Bloody River Blues: A Location Scout Mystery Read Free Page A

lifted a hand briefly, then lay still.
    Lombro’s Lincoln started away, accelerating with a sharp, gassy roar.
    Silence for a moment.
    Ralph Bales took a step toward Gaudia.
    “Freeze!”
    The scream came from only five feet away. Bales almost vomited in shock and the way his heart surged he wondered if he was having a heart attack.
    “I mean you , mister!”
    Ralph Bales’s hand lowered, the gun pointed down. His breath flowed in and out in staccato bursts. He swallowed.
    “Drop the weapon!” The voice crackled with a barely controlled hysteria.
    “I’m dropping it.” Ralph Bales did. He squinted as the gun fell. It didn’t go off.
    “Lie down on the ground!” The cop was crouching, holding his gun aimed straight at Ralph Bales’s head.
    “Okay!” Ralph Bales said. “Don’t do anything. I’m lying down.”
    “Now!”
    “I’m doing it now! I’m lying down now!” Ralph Bales got on his knees then lay forward on his stomach. He smelled grease and dog piss.
    The cop circled around him, kicking the Ruger away and talking into his walkie-talkie. “This’s Buffett. I’m in downtown Maddox, I’ve got a 10-13. Shots fired and two down. Need an ambulance and backup at—”
    The Maddox police and fire central radio dispatcher did not find out exactly where Donnie Buffett needed the backup and ambulance—at least not at that moment. The cop’s message ended abruptly when Stevie Flom stepped out of the alleyway and emptied the clip of the Beretta into his back.
    Buffett grunted, dropped to his knees, and tried to reach behind him. He fell forward.
    Ralph Bales climbed to his feet, picked up the Ruger. He walked over to the unconscious cop and pointed the big gun at his head. He cocked it.
    Slowly the heavy blue muzzle nestled itself in the cop’s damp hair. Ralph Bales covered his eyes with his left hand. His heart beat eight times. His hand tensed. It relaxed. He stepped back and turned away from the cop, settling on one head shot for Gaudia and one for the blonde.
    Then, as if they were a couple of basketball fans eager for some beers after the game, Ralph Bales and Stevie Flom walked briskly to a stolen black Trans Am with a sporty red racing stripe on the side. Stevie fired up the engine. Ralph Bales sat down in the comfortable bucket seat. He lifted his blunt index finger to his upper lip and smelled sour gunpowder and primer smoke. As they drove slowly to the river Ralph Bales watched the aura of lights rising up from St. Louis, to the south, thinking that all he would have to do now was take care of the witness—the guy with the beer—and that would be that.

Chapter 2
    YELLOW LIGHT FADING in and out, going to black, black to yellow, motion, shouting, more blackness, deep deep pain, can’t breathe can’t swallow . . . The fragments of yellow light. There they go, slipping away . . . Don’t leave, don’t leave me . . .
    Donnie Buffett focused for a moment on Penny’s terrified face. Pale and framed with dark hair. The sight of her terror terrified him . He reached for her hand. He passed out.
    When he opened his eyes again his wife was gone and the room was dark. He had never been so exhausted.
    Or so thirsty.
    After a few minutes he began to understand that he had been shot. And the instant he thought that, he forgot everything—Penny, the sickening loose feelings in his back and guts, his thirst—and he concentrated on trying to remember something. One word. A short word. The one word that gave purpose to his entire life.
    The Word. What is the Word? He slipped back into unconsciousness. When he woke again he saw a Filipino nurse.
    “Water,” he whispered.
    “Rinse and spit,” she said.
    “Thirsty.”
    “Rinse and spit.” She squirted water into his mouth from a plastic bottle. “Don’t swallow.”
    He swallowed. He vomited.
    The nurse sighed loudly and cleaned him.
    “I can’t feel my legs. Did they cut my legs off?”
    “No. You’re tired.”
    “Oh.”
    The Word.