StoneDust Read Free Page A

wondered, too late, what I should have done to help.
    Ollie heard Scooter MacKay rumbling up the dirt road and transformed, grudgingly, from vicious bully to peace officer: “Get in your car and drive away or you’re under arrest for obstructing an investigation.”
    Couldn’t argue with that. Didn’t feel like it, if that was Reg’s hand.
    I turned around and walked to my car, at an angle that produced a view of the right side of Reg’s Blazer. I thought I saw a scrape—a long scratch that ran from tail light to front bumper.
    The Range Rover skidded around the bend like a pig on tiptoe. Scooter jumped out with his camera, glowering at my ten-year-old sedan, which had left his latest extravagance in the dust. “What happened?”
    I told him that there seemed to be a dead man in Reg Hopkins’s Blazer. His face dropped and he suddenly looked like a big dog that had been kicked for no reason.
    â€œReg?”
    â€œHis car.”
    â€œJesus. What happened to him?”
    â€œI don’t know. Except he’s dead. Ollie ran me off.”
    â€œCan’t be Reg.” He headed toward the bridge.
    I stopped him. “Do me a favor? Give me a wave if it’s him.”
    Ordinarily Scooter would have made a lame joke about journalistic ethics and I’d have countered with a lamer retort. Instead we held eyes a moment, until Scooter muttered, “We’re too young for this.”
    We’d all played baseball together, in Old Man Hawley’s side yard, ridden bikes and hung out. We’d drifted a little apart, of course, when Scooter and I were enrolled in Newbury Prep as day students and Reg entered the public high school. Eventually he’d married a newcomer, which took him further from our sphere. But business, the Lions, and the Rotary had brought us back, and I felt the same numbing astonishment Scooter did that a kid from our childhood could actually die.
    I got in the car and turned it around slowly while Scooter interviewed Ollie.
    I watched in the mirror until he boomed, “Reg Hopkins?”
    Then I eased past the Range Rover. Around the next bend I came within a foot of a head-on collision with a beige unmarked state police car. A siren whooped and lights flashed. I made a show of backing off the road, leaving so little room that she had to inch past.
    â€œHi, Marian.”
    A very annoyed, very attractive brunette with all-business eyes I once called an arresting shade of gray lowered her window. “Ben, what are you doing here?”
    â€œFleeing,” I said, and when she didn’t smile, I added, “Trooper Moody chased me.”
    Marian Boyce was a terrific woman who deserved three good men: a decent stepfather for her little boy; an energetic lover; and someone to hold her coat while she fought her way up the ranks of the state police.
    â€œLobster night next week?” I asked.
    â€œSo you can pump me about the body in the bridge?”
    â€œDid I pump you last time we had dinner?”
    â€œI’m off lobster.”
    â€œHow about a picnic?”
    She drummed the steering wheel with her big fingers and gave me an uncharacteristically shy smile. “I’m sort of seeing someone.”
    â€œCongratulations. Bring him along.”
    â€œYeah, right…Listen, call me next week if you still feel like it.”
    I stopped at the junction of Crabtree and Route 7 to wait for Scooter. The Newbury Volunteer Ambulance came along, slowly and without running lights, trailed by Dr. Steve Greenan’s old diesel Mercedes. Steve doubled as an assistant medical examiner. I ducked down, too shaken to talk. Finally Scooter pulled alongside. He’d been crying.
    â€œSteve thinks maybe some kind of convulsion.”
    I almost felt relief. I’d been afraid he’d killed himself.
    â€œFrom what?” I asked.
    Scooter dried his eyes on his sleeve. “Maybe drugs…”
    â€œOh for