THE RIGHT TIME TO DIE Read Online Free Page A

him to confirm Dojcsak’s supposition.
    Leland said, “Chislett, you’re full of shit. How could he know that? ”
    Chislett shrugged. “Beats me. Something to do with water in her lungs.”
    Leland said, “No, I mean about the other thing.”
    Again, Chislett shrugged. “Who knows? Stick a Q-Tip up her pussy, I suppose they can tell anything. ”
    “She didn’t drown?” asked Pardoe .
    “According to my old man, she didn’t,” said Chislett. Keith’s father, Graham, was County Coroner. After speaking with the Medical Examiner the previous evening, he was in a position to know .
    “How did she die?” asked Seamus Mcteer. “Is anyone saying?”
    Mcteer was a new member to the group, who’d arrived recently from overseas. A portly redhead with a thick Scottish bur, his modest collection of “nudie” magazines had allowed him easy access to the tightly knit fraternity of high school friends. Mcteer hoped, during that summer, to obtain more explicit material, photos exposing what he referred to almost reverentially as Bush , as if it represented the Holy Grail. The genital area in his father’s limited inventory had been artistically edited out. Though he would never replace Leland McMaster as the center of attention with the boys, Seamus aimed to place a close second .
    Chislett continued. “Don’t know how she died, couldn’t hear after that. However it was, Womack don’t agree with my dad. They argued.” Then, as if in a bid to bolster his father’s reputation, he added, “Old man told him to fuck-off.”
    The boys were quiet now, considering the possibilities. Each had been seen at the Big Top Diner three days before in the company of the dead girl and each had been questioned that same evening by the police, owing to her failure to return home. Sheriff Sidney Womack had not spoken to the boys again since, though with the discovery of the girl’s body he was scheduled to do so again, soon .
    Turning to Ed Dojcsak, Leland said, “G’me a smoke.” The muscles strained beneath his tee shirt like a spool of tightly wound cord .
    Dojcsak stooped, raised the cuff of his pant leg and retrieved a package of cigarettes secreted in the band of his white athletic socks.
    McMaster laughed. “Scared your parents will find out?”
    “Mom thinks I’m too young to smoke. ”
    “Dojcsak,” McMaster said, “you’re a knob.”
    “So you keep telling me,” Dojcsak said, “but if she finds out, you’ll have to start buying your own , asshole .”
    McMaster agreed, nodding his head gravely. Despite being the eldest son of the wealthiest man in the county, Leland was always broke.
    “Ed-ee-oh,” he said to Dojcsak, “let’s walk.”
    They separated from the group, walking to the river, away from the bandstand and along a footpath where the crowd thinned out, toward the dam and a barrier that had been erected the previous year in an effort to keep curious visitors and reckless teens from wandering too far along the break wall. In summer, when the water was low and conditions dry, it wasn’t hazardous. But in the early spring and late fall, when water levels became elevated, the drop in temperature caused a thin film of ice to accumulate on the concrete, making the surface slick. Dojcsak wondered at the number of suicides here who had been classified mistakenly as accidental death. After all, a walk along the break wall at any time between December and March guaranteed, to someone looking, virtually the same result .
    They crossed over the barrier, ignoring the warning that read, “No Unauthorized Personnel Beyond This Point”, and stood on a promontory overlooking the river. Tons of water came together below them in a swirling mass, making conversation difficult.
    “She was found there,” McMaster said, pointing.
    Dojcsak acknowledged with a shrug, mesmerized by the roar of rushing water and the gauzy mist rising from its surface.
    “So, Ed” Leland said, “Any plans for next year ? ”
    Dojcsak