The Drifter Read Free Page B

where faint blue strands showed on the bark, and smiled.
    “Good luck, dog,” he said. “That’s climbing rope. Kevlar core.”
    When he reached out to pat the dog’s head, the dog shied away. Peter shrugged and went back to work.
    He supported the porch roof with long two-by-sixes braced against the ground, then cut out the rest of the deck frame with a Sawzall and hauled the pieces to the street. The dog had taken to rubbing its rope-wrapped chin on the front walk. A pretty good strategy, actually. It kept its eyes on Peter the whole time. He could feel the weight of its stare, a hundred and fifty pounds of dog planning to tear his throat out.
    It was better than all those Iraqi freedom fighters. Hell, this was just one dog.
    What Peter didn’t want to admit was that he almost liked the feeling.
    It kept him on his toes. Like old times.
    Like the white static was there for a reason.
    —
    He unloaded the lumber and stacked it on sawhorses. But before he started putting things together again, he had to clear out all the crap that had accumulated under the porch. He stuffed disintegrating cardboard boxes and trash into construction-grade garbage bags. Broken bricks and scrap lumber he carried to the street. At the very back, tucked against the house, behind a stinking dog bed, was an old black hard-sided suitcase. It was heavier than it looked.
    There was a little white mold growing on the side, but it didn’t look too bad. There might be some use left in it. Peter didn’t believe in throwing stuff away just because it had a little wear.
    He set the suitcase by the side door and turned away to finish cleaning up. The stoop was cracked, and the suitcase fell over, then bounced down the four steps to the concrete walk. When it hit bottom, it popped open.
    And money fell out.
    Crisp hundred-dollar bills. In plain banded ten-thousand-dollar packets. Forty packets, each about a half-inch tall.
    Four hundred thousand dollars.
    Under Jimmy’s broken-down porch.
    —
    Peter went back to the suitcase.
    It was a smaller Samsonite, about the size of a modern airline carry-on, probably expensive when it was new. But it definitely wasn’t new. They didn’t make suitcases like this anymore.
    Despite its time under that porch, it was in decent shape. Hard to tell if it had been there for thirty years or was bought at Goodwill the month before. Peter picked up one of the stacks of hundreds he’d found inside and flipped through the bills. Mostly newer, with the big Ben Franklin head.
    So the suitcase hadn’t been there too long.
    There were no identifying marks on the Samsonite’s outside shell, nothing inside to tell where it had come from. But there were four little elastic pockets on the interior.
    Inside each pocket was a small brown paper bag, wrinkled and worn with handling. Peter opened one bag and shook the contents out into his hand. A pale rectangular slab stared up at him. A bit smaller than a paperback book, soft and pliable like modeling clay, smelling slightly of chemicals, with clear plastic sheeting adhered to its faces.
    Interesting.
    He was pretty sure it wasn’t modeling clay.

3
    P eter sat on Dinah Johnson’s back stoop, waiting for her to come home from work. The suitcase stood closed in the shadow of the steps. On his leg, his restless fingertips kept time to that endless interior metronome. Charlie and his little brother, Miles, were inside, doing whatever boys did in the odd, lonely freedom before their mothers came home from work.
    The wind blew hard, another big autumn storm system moving across the continent. No rain, not yet. Early November in Wisconsin, Veterans Day next week. It was dark before suppertime, and getting colder. Frost on the windshield at night. Charlie had already offered Peter hot chocolate twice. He was a good kid. Both concerned and maybe a little relieved that Lieutenant Ash the crazy dog tamer wouldn’t come inside.
    Peter preferred the outdoors.
    After mustering out at