Bonegrinder Read Online Free

groanin’—real low, not the boy groanin’. We run there fast as we could an’ found the boy pretty much like you saw him but alive. He was ravin’, said he was fishin’ an’ somethin’ come up outa the lake an’ got him, somethin’ big an’ dark. Joe pulled me aside, said he figured the boy wouldn’t live long enough for us to get Doc Amis an’ bring him back, so we decided to bring him on in with Joe’s pickup. We put an old blanket an’ some rags in back so’s to soften the ride, but I knew the boy was dead when we loaded him in—too much blood lost.”
    “Know who the boy was?”
    Sonny shook his head, yanked unconsciously at his hair. “Wasn’t any identification on him. We thought he must be the son of somebody in that bunch stayin’ at Higgins’ Motel.”
    Wintone’s insides seemed to twist and he cringed. He would have the unpleasant task of checking that out and notifying the boy’s family. “What was it you think got him?” he asked.
    Sonny shrugged. “That comin’ up outa the water business’d be the boy’s imagination. He was ravin’, busted up the way he was.”
    Bonifield had come back from Doc Amis’s and was standing leaning against the wall near the cork bulletin board. “Doc Amis says he ain’t seen nothin’ like it … jaws an’ claws, is what he says … boy been put through a grinder.”
    Wintone thought about running Bonifield out of the office but decided against the effort. Besides, he might have some questions to put to the old man.
    “Tell the good sheriff ’bout the footprint,” Bonifield said. “Though it weren’t no footprint, nor paw, neither.”
    Sonny nodded. “There was a print, Sheriff, leastways one clear one, on the bank near where the boy was layin’. Rest of the ground was soft an’ all churned up.”
    “So,” Wintone said, “what kind of print?”
    Sonny hesitated and shook his head. “No kind I ever seen.”
    “Big, though,” Bonifield said. “Six, eight inches across. An’ deep, like the thing were somethin’ heavy.”
    Wintone grunted. “How ’bout goin’ back up there,” he said to Sonny. “Make sure nobody messes things up around where it happened. I got some people to talk to an’ I’ll be along.”
    After a moment Sonny nodded. “I’ll get Joe James to go with me. We’ll take his truck.”
    “I’m goin’ down to Mully’s an’ get a drink,” Bonifield said.
    Heat rolled in before Sonny and Bonifield slammed the door behind them, rattling the blinds. On the warm windowpane a bluebottle fly crawled across the loop of the R in SHERRIFF. Wintone picked up the phone like it was something slimy.
    Lil Higgins answered the telephone, and Wintone had to wait awhile for Luke to come in from where he was working on one of the cabins. Then he told Wintone that the couple in cabin eight, the Larsens, had been inquiring since morning about the whereabouts of their eleven-year-old son, Dale. Higgins confirmed that the boy was blond—that was really all the description that Wintone could give him. Wintone told Higgins not to mention the phone call to the boy’s family and said he’d be on his way up there shortly.
    Wintone stood wearily and strapped on his holstered .38 revolver. He ran broad fingers through his brown curls, pulled the leather holster strap tight and adjusted the weight of the pistol on his hip. Then he went out into the heat, careful to shut the door tight behind him, and set out walking toward Doc Amis’s.
    He was in front of Lige Thompson’s Ozark Used Furniture store and already sticky with sweat when a low red sports car slowed to keep pace with him. There were two men in it who looked to be in their middle twenties, each with a flowing dark mustache, and several fishing rods were lashed to a chrome carrier on the car’s roof.
    “Hey, Marshall,” the driver called, “is there anyplace to buy bottle liquor in this metropolis?”
    Wintone kept walking. “Colver Liquor and Tobacco Shop, three blocks