Early Graves by Joseph Hansen

Author:Joseph Hansen [Hansen, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-1682-6
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-03-12T21:02:00+00:00

14

IN LEPPARD’S OFFICE, WITH its metal desk and file cabinets, the rattle of rain on the vertical metal slats outside the windows made a gentle background for Leppard’s ungentle speech. “He’ll never accept it, and you know that. Sure, we can cut out the part about how Church didn’t kill Dodge. Hell, we can suppress the whole damn thing.” He lifted and let fall back to the desk Leonard Lynn Church’s pitiful try at writing out his life story in ballpoint ink on twenty-one pages of blue-lined school notebook paper. “The press and TV will call us dirty names, but it won’t last forever.”

“What will last forever,” Dave said, “is police officers guarding me around the clock, following me wherever I go. I appreciate the thought, but—”

“The kid is going to keep trying to kill you,” Leppard said. “He won’t believe for a minute we’ve settle on Church as the one who stabbed Dodge and attacked you. We released his description, Dave. Remember?”

“I missed that. In the hospital. It was a mistake.”

“We wanted the public’s help,” Leppard said. “We had every reason to think he was the one.”

“Then you shouldn’t have let Church’s picture out.”

“You saw that street,” Leppard said. “Every reporter in town, including your friend Harris. Cameras had Church on film the minute he came out that window. The alley was all lit up. Telephoto lenses. What the hell could I do? They had a clear sight line from the top of their trucks.”

“Right.” Dave nodded. “Sorry.” He sighed, rose, went for his trenchcoat by the office door. “Why don’t we leave it this way—if he doesn’t take a crack at me in the next few days, you call your people off.”

Leppard got to his feet back of the desk, stretched, yawned. “I’ve got a better idea. Take a vacation. You ever been to the Virgin Islands? Beautiful. And cheap this time of year.”

“No doubt.” Dave had shed the sling. If he was careful not to reach too far or too high, his shoulder gave him almost no pain. Flapping into the trenchcoat involved some discomfort, but he only winced a little. He put on the Irish hat, damp on the outside, dry within, the woolfat still in the yarn. He took hold of the doorknob. “But I want to be here when you catch baby,” he said. He frowned again at the pages on the desk. “It doesn’t explain much, really, does it? The thought must have gone through the heads of hundreds of youngsters dying of AIDS like Church that the men they’d had sex with were to blame. But only he went around stabbing them to death.”

“Yeah, well,” Leppard said with a sour smile, “it doesn’t give the reason he left Creon, North Dakota, very suddenly one hot September night in 1976, either, does it?”

“He didn’t like working in the café.” Dave said.

“He didn’t like it so much,” Leppard said, “that after closing time that night, he picked up a butcher knife in the kitchen and stabbed his father in the chest, and left him for dead on the greasy linoleum.

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.