Bones Omnibus Read Free Page A

sent three rounds from the shotgun blasting down the hall to the back door.
    Bitch had been cowering under the counter since Christopher walked in. This was due less to her own fear than what she sensed in her owner. When the driver with the familiar scent, a man who had occasionally brought her treats “from his own dog’s stash,” flopped to the floor, Bitch finally bolted from her hiding place behind two phone books to race toward the safety of the storeroom. Unfortunately this took her directly into Ferris’s zone of fire. When he squeezed off the last of his three volleys, an errant pellet seared through the Yorkie’s ear, slicing it in half.
    With a yelp, she hit the floor, sliding to a stop when she hit the baseboard.
    “Bitch!” Ferris cried, instinctively lurching forward to recover his dog.
    But then everything around him began to explode as high-velocity machine gun rounds tore the place apart. Ferris lunged for the cover of the reinforced counter but caught a bullet in his left heel. The pain was intense, as if someone had wrenched off his foot and placed a red-hot poker on the stump. He forced the feeling aside and crawled for the cash register. Pulling the whole thing off the counter so it clattered violently to the floor, he yanked open the drawer and withdrew the two loaded pistols.
    But even as he gripped the automatics in his fists, he knew it wouldn’t be enough to save his life. Whoever waited outside had more than enough firepower to overcome Ferris’s meager cache.
    As several more high-velocity rounds tore the small shack apart, the sound of the Buffalo-bound hotshot clattering through the crossing was virtually drowned out. A single last blast from the horn, however, cut through the ballistic cacophony. It would be the last thing Ferris Aaron ever heard.
    “Nothing but bad guys up here,” the patrolman was saying. “Eight bodies in all, completely shot to hell. We think one of them is Demetri Cuno and another, the owner of the shack, Ferris Aaron, this big meth supplier. And get this, one of them is in handcuffs with all this ante mortem trauma.”
    “And the others?” asked Sergeant Billy Youman from the front seat of his white Ford Bronco.
    “At least a couple are Cuno’s goons. Still trying to get IDs. They’re thinking Mr. Handcuffs is Cuno’s kid, Christopher, a real fuck-up he kept on as a driver.”
    “So, what do you make of that?” Youman asked, reaching over to scratch between the ears of the large German shepherd sitting beside him on the passenger seat.
    “Who knows?” The patrolman shrugged. The shack behind him and a pair of black SUVs parked in front were enveloped by swarming law enforcement officers wearing the uniforms of a variety of branches: local, state and federal. “Somebody was probably out to screw somebody else, it went bad, now they’re all dead. When the detectives ID’d Cuno Sr., they were giddy. Said it felt like Christmas morning. How come they called in a K-9?”
    It was Youman’s turn to shrug. “There was a blood trail leading away from the scene. They think there might another body or two in the woods.”
    “Happy hunting.”
    Youman pulled the Bronco past the roadblock and looked for a place to park. There were at least two dozen vehicles spread around the perimeter, but he finally pulled into a space alongside a state trooper’s sedan. He took the German shepherd, Bones, by the leash and led him out. As he closed the driver’s-side door, a pair of familiar Allegheny County deputy sheriffs approached from the scene.
    “Billy Bones!” called the lead deputy, smiling wide, clearly a man happy to be out of the office for the day.
    “Aren’t you a good two counties outside of your jurisdiction?” the dog handler asked.
    “Nah.” The deputy grinned. “Looks like a couple of the weapons used might’ve been boosted from a shop in Port Vue. We just might close a case today.”
    Bully for you
, Billy thought.
    Ten minutes later, Billy