Bone Rattle by Marc Cameron

Author:Marc Cameron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

The throw rug in Dean Schimmel’s filthy apartment was too dirty for him to notice the muddy boot print.

A near-constant adrenaline dump throughout the day left him too exhausted to be jittery.

He kicked the door shut behind him, slouching under the enormous burden of the bone rattle. It may as well have weighed a hundred pounds. At least a dozen times he’d considered throwing the damned thing into the sea, but the notion of a half million – or even half a thousand dollars – made him hang on to it a little longer. Things weren’t going so well since he’d scooped up the rattle from the shaman’s grave, but then, they hadn’t been all that great beforehand either. Maybe it wasn’t the bone rattle that was cursed, but Schimmel himself. If that were the case, then maybe the rattle was a good thing.

Maybe, just maybe, things would start looking up.

Schimmel had a bunk in one of the ATCO trailers out at the Valkyrie mine. It was dry and comfortable enough, but still smelled like other people’s feet. On his off weeks, he lived in a miniscule efficiency apartment on Douglas Island, a couple of blocks from the Breeze Inn. He kept a spritz bottle of Febreze inside the front door, though there was no one here to blame for the stench but himself.

Childers was pissed at him. The guy had nothing against shooting a girl, but shooting the wrong girl meant they had probably scared his target away – and that made him mad. But what was Schimmel supposed to think? Some chick he’d never seen before came up the road fifteen minutes after the lawyer like they were going to meet. Dollarhyde and the others had the luxury of blaming him now, but every last one of them would have made the same call. They’d get over it.

Probably.

Schimmel gave the room a couple of squirts of Febreze and then headed for the bathroom. Experience told him to bring the bottle with him. For some reason, Schimmel’s body was programed to need the toilet every time he got within a block of his house. He could go for a day or two at the mine, but at home, all he had to do was cross the bridge to Douglas Island and his guts started to gurgle. The two gas station corn dogs he’d wolfed down earlier probably hadn’t helped.

He kicked off his pants, cracked open a Bud Light, and sat on the john, beer in one hand, air freshener in the other, staring at the peeling paint and thinking about the day.

It had taken Schimmel six hours to get home from the time they’d sped north away from the shrine. Childers got out at the Auke Bay Marina, where he picked up his motorcycle. It was there that Childers had gotten the call from Mr. Dollarhyde about the screwup. He’d told Schimmel to hide the skiff and they’d sort it all out in the morning, but it was obvious he was pissed.

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.