Desolation Read Online Free Page A

him.
    He was just about to let the curtain fall back when movement caught his eye. There was someone else in the house.
    Snyder had been married, but they’d split three years ago and she’d moved across town, back in with her mother. What was her name? It didn’t matter. What mattered was that, since Snyder’s wife had left him, Virgil had never seen anyone else in that house. No women, no friends, no one. No one but Snyder. And now this … this shape .
    He was tall, whoever it was. Thin, too. He moved past the windows quickly but without urgency, from dark room to bright room to dark room. Virgil lost track of him and frowned slightly, wondering why he was still watching. Who cared if Robert Snyder had made a new friend? Virgil certainly didn’t.
    Snyder drained the last of his beer and stood, scratched his expansive belly, and walked into the kitchen. He stood at the sink, looking at his reflection in the window, unable to see Virgil in his darkened house directly across from him. He washed out the empty beer bottle. Recycling. Well, he wasn’t all bad.
    The visitor, whoever he was, came into the kitchen. He was pale, his skin a funny colour, and his mouth was wide. Very, very wide. He walked up behind Snyder and grabbed him.
    And then snapped Snyder’s neck.
    Virgil’s heart lurched in his chest and he ducked down. He didn’t know why he ducked down, he just did. Ducking down seemed like the thing to do. But now that he had, he was finding it hard to straighten up again. He half waddled to the bookcase, moving away from the window. His legs were burning, the treacherous things. When he was in the clear, he straightened up slowly, groaning as his hip popped and his back creaked.
    Moving a little easier now, he sneaked to the window once more and peeked out. He couldn’t see Snyder or the figure. Either the killer had dragged him away or else he’d just let him drop out of sight.
    Virgil thought about how crappy a neighbour Snyder had been. He had been rude and disrespectful and had threatened Virgil with physical harm on more than one occasion – and, while Virgil had held serious doubts about Snyder’s ability to follow through on those threats, there was no getting away from the fact that Snyder had been a young man in his forties and Virgil was an old man in his eighties with a bad heart. That was not, by anyone’s standards, a fair fight.
    But Snyder was not a young man in his forties anymore. He was a body now. A corpse. He was remains . Whatever hopes and dreams he’d ever harboured were gone, evaporated into the ether the moment that figure had laid his hands on him. Virgil felt some sympathy for the guy, but it was the shallow type of sympathy that was easily forgotten and quickly put away.
    Movement caught his attention. The figure was walking towards the back door.
    Virgil hurried to his own kitchen, banging his leg off a chair in the dark. Cursing all the way to the window over the sink, he peered into Snyder’s overgrown backyard as the figure slipped out into the night. He seemed smaller now, under the moonlight. He had dark hair. That was odd. In the kitchen, Virgil could have sworn he’d been bald. He wasn’t nearly so pale, either, and he wore slacks and a vest over a short-sleeved shirt. The killer glanced his way and two thoughts spiked in Virgil’s head.
    The first was, He’s seen me, he’s seen me, he knows I’m here , a thought that faded when the killer’s gaze moved on without stopping, taking in a full sweep of his surroundings.
    The second thought was, I know that guy. I know that guy, but it’s impossible. It can’t be him. The guy I’m thinking of is eighty years old and living in Arkansas .
    He watched the killer jump the back fence and disappear, then stayed where he was for twenty minutes before he allowed himself to relax. Slowly, his heart stopped beating a tango. The thought occurred to him that it might be a good idea to call the cops. He took his phone from his