill, Crider,]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery & Crime
Publisher: Crossroad Press

11

It's funny, the things you think of at a time like that.

I thought of my sister, lying dead in a field for a long, lonely time with no one to know, and of how I'd looked for her for so many months. And how I'd never be absolutely sure of how she got there and why.

I thought of what it would be like to lie there in the rainy darkness with a bullet in my gut.

I thought about how Dino would have to keep on feeding Nameless, and how he'd hate having to do it.

I thought about long blonde hair, and a shadow on blue eyes.

"All right," Brenda Stone said. "Put the flashlight down, and then you can both turn around."

Fred bent over and put the light on the ground. We both turned around. Brenda Stone was standing about fifteen yards behind us, holding a small rifle, probably a .22. I didn't think she could kill me with it, not unless she was a really good shot, or unless she got lucky, but it wasn't worth taking the chance. One of those small caliber bullets could tumble around inside me and rearrange my internal organs in a way that the surgeons would never quite figure out.

She looked as if she would shoot without hesitation, too. He blonde hair hung in lank strands around her face, and the man's shirt she was wearing clung to her curves in a way that might have been interesting under other circumstances. Her face was set and hard.

"Can I just step out of this water?" I said.

"Real slow," she sad, gesturing slightly with the rifle barrel.

I stepped up to stand beside Fred. "I knew this was a bad idea," I said.

"I knew I shoulda invested in IBM forty years ago," he said.

I got the point.

Brenda looked at us and held the rifle steady. It occurred to me that she didn't have any more of an idea about how to proceed from this point on than I did.

"I guess you know you're trespassing," I said.

"That's not really my problem," she said. "You two are the ones with the problem."

"What exactly is the problem?" I said. "That's what I'd like to know."

"You didn't get my husband out of jail," she said.

That wasn't my job, and I hadn't said I'd do it anyhow. But I was a little surprised.

"I talked to him and the Sheriff this morning," I said. "I thought he'd be out by now. They didn't really seem to have any grounds for holding him."

"They're holding him," she said.

"What about his alibi?" I said. "What about all those friends of his that he said could vouch for him?"

"Deputy Jackson says friends can lie." She paused thoughtfully. "They probably are lying."

"What?" Fred and I said at the same time.

"Perry has a lot of friends. They wouldn't mind lying for him if he killed Zach Holt."

"You mean you think he did it? Why--"

Then it came to me. "You think he might've had a good reason. Those rumors I've heard.

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