The Red Corvette by Robert Sims Reid

Author:Robert Sims Reid
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Argo-Navis

It was nearly midnight when I said goodnight to Sarah on her porch, feeling like a kid heading home from his first date. Sooner or later, I knew, guilt would hunt me down, leave me sliced up and bleeding. But for now, it was a lovely evening, warm and clear, with a thick mat of stars spread out above the silent trees. I had left my car at the hotel, and on the walk back I decided to make another swing down by the river. Rivers aren’t an antidote to guilt, but sometimes they can soften the blow. When I got to the boat ramp, a pair of headlights swung in behind me. A moment later, the sheriff’s cruiser went by and cut me off. Otis Wiesel got out.

“Hey, pardner,” he said. His nasal whine sounded like that of a tomcat perched on a garbage can at midnight.

“Don’t shoot!” I threw up my hands. It had been too long a day, and was now too nice a night to get rousted.

“Shoot?” Wiesel pushed his cap back on his head. “Naw, hell no, I ain’t gonna shoot. That bidness last night, that was just work, that’s all.”

“And tonight?”

Wiesel tilted his head back and scratched his Adam’s apple, then looked back at me and grinned. “This here’s bidness, too. I got me some theories on that doctor’s murder. Thought you might be interested.”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

“Whyn’t you get in the car.”

“I got someplace I have to go.”

“I’ll give you a ride.”

“I’d rather walk.”

“No you wouldn’t.” Otis flexed his scrawny shoulders and shook out his hands. “Wouldja?”

This was a man who could hurt himself just trying to look menacing. For his own protection, I gave up and got in the car.

“You must’ve worked on a lot of these things,” Wiesel said as we got underway. “Murders, I mean.”

“Enough to last me,” I said. There were perhaps half a dozen radios stacked one atop another from the drivetrain hump to nearly level with the dash, enough radios to conduct a small war.

“That thing the other night,” Otis said, “you shouldn’t take that personal. Hell, you know how hard I gotta hunt to find somebody to bust in this here burg?” He tugged at the end of his mustache, then looked over at me and winked. “Bustin’ people, you know, it gets in a lawman’s blood. You get a little barn sour, you don’t bust somebody once in a while.”

I nodded wisely. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” At this rate, we’d be peeing on light poles before the night was over.

As we cruised through the dark streets, Otis Wiesel began to ramble on about, as he had called them, his theories. First there was the escaped mental patient theory. Because who else but a crazy man would kill somebody like that? In the middle of nowhere and for no reason. Then there was the drug deal gone bad theory, in case there was a reason. Because, you see, everybody knew Doc Heyman had lots more money than he ever could have earned pushing pills.

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