Loren D. Estleman_Amos Walker 19 by American Detective

Author:American Detective
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780765350824
Publisher: A Tom Doherty Associates Book
Published: 2007-06-29T22:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

When the water had receded to my waist I adjusted my course, away from the pier and across the front of Darius Fuller’s cabin toward a seawall built of concrete blocks and driftwood to keep the lake from flooding the homely little house on the other side when it rose in the spring. It looked uninhabited. Except in the dead of winter, there’s nothing more deserted than a vacation community the week before the weekend of Independence Day. For a few minutes, waterlogged and aching all over from cold and muscles held too long at tension, I sat on the damp earth with my back to the seawall, waiting for my heart to slow to a sprint. Then I got up and climbed the incline toward the road, putting the house between me and Fuller’s place. It didn’t seem likely that Loudermilk would still be staking it out, but on the other hand I hadn’t heard him start up his Jeep and pull away. Then again, I hadn’t heard it coming when I set my trap for Bairn, so he might have parked somewhere else and come in on foot. I didn’t hold the patent on that.

So apart from the fact that I didn’t know why he’d kill me to help Hilary Bairn get away, I didn’t know where the security captain was, or what tree he might jump out from behind to finish the job.

A sheriff’s cruiser swept down the road, siren off but its spotlight swiveling. I ducked it, a suspicious person dripping wet, and it swept on, dragging a train of dust. Not long after came a chain of civilian cars. The dinner hour was over, the patrons of the Wooden Duck Bar and the Chain O’ Lakes Diner were headed home to their families. A few of the cars slowed as they passed Darius Fuller’s cabin; the story of the body in the car and the shooting behind the house next door would have spread around the lake by now. That was the difference between country and city. In Detroit, people sped past crime scenes all the time without a second look.

The last vehicle passed and the neighborhood got quiet again. I let it, then started again for the road.

I was passing a tall cedar when something hit the ground with a thump at the base, standing every skin cell I owned on end. I leapt back—and saw something black and glistening and no longer than my foot thump through the grass in the collateral light of a latecoming vehicle accelerating to catch up with the others. Black squirrels are genetic freaks, not really a breed, rarely seen in the Great Lakes and almost never anywhere else, and seeing one is supposed to be good luck; but if they were common enough where I was to have a lake named after them, I wasn’t putting any store in it.

I crossed the road without any more incident and turned toward the little commercial strip, barren-looking now with

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