You Know Who Killed Me Read Free Page B

this job on your résumé and anyone checks, you lied.”
    â€œThis just keeps getting better and better.”
    He stopped smiling. “I can’t turn it down, but you can. Nobody’d blame you.”
    I stuck the folder under my arm. “It’s either this or a gig at the Eureka Cyber School of Criminal Science.”
    â€œThanks, Amos.”
    Both my arms were occupied, so I got away from there without any more pulverized bones in my fingers.
    Outside, I turned my collar up against the cold. Donald Gates smiled at me. It was one of those pictures that follow you around.

 
    THREE
    I smoked half a pack in my easy chair, listening to the voices on the tape player, checking off numbers to follow up on and drawing lines through the rejects. There weren’t nearly enough of the last. At midnight I switched off the machine, went to bed, and dreamed I lived in a cubicle, trying to sell storm doors to whoever answered the telephone.
    Operator: Sheriff’s tip line. What’s your information?
    Caller: Yeah. I know who killed Donald Gates.
    Operator: I’m listening.
    Caller: Not over the phone. How do I know you won’t just nab the guy and stiff me on the reward?
    Operator: Sir, that reward is being offered by Christ Church, not by this department.
    Caller: Okay, forget it. I’ll call the church.
    Operator: If you’re certain of your information, withholding it from the authorities is a crime.
    Caller: You’ll get it after I talk to the church.
    He’d hung up then. He had a deep voice with a hint of a twang. I looked up his name on the sheet taken from the reverse directory: Alvinus C. Adams, 1207 Daniel Boone Drive, Iroquois Heights; a lot of streets got their names from people who fought the Indians the town was named for. It put him a couple of blocks over from the Gateses, a hopeful sign. I finished my morning coffee and dialed the number.
    â€œHello?” The same voice.
    â€œMr. Adams? My name is Amos Walker. I’m a private detective.”
    â€œNo shit? I thought they went out with black-and-white TV.”
    â€œNot just yet. You called the sheriff’s tip line two weeks ago, claiming to know who killed Donald Gates.”
    â€œWhere the hell’d you get that?” he said after a silence. “It’s supposed to be anonymous.”
    I’d lain awake much of the night working on an explanation. I’d decided just to duck it.
    â€œHow far did you get with Christ Church?”
    â€œWhat’s it to you?”
    â€œI’m guessing from your attitude you didn’t get far.”
    â€œI didn’t get dick, same as from the law. Why do they set up tip lines and offer re wards if they don’t want the help?”
    â€œIf your information’s good, I might be able to help you get half that reward.”
    â€œWho gets the other half, as if I don’t know the answer already?”
    I grinned at the empty seat opposite me in the breakfast nook.
    â€œMr. Adams, that’s the most pointless question I’ve ever been asked. Did you mean what you said about Gates’s murderer?”
    â€œI’ll axe you the same question I axed the bitch at the sheriff’s. What’s to keep you from taking what I give you and keeping the whole thing for yourself?”
    â€œHave you got a pencil?”
    â€œSure I got a pencil. I just ain’t got a job. That’s why I’m going against ten generations of Adamses and turning stool pigeon. What am I writing?”
    I gave him the names and numbers of three references, one of them a congressman who’d served his Michigan district more than thirty years. “Ask them the same thing you asked me. You can believe them or not, but there will be a record you asked, which would make it difficult for me to snipe you out of what you’ve got coming.”
    â€œWhat’s your name again?”
    I repeated it.
    â€œThen again, you could be somebody else