The Destroyer - 42 - The Destroyer 042 - Timber Line by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir [Murphy, Warren & Sapir, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pulp Action
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 2010-03-19T14:51:51+00:00

CHAP­TER EIGHT

LaRue’s was an over­state­ment, Re­mo thought. There wasn’t blood all over the place. It was on­ly on three of the four white-​paint­ed walls, on the bed, on one of the chairs, on the night­stand, and one large pud­dle on the floor. An­oth­er chair, one wall, a desk, a chest of draw­ers, and the ceil­ing were un­touched.

Chi­un and Re­mo had led Joey and LaRue back in­to the small log cab­in. Joey took one look and ran back to the A-​frame to call Sta­cy at the base camp.

The Mas­ter and his pupil stepped cau­tious­ly about the room, look­ing, care­ful not to dis­turb any­thing, and walk­ing gen­tly so as not to dis­turb the air cur­rents. LaRue watched from the door­way where he had been told to stay.

“There is a tale here for the nose,” Chi­un said.

“Heavy drink­ing,” Re­mo agreed, with a nod of his head.

Joey was back now, and she was stand­ing next to LaRue.

“Os­car,” she said, “has been drink­ing heav­ily since Dan­ny died. He kept say­ing that he was re­spon­si­ble.”

“Was he?” Re­mo asked.

“No,” Joey said vig­or­ous­ly. “How could he be? But he seemed to have this idea that he might have been able to stop it some­how.”

“Did he know some­thing you didn’t know?” Re­mo asked.

“I don’t know,” Joey ad­mit­ted. She looked again at the blood-​splat­tered room and be­gan to cry, long, loud sobs mixed with tor­rents of tears. Chi­un touched her shoul­der com­fort­ing­ly and slow­ly the tears sub­sid­ed.

“Thank you,” she said. “I don’t do that of­ten.”

Re­mo was look­ing at the bed. “Did Brack seem dif­fer­ent in any oth­er ways?”

Joey shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “He al­ways drank too much. He liked to go out and tie one on with Pierre’s boys. But late­ly he’s been drink­ing alone, by him­self, just sit­ting and whistling that damn song.”

“What song?”

” ‘Dan­ny Boy’.”

But Re­mo wasn’t lis­ten­ing. He had turned back to Chi­un.

“Three men, Chi­un?”

The old Ori­en­tal nod­ded.

Pierre LaRue asked, “How you know that?”

“The smells,” Chi­un said. “Dif­fer­ent peo­ple smell dif­fer­ent. There are three smells in here.” He sniffed the air in­side the room again, then looked to­ward Re­mo.

“There might have been a fourth,” he said. “If so, the fourth on­ly watched. It is a bad smell. It is like . . .” and he spoke a word in Ko­re­an.

“What is that?” Joey asked Re­mo.

“It means a pigsty,” Re­mo said.

“Or a Japanese house of plea­sure, which is the same thing,” Chi­un said.

The old man bent over the largest pud­dle of blood, dipped his fin­ger­tip in it, brought the fin­ger to his nose, and sniffed deeply. He did the same thing with the stains on the rum­pled bed.

“The blood on the bed is your friend’s,” he told Joey.

“Oh dear.”

“But the big pud­dle is not Ms. It is some­one else’s,” Chi­un said.

“Again, how you know?” Pierre said.

“The man who bled on the bed, his blood stinks with al­co­hol. The blood on the floor stinks on­ly with the smell of the red meat that all you white peo­ple eat. That is how I know.” .

Re­mo said, “I’m go­ing to look out­side to see if I can find any­thing.

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