Mad Dog and Englishman: A Mad Dog & Englishman Mystery #1 (Mad Dog & Englishman Series) Read Online Free

Mad Dog was alone with the universal forces from whom he sought enlightenment.
    Mad Dog had left his watch in the Saab, feeling that a digital Japanese time piece was out of place with the rest of his costume as well as with the timelessness of his intent. Still, from the shadows, the ever thickening crowds at the diner, and the way he was sweating, he guessed it must be after eleven. It might be a little early for him to expect a vision, especially since he’d cheated a bit on the fasting when he started out that morning, helping himself to a couple of cups of coffee and a pair of cream-filled cupcakes that proved almost as tasteless as they’d looked. Still, relatively fresh calories were being processed by his digestive system so he was surprised when he noticed a blurring of his vision and a humming in his ears. He’d been staring vacantly at the out-of-order Veteran’s Memorial Park restroom. It was a small structure that, in its day, had discriminated against users neither for race, creed, nor even sex, since it contained plumbing to accommodate only one visitor at a time. The door, which should have been padlocked, seemed to be ajar. Just in front of it the air was filled with dancing spots, almost as if someone was about to beam down to the park from the Starship
Enterprise
. All this was accompanied by a faint buzzing in Mad Dog’s ears. He sat there, patiently waiting for the vision to solidify into something recognizable or for the sound to take on meaning. Neither happened. Nothing, in fact happened, except the morning’s coffee worked its way through Mad Dog’s kidneys to his bladder, making concentrating on the impending vision increasingly difficult. This wasn’t something he’d planned for. He’d expected the sun to sweat the coffee out of him—it was certainly sweating something out of him—but the coffee had taken its normal course and expected to exit by the usual route.
    Mad Dog let himself glance around at the street. He was surprised that the blurring swirl of spots didn’t remain in the center of his vision. When he looked away from the restroom his sight was clear. Whatever the phenomenon, it was located in space and time and not just in the inner workings of his mind behind his nearly coal black eyes.
    The adjacent street was abandoned. There was a collection of cars down at Bertha’s, but no faces peered his way through her front window. Mad Dog decided to examine the phenomenon more closely and perhaps relieve himself of the coffee behind the structure or in some of the park’s thicker bushes.
    The humming was louder as he approached the building. The spots grew clearer. A pungent odor became increasingly noticeable as he drew near. The spots, he was surprised to discover, were flies, a swarm of them so thick as to explain the hum and the apparent distortion of the atmosphere in the door to the restroom. He’d seen swarms like that around dead things, usually ones that were well past ripe, but the smell that steadily grew more offensive wasn’t decay. There was a coppery tinge to it with fecal overtones. The door to the facility was still padlocked, but lock and chain hung from the hasp, dangling where they’d been pried free of their attachment to the wall. Fresh scars on the surface gave evidence of the force used to separate them.
    Mad Dog took a deep breath of relatively fresh air, swiped wildly at the flies, and stepped to the door, pushing it further open to see what was interesting the flies. What he discovered made him address a deity other than the ones he’d been concerned with contacting. He lurched away from the restroom and fell to one knee, vomiting cupcakes onto the dry grass. His stomach continued to heave long after it was empty.
    What remained of the Reverend Simms, lying face down in the abandoned toilet, took no offense at Mad Dog’s reaction. The flies didn’t complain either. They were delighted to have an option.
    ***
     
    Doc Jones had the sad, sagging