Devil’s Wake Read Free

in the swivel chair said. Terry could believe they were cousins, from the same logging family before, as Vern put it, “the Obama recession” had sent logging into the crapper. “You need to call Mom.”
    “Phones out at the camp aren’t right. Been busy.”
    “Too busy to call your aunt? You know she’s going in for her biopsy, and she’s scared spitless. You was always her favorite, you know. Step up, Vernie.”
    Vern shook his head. “I’ll be there, Sally.”
    “Sally” opened his top desk drawer, and pulled out a manifest. “Anyway, like I said, we’ve got a great deal for the camp. We can give you a price on the salmon because the Jesuits over at Seattle University decided to play footsie with Parker’s market instead of mine. Damn mackerel snappers.”
    Sally looked at Terry cannily. “You ain’t Catholic, are ya?” Terry shook his head. And noticed that he didn’t bother asking Piranha. “Good. Not that I got nothin’ against Catholics, y’understand. Just they tend to stick to their own. Stick together like a buncha used Kleenex. Anyway,” he said, grinning at what he seemed to considergreat good humor, “we got twenty crates, Alaskan crab and salmon, can let you have ’em for fifty a pop.”
    Vern tilted his head and shook a Camel out of its wrinkled pack. He didn’t smoke in front of Molly, his wife and the camp nurse. Not that she didn’t know he smoked. It was just a little game they played. “Forty.”
    “Forty-five.”
    “Deal. Net sixty?”
    “Works for me. See you brought some strong backs to help out.” Now he looked at Piranha, who was busy cleaning his fingernails with a toothpick, studying the results as if they were far more important than anything Sally might have on his mind.
    “Anyway… let’s get to it.” He leveraged himself up from the desk and headed with them back down the stairs. The market was bustling, and would be for another three hours until the shops closed for the day, and only the restaurants would stay open. Terry was wondering when he’d have time to grab that doughnut. Those doughnuts, actually. If he didn’t bring back a half dozen, he’d catch holy hell from the Twins.
    In glass display cases, rows of dead fish gaped into the great beyond, glassy eyes staring at the customers. There was an odd sense of surprise in that expression. As if to say: A net? It was a net? How did that happen?
    The room beyond the display cases was an ice cave, a kind of dry cold that felt exactly like walking into a refrigerator, which it was. “The red stack,” Sally said, pointing out a flat loaded to the ceiling with red boxes.
    “I’m going back up. Get us some coffee for the drive back,” Vern said. Then the cousins went back upstairs and left them in the cold. Piranha took the first dolly, and pushed it out through the double doors and down the sidewalk.
    Terry took the second, a stack of six boxes packed with ice andfish, and levered back on the handle. Had to weigh two hundred pounds, but he managed to find the balance point, and was strong enough to steer.
    He and Piranha stacked the fish into the van, came back, made another run while Vern loafed about in Sally’s office and smoked Camels.
    On their fourth run, Terry guessed that they were almost done. He was just thinking about those buttermilk bars again, savoring the first spongy bite, when he heard the first scream.
    It was high, wavering. Disbelieving. A woman’s voice. Pain.
    Terry and Piranha looked at each other. Piranha acted like he didn’t give a damn about anything, but Terry knew different. He’d watched the way the big guy had picked up the little girl who broke her toe in the Friday-night talent show a month back. Carried her as gently as a glass doll. He acted hard, but Terry suspected it was just that—an act.
    A woman was running along Pike Street, one hand clasped to the side of her neck, or perhaps at the juncture of neck and shoulder, as if trying to hold something in place. She