Sam McCain - 05 - Everybody's Somebody's Fool Read Online Free Page A

sighed. “Maybe you can make her understand, Counselor.” We were talking man to man now.
    Girls excluded. It was as if Linda had vanished. “Maybe you can explain how police protection works. Everywhere she goes, she’ll have one of my men trailing her. And every time she’s at home, I’ll have a man parked nearby. I won’t let anybody touch her.”
    Linda smiled. “That sounds very nice, Chief.
    Having protection like that. Unfortunately, I really don’t know who the killer is.”
    “That’s just about all she has to say, Chief.
    Now, we’d like to get out of here if possible.”
    He leaned in my direction and said, “You know these people pretty good, do you, Counselor?”
    “If you mean the Coyles, I’m a friend of Jean’s.”
    He leaned in and whispered. “Glad you’re not a friend of her husband’s. There’s a jackass for you.”
    I didn’t say anything.
    “You come out here often?”
    “A few times a year. To parties.”
    “I’m surprised they’d invite somebody who grew up in the Knolls out here.”
    “They’re well-off. But that doesn’t
    mean they’re snobs.”
    “I’m also told that the dead girl was going out with David.”
    “I have to take your word for all this. I don’t know anything about David’s personal life. Not much, anyway. I’ve represented him on a few traffic charges is all.”
    “The way he drag races, he’s gonna
    get himself killed one of these days. And he’s gonna kill somebody else, too, while he’s at it.”
    “I agree. And I’ve told him that many times.”
    The smile. “Well, Counselor, it was bound to happen. We had to agree with each other someday and it finally happened.” Then, to Linda, “Don’t leave the county without my permission.”
    “Darn, Linda,” I said, “there goes your trip to Antarctica.”
    “Gosh, and I was hoping to bring back all that whale blubber, too.”
    “You two should go on Ed Sullivan,”
    Cliffie said. “You’re getting your act down real good.”
    “Can he do that? Order me to stay in the county?”
    Linda asked as Cliffie walked away. He was now a whole lot less intimidated by the house and its guests. His swagger was back. And that was the natural order of things. Cliffie was an incompetent jerk. My momentary madness of feeling sorry for him had passed.
    “Of course not.”
    “That ride really sounds good, Sam.”
    “Yeah,” I said, sliding my arm around her slender shoulders, “it sure does.”
     
    I always try to picture the land as it was before even the Indians arrived. Impenetrable timber and man-tall grass and prairies and meadows and hills raw with deep true colors. Enough buffalo and bison to make the ground rumble when they approached. Enough steep red limestone cliffs to provide a facsimile of life as the original cliff dwellings must have looked like.
    And the rushing, bank-overflowing rivers, fast and blue and slapping with fish.
    At night come the mysteries that must have given even the Vikings pause, those sounds and shadows, that harsh and brazen moon, the tumbled dark ravines and the caves with their seared white bones of
    unknown animals—night is best of all.
    We didn’t talk.
    You can do that sometimes after sharing a proximity to death. A car accident, all mangled metal and terrible lurid blood on the highway; or sobbing, plump swimsuited adults telling you about a five-year-old who has just drowned in the public pool; or a crowd of drunks in a parking lot where one drunken battler accidentally killed another with an unlucky punch.
    There’s either a lot of talk or not much talk at all.
    A teenage girl had died tonight and there was nothing to say and so we said it.
    There was just the wind and the smooth V-8 of the red ragtop in the moon-silver countryside: the sandpits where we’d drunk underage beer in high school; the drive-in theater that would close with the first frost but for now showed a screenful of images of rock and roll and sex and despair and death, city images