Evil Harvest Read Online Free

giggled.
    It was time to teach these smart asses a lesson. “Don’t go anywhere.”
    Rafferty put the car in park, turned on the flashers; the lights strobed red and blue against the black Dodge Ram. He got out of the car and went to the driver’s side door of the pickup. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a Swiss Army knife, then clicked it open. The kid who was driving looked like he had just seen the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future all at once.
    “This is for your smart-ass fucking friend.”
    Rafferty pressed the tip of the knife against the side of the truck, dug it in and ran the blade down the driver’s side. It left a thin white scratch the entire length of the truck.
    “Aw, man,” the driver said.
    Rafferty walked to the driver’s side door and looked at the kid behind the wheel. “Stay off of my road.”
    Rafferty stomped back to his car and got in. Turning the gumballs off, he pulled away from the truck. He took a look in the rearview mirror and saw the driver standing on the road, yelling and pointing at the kids in the back. No doubt he was chewing out his friend for causing so many problems.
    Two minutes later, Rafferty pulled up in front of Folsom.
    Grabbing his flashlight, he got out of the cruiser and walked to the doorway. The steel door was open, and the inside lock was busted. He pulled his revolver from his holster, shone the light inside and saw a pile of kitchen chairs and a splintered pallet blocking the entrance. The chairs’ legs had snapped like toothpicks and the pallet lay busted in half, the wood all jagged shards.
    There came a thud and a clang from around the back of the building, the sound of metal hitting metal. Was somebody hiding on him?
    He shone his light down the alley between the two buildings and saw only murky brown shadows. Revolver in one hand and flashlight in the other, he crept down the alley until he reached the rear of the buildings.
    He was in a courtyard. The rest of the buildings in the complex butted up against the concrete slab on which he stood. To his left was the warehouse, a green-and-white sign reaching BUILDING 57 hanging on the wall. Behind the warehouse was a blue Dumpster with the name BROWN RECYCLING painted on the side. A cloud of flies buzzed over the container.
    He lifted the Dumpster lid with the barrel of the revolver and found only maggots squirming on a grease-covered piece of cardboard. Apparently he had missed whatever happened at Folsom. He was ready to go back to the car and tell Clarence to get down here. Put old Red to work, have him haul some chairs out of the way.
    When he turned to leave the alley he heard shuffling coming from the other side of the Dumpster. Shining the beam, he hunkered down and moved to the front of the container.
    He pointed the revolver in the direction of the noise. “Come out of there. Put your hands where I can see them.”
    A man stepped out from behind the Dumpster and Rafferty’s flashlight beam lit up his face. He was thin and pale with white-blond hair and had full, almost feminine lips. The lips were an unusual feature, but not his most unusual. The man was naked except for a collapsed cardboard box wrapped around him like a towel.
    “Nice outfit. What are you doing here?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You don’t know why you’re standing naked with a cardboard box around you at a furniture factory in the middle of the night?”
    “Well—”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Charles Dietrich.” The guy lifted the box a little, as it had begun to slip down further on his body.
    “Hold still,” Rafferty said.
    Rafferty stepped toward him until they were standing nose-to-nose. He sniffed, taking in the rotten fruit smell of the trash, Dietrich’s underlying body odor, and underneath that, underneath his skin, the smell of Rafferty’s own kind. A hint of sulfur. It would smell like skunk or rotten eggs to most people. But you had to get up close, within kissing distance, and really