The Blight Way Read Free

ambled over to his parking spot behind the courthouse, some of the current residents of the jail stopped shooting baskets long enough to give him their hard stares through the wire mesh of the exercise cage.
    He held up the shotgun. “Expect some company, boys!”
    Sorry nincompoops. Nobody ever told them you can’t be dumb. Half of them wouldn’t live to see thirty, done in by booze, drugs, cars, AIDS, guns, knives, pool cues, enemies and friends. Mostly friends. The inmates intensified their hard stares. The stares were meant to tell him that as soon as they got out they’d settle the score with him. Two former inmates had actually tried. They hadn’t made it to thirty.
    He climbed into the mud-coated, red Ford Explorer and clamped the shotgun upright in its clip on the dash. He slid the .30-30 into a gun rack attached to the heavy wire screen that separated the front seat from the back. The gun rack also contained a fly rod, separated into its two sections but rigged with leader and fly, a size fourteen Dave’s Hopper. A man had to be ready. He locked both handguns in the glove compartment. As he drove out of the parking lot, he grinned at the inmates hanging against the wire. They didn’t grin back.

Chapter 2
    Pap was sitting in a rocker on his covered front porch. He was medium height and lean with a thick shock of pure white hair protruding around the edges of his battered black Stetson. A classic wood-and-canvas pack frame was propped against a white porch column. An insulated cooler sat next to it.
    Pap lived alone in the huge house that sat on a hill overlooking what Pap had once clearly thought of as his domain. Probably still did. Visitors to Blight County might wonder how a person earning a sheriff’s salary for nearly forty years could afford such a fine house. The residents of the county, on the other hand, had no doubt.
    Pap walked out to the Explorer and loaded his pack into the rear luggage area. He went back and got the cooler and put it inside the SUV. Then, grunting a bit too graphically to suit Tully, he hoisted himself up into the front seat.
    â€œYou practically need a ladder to get into this rig,” he complained.
    â€œYou better not have a gun stashed in that pack,” Tully said.
    â€œCourse I ain’t. And what’s the idea of you having that saucy little broad of yours tell me what I can bring and what I can’t! What I need a gun for, anyway?”
    â€œWhat difference has that ever made?”
    Tully watched his father fuss with the seat belt.
    â€œHow you fasten this infernal thing?”
    â€œLike this, for the thousandth time!” Tully reached over and snapped the belt latch shut. What was it with old people and seat belts? He’d never met an old person yet who could fasten one. Pap could tear apart a car and put it back together blindfolded but couldn’t figure out how to fasten a seat belt.
    â€œHappy seventy-fifth, Pap.”
    â€œThanks. So what did you get me?”
    â€œSame as every year. Nothing. Which is more than you deserve. Actually, I do have something.”
    â€œI probably won’t like it.”
    â€œOh, you’ll like it all right. We apparently got ourselves a murder up by Famine. Batim Scragg called up this morning and said he had a body hanging over one of his fences.”
    â€œAwful thing,” the old man said. “Murder.” Beneath the stormy white brows, the hard little eyes sparkled with sudden delight. “Thanks, Bo. For taking me along. Been a while since I’ve had a good murder. Couldn’t be more pleased if you’d bought me something.”
    â€œI figured you might like it.”
    â€œI hope it’s an actual murder, not just a killing. It would be nice there was something for me to solve. I hate it when all you got to do is go down to the nearest bar and arrest the guy that’s bragging about the killing.”
    â€œHey, you’re talking about