Lethal Read Free Page A

fanned out and began picking their way through the tall grass toward the tree line that demarcated the dense forest. Trainers unleashed their search dogs.
    They were commencing the search here because a motorist who’d been changing a flat on the side of the road late last night had seen a man running into the woods. He hadn’t thought anything about it until the mass slaying at the Royale Trucking Company warehouse was reported on the local news this morning. The estimated time of the shooting had roughly corresponded with the time he’d seen an individual—whom he couldn’t describe because he’d been too far away—disappearing into the woods on foot and in a hurry. He’d called the Tambour Police Department.
    It wasn’t much for Fred and the others to go on, but since they didn’t have any other leads, here they were, trying to pick up a trail that would lead them to the alleged mass murderer, one Lee Coburn.
    Doral kept his head down, studying the ground. “Is Coburn familiar with this territory?”
    “Don’t know. Could know it as good as he knows the back of his hand, or could be he’s never even seen a swamp.”
    “Let’s hope.”
    “His employee application said his residence before Tambour was Orange, Texas. But I checked the address and it’s bogus.”
    “So nobody knows for sure where he came from.”
    “Nobody to ask,” Fred said dryly. “His coworkers on the loading dock are dead.”
    “But he’s been in Tambour for thirteen months. He had to know somebody.”
    “Nobody’s come forward.”
    “Nobody would, though, would they?”
    “Guess not. After last night, who’d want to claim him as a friend?”
    “Bartender? Waitress? Somebody he traded with?”
    “Officers are canvassing. A checker at Rouse’s who’d rung up his groceries a few times said he was pleasant enough, but definitely not a friendly sort. Said he always paid in cash. We ran his Social Security number through. No credit cards came up, no debts. No account in any town bank. He cashed his paychecks at one of those places that do that for a percentage.”
    “The man didn’t want to leave a paper trail.”
    “And he didn’t.”
    Doral asked if Coburn’s neighbors had been interviewed.
    “By me personally,” Fred replied. “Everybody in the apartment complex knew him by sight. Women thought he was attractive in that certain kind of way.”
    “What certain kind of way?”
    “Wished they could fuck him, but considered him bad news.”
    “That’s a ‘
way
’?”
    “Of course that’s a ‘
way
.’ ”
    “Who told you that?”
    “It’s just something I know.” He nudged his twin in the ribs. “ ’Course I understand women better than you do.”
    “Piss up my other leg.”
    They shared a chuckle, then Fred turned serious again. “Men I talked to said they knew better than to mess with Coburn, which wasn’t a problem, because he came and went without even a nod for anybody.”
    “Girlfriends?”
    “None that anybody knew of.”
    “Boyfriends?”
    “None that anybody knew of.”
    “You search his apartment?”
    “Thoroughly. It’s a one-room efficiency on the east side of town, and not a damn thing in it to give us a clue. Work clothes in the closet. Chicken pot pies in the freezer. The man lived like a monk. One thumbed copy of
Sports Illustrated
on the coffee table. A TV, but no cable hookup. Nothing personal in the whole damn place. No notepad, calendar, address book. Zilch.”
    “Computer?”
    “No.”
    “What about his phone?”
    Fred had found a cell phone at the murder scene and had determined that it didn’t belong to any of the bullet-riddled bodies. “Recent calls, one to that lousy Chinese food place that delivers in town, and one came in to him from a telemarketer.”
    “That’s it? Two calls?”
    “In thirty-six hours.”
    “Well, damn.” Doral swatted at a biting fly.
    “We’re checking out the other calls in his log. See who the numbers belong to. But right now, we know