Hunt the Killer by Day Keene

Author:Day Keene [Keene, Day]
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Crime, OCR-Editing
ISBN: 9781933586335
Amazon: 1933586338
Barnesnoble: 1933586338
Publisher: Avon Book
Published: 1951-07-31T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I slipped the gun Beth had given me from my pocket. It was on safety. The clip was full, but there was no shell in the chamber. I pumped a shell into the chamber and padded barefoot through the big living room down the long hall to the kitchen. The kitchen was festooned with cobwebs and as dusty as the front of the house. The sun was high enough now for me to see there were no tracks in the dust except the ones I was making.

I looked through the back door. Flame-vine practically covered the glass. The island vegetation had encroached on the rear of the house until the backyard was a jungle of wild grape, live oak, flowering yucca, and re-leafed poison ivy. I tried to open the door and found it was stuck fast by the flame-vine that had grown around the knob and anchored it.

I walked across the kitchen to the rear stairs and plowed a pine sliver with my big toe. I stuffed the gun in the waist band of my slacks and sat down on the floor to dig at the sliver with my knife. I’d have to find shoes of some kind. They’d made me wear shoes at Raiford. All the time. The quarter-inch callouses on my feet were gone.

I extracted the sliver and limped up the back stairs. There was no one in the bedroom that Beth and I had used. Dust lay thick and undisturbed on the floor. The bed was as Beth had left it, stripped to the bare mattress. It was the same with the other three bedrooms. Nothing had been touched. Nothing had been stolen. That was because I was Charlie White. If I’d been a northern tourist who had built a new home on the island and then gone away for four years, the boys would have ‘borrowed’ everything down to and including the plumbing and the foundation blocks.

I sat on the bed in the front room. The feeling that I wasn’t alone persisted. But not as strongly. I put the gun back in my pocket and lighted a cigarette. Nerves did funny things to a man.

I finished the cigarette and snuffed it. It was time for me to think of a place to hide. When I wasn’t picked up in town or found at Beth’s apartment, Gilly and Strawn would either hook up a kicker or get the Coast Guard to run them over to the island. I’d want a vantage point from which to see them coming.

I thought of the captain’s walk and dismissed it. It was exposed to the weather. I doubted that the rotted floor boards would hold me. Besides, if I were seen on the walk I’d be trapped. The best place to hide would be out on the island itself. But I’d have to have shoes of some kind.

Then I thought of the old pair of sneakers I’d discarded on my last trip down to Shrimp Bay. I’d left them in the bedroom.

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.