The Juan Doe Murders: A Smokey Brandon Thriller Read Online Free

white clouds.
    He recovered and said, “No, not my dad. Listen, it’s theft, okay? My roommate’s stealing stuff. I thought I saw him down there just now. But it couldn’t be him.” His laugh bore a shading of scorn. “He wouldn’t be caught dead at something like this.”
    “Stealing stuff? Property, money, what?”
    David shook his head as if he were stupid or the whole universe was.
    “Can you prove it,” I said, “what he’s doing?”
    “Rat out your friends and you’re just a different species of rat.”
    “Not always,” I said.
    “So-called ‘situational ethics,’ right? I took a philosophy class once. Some things are not so wrong
if
right? But I can’t buy into it. You just don’t tattle.”
    “Well, then, I guess we’ve pretty well covered it,” I said. Something more than a moral stubbornness played here, but I didn’t have a clue as to what, or why he would disclose this stuff to me, a virtual stranger, and frankly I was a little annoyed at this boy I didn’t know, and hungry for a beer.
    Across the street when we reached the sidewalk, a white terrier in a front window of a house stood on the back of a couch and barked wildly.
    In second grade, I watched a friend slip her hand in the pocket of a green coat belonging to another child while all the other kids were at the tables making Play-Doh animals. Her fist was closed when it came out, and when she opened it, her palm held a silver dollar. She saw me, but neither of us said anything, not then, not later; not to the teacher nor to the little girl who owned the coat and who was crying at the bus stop when I walked by that afternoon. I hated myself for not doing what I should have: gone up to the offenderand told her to give the coin back. Instead, I avoided my friend who’d turned thief before my eyes until avoiding her became part of the crime itself, and it niggled at me after all these years.
    We were nearing the street to turn on to reach The Swallow’s Inn when David said, “Thanks for trying.”
    “Somehow I think you’ll find the right thing to do,” I said.
    He smiled a little and said, “Dad says all I have under my hat is hair.” We walked by a silver Jaguar parked at an angle, taking up two parking spaces. Dave said, “Overpriced bucket of bolts.”
    “You couldn’t tell it by me.”
    He said, “Ever back up over gate prongs?”
    “Not that I remember.”
    “I did that.”
    “For fun, or what?”
    “I forgot a book at school, backed up before I thought,” he said, shaking his head. “It’ll be fun all right, paying Dad off.”
    “I’m really sorry,” I said, but had to smile.
    In the street in front of the mission, line-dancers were doing the Texas Swing to “Bad Moon Rising” blasting from enormous P.A. speakers.
    The saloon was still packed with people shouting over dozens of others. We found Joe and Ray in a corner with a couple of cops and a sunburned brunette in a little bitty blouse, the bunch of them red-eyed and having the good time they should on an off-duty day.
    I decided to head home and let them call me a party-poop if they would. And they did. But I kissed both Ray and Joe on the cheek, nodded to the brunette and the deputies, and shook hands with David, telling him to take care. He held on a fraction more than he needed, it seemed, and again I felt I’d lost somehow but didn’t know exactly why.
    On my way out, a man in a white cowboy hat who looked East Indian asked me if I knew the two-step. “Next time, Duke,” I said, and squeezed through the doorway.
    It took me a minute to get through the crowd and around the building, and when I did I saw Dave Sanders outside again in the courtyard, alone, sitting on the same bench we sat on earlier, with his head bent to his hand as if he had a headache that just would not let go.

THREE

    O n the way home from the parade I stopped at a car wash, got the jiffy job, and watched a limping Hispanic man with white sideburns slap rags on car roofs and