Prairie Gothic Read Online Free Page A

hunting in his youth. No more, though. Killing for sport had lost its appeal. When he hunted these days it was with a camera or binoculars.
    A harsher gust nudged him, a reminder he’d better get down before his aging muscles began to stiffen in the cold. It was nearly too late already, but he made it.
    Tommie was barely perceptible in the jumble of branches above. When there were leaves, he’d be absolutely invisible.
    Mad Dog put his fingers to his lips again. It was time to reclaim Hailey and head for home. He stopped short of whistling. Something, besides the frozen wind, prickled the back of his neck. He was being watched. He moved his eyes and pivoted his head.
    It was only Hailey, come up behind him with her usual stealth, an ability that made her seem able to beam herself instantly from place to place. She smiled at him, but only with her eyes since her mouth was filled by a big oval rock.
    â€œDrop it, babe. Let’s get out of here. Go back to the house for some coffee and a rawhide chew toy.” He didn’t try to take things out of her mouth anymore. There were ways in which wolf hybrids were different than domesticated dogs, even ones like Hailey who adored you. She stepped up beside him, though, and put the rock gently on the snow at his feet. It was a peculiar rock with regular indentations. Mad Dog bent and picked it up and found himself wanting to quote Hamlet’s line about poor Yorick. It wasn’t a rock. It was a human skull.
    ***
    â€œNot likely we’ll have visitors on a morning like this,” Deffenbach said a little defensively. The young woman they’d found to replace Mrs. Martin at the front desk of the
    Sunshine Towers seemed overwhelmed by the possibility she might have to answer a phone or look up a room number. Minimum wage, minimum skills, the sheriff thought.
    There was a long hall just off the lobby, offices on one side, a cafeteria on the other. None of it lived up to the reception area’s bright promise.
    â€œOur multipurpose room,” Deffenbach explained as they passed.
    â€œWe call it the mess hall,” Dorothy said. “Mess is the perfect description for what they serve in there.”
    â€œIt is a little bland,” Mrs. Martin admitted, “but wholesome.” There wasn’t much of a breakfast crowd and most of those were just nursing cups of coffee.
    â€œHow could Mad Dog, or anyone, walk in here in the wee hours of the morning and leave with a dead body?”
    â€œInside help.” Mrs. Martin shot an accusing glare at the little woman with the red tennies. “We secure the doors every night at nine, then unlock at seven the next morning. They can all be opened from inside so people can’t be trapped in case of some emergency, say a fire, but an open door sounds an alarm at the front desk. If he came through a door, we should have known. The windows are supposed to be secured too, but I’ve found a few that have been jimmied from time to time. This isn’t a prison you know.”
    â€œCoulda fooled me,” Dorothy grumbled.
    â€œWere you the one who helped Mad Dog come and go?” The sheriff bent to focus his question on the little senior.
    â€œOne of them, but let’s talk about that after we see to the baby.”
    One of the offices was a nurse’s station. A frazzled woman was counting out prescription medicines into labeled cups. “Mrs. Burton’s in her room, far as I know,” she said, in answer to Mrs. Martin’s query. “Haven’t seen her on this level and I haven’t managed to do rounds upstairs because I’ve been persuading one of our ladies she doesn’t need a morning-after pill on account of last night’s indiscretion.”
    â€œCard games get pretty boring after awhile,” Dorothy muttered again.
    There was an elevator midway along the hall. It took a long time to arrive, during which the bird woman entertained them with further