StoneDust Read Free

Walkmans.)
    I sped north on an empty Route 7, secure in the knowledge that the only cop in twenty miles was babysitting a crime scene in the deep woods.
    It was glorious late June. Apple, shad, and native dogwood had faded, but the mountain laurel was bleeding pink and hemlock forests hung heavy with pale green new growth. The only disappointment on the drive was a minor one, a slight shimmy in the low hundreds when, on a short straight, I rocketed past Scooter’s Range Rover.
    Once Crabtree turned to dirt, it was a full twenty minutes before the covered bridge hove into view around a bend. Ollie’s cruiser blocked the road. Ollie stood behind it, facing me. His flashers were off. He didn’t even bother raising a hand. He just stood there—mirrored sunglasses and full gray uniform, six-foot-five plus hat, arms folded like anvils across his chest—the message clear as an electric roadwork sign: stop. turn around. get lost .
    I couldn’t see much past him and his car, but it looked like someone had parked a dark Chevy S10 Blazer in the shadows of the one-lane bridge and left the driver’s door open. The bridge itself, which spanned a fair-sized brook, running low this dry spring, was about fifty feet long with a shingled roof and barn-siding walls. A couple of square holes were cut between the timbers as unglassed windows, and in the light spill from one I saw an arm hanging white out the open door of the Blazer.

Chapter 2
    As I drew within point-blank range of the cannon holstered at his waist, Trooper Moody said, “Get lost.”
    Like many country troopers, Oliver Moody had grown up a younger son on a struggling farm. When big-brother Bob inherited the disaster, Ollie joined the Army, where he had enjoyed a couple of hitches in a famously sadistic MP unit. Discharged, he brought his talents to the state police and took up residence in a little saltbox Newbury provided next door to Town Hall. In his eyes I would always be the spoiled kid from the big house on Main Street.
    In fact, there were several houses on Main Street bigger than mine, and I was never spoiled. My parents had neither the means nor the temperament, but if they had, Aunt Connie would have put a stop to that , thank you very much. I had run a little wild, however, and Trooper Moody had taken it as a turf challenge to tame me, which had, over the years, caused near equal suffering on both sides.
    The fact that Ollie owed me a big favor, if not his life, didn’t make him love me any more.
    I said, “I’m going over to the reservation.” Thanks to some service my great-grandfather had performed, the Housatonic tribe turned to the Abbotts for their rare real estate dealings.
    â€œCrime scene,” said Ollie. “Bridge is blocked.”
    â€œSo I’ll leave my car and walk.”
    â€œBen, get the hell out of here before I punch you in the mouth.”
    Given the absence of witnesses in the woods and our long, unpleasant history, Ollie would have enjoyed doing that very much. While I, a hundred pounds lighter and a lot shorter, would, in the long run, have suffered more than he.
    I took a step left, and before he moved to block my view I saw that the white object hanging from the Blazer’s door was definitely a man’s hand. Then, with a jolt, I noticed the plastic WindVent installed on the window.
    â€œIs that Reg Hopkins’s Blazer?”
    I sidestepped again and finally got a glimpse of the vanity license plate.
    â€œE-FLU-NT? Looks like Reg to me. Somebody steal his car?”
    Suddenly jousting with Ollie wasn’t fun anymore.
    Reg and I went back to marbles and Little League. More recently, our businesses had meshed on the occasions that Benjamin Abbott Realty steered new homeowners toward Reg Hopkins Septic—steering I did with an easy conscience, as Reg was a straight shooter in a service that bred hustlers. I hadn’t seen much of him since Janey left him, and now I