Nude in Nevada by Thomas B. Dewey

Author:Thomas B. Dewey [Dewey, Thomas B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, detective, crime, sleuth, murder
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2015-08-24T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

For about five minutes, all I could do was to experience pain, the nasty, untouchable pain of being full of needles—like an intensified tingling when the circulation is cut off in your leg or arm. Then pretty soon, balancing myself on my left knee and the big toe of my right foot, I began picking the spines out, one by one, first from my hand, then my right foot, and finally the left. Some of them were halfway up my legs and it was murder just pulling my pants up to find them. I was at it altogether about twenty minutes, because there would be long rest periods when I would just hang there and wish I were dead. But finally I got it done, and began looking for my shoes and socks.

They had tossed them pretty good and far apart. Barefoot, I picked my way among the clumps of cactus, staring at the dots of blood the spines had drawn. Once in a while I would lose my balance, or fail to see a clear spot in time, and then I would have to stop and pull some more out.

I could only find the two shoes and one sock. But by then it didn’t matter. I would have wrapped my feet in grass—if there had been any grass. I put the shoes on standing up and stuffed the lone sock in my pocket, I don’t know why. Then I limped to the road and started the walk into town, past the hospital entrance, on down toward the highway.

If those deputies had any perseverance, I thought, they’d be looking for me, and pretty soon now they should find me. It would be nice to have a ride, even with them. Every step was like walking on ground glass.

When I got to the highway, there was a wooden bench facing the main street, and I sat down on it to rest. It was a relief to my feet, but it was so hot in the desert sun that after five minutes I got up and limped on toward the motel. I passed a drugstore, stopped, thought it over, and went back there. I bought a five-pound box of salts and some calamine lotion. The store had a liquor department, and I also bought a fifth of bourbon. On the way out, I noticed a big hand-lettered sign on a table, reading “SPECIAL—THE MAGIC EYE.” I took a look and they were selling magnifying glasses—electrical magnifying glasses! They were very handsome in design, a square panel of glass with a handle angling off one corner, and with a small light bulb attached and an electric cord.

An alert young lady caught my eye at precisely the right-wrong moment.

“Just what you always needed,” she said.

“Sure,” I said.

“This is a real bargain. Regular—eighteen fifty. Today, nine ninety-eight.”

“Half-price.”

“Almost.”

She was a cute kid. Besides, I had all that money from Las Vegas, and besides that, a vague but urgent idea was forming in my mind. I

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