Time to Live: Part Five Read Online Free Page A

confused. As he cocked his head to think, a stream of rain water dripped from his nose.
    “Why’d you shoot Chas Delphin, Jeremy?”
    “Who said I did? I thought you were looking for Peter Banks on that.”
    “We got Peter Banks,” Carter said. “But then we got more evidence. It was you. You were wearing a red jersey, and you nearly got away with it, except someone else startled you and beat the shit out of you.”
    Jeremy’s jaw dropped. “You don’t know that.”
    “Come on, Jeremy,” Carter snorted. “You left evidence all over the place.” That last part was a lie, of course. He wanted the boy to feel as if everything from this moment forward led to his inevitable confession.
    “What kind of evidence?”
    Carter’s eyes narrowed as he pretended to formulate an answer, but ultimately, he just shook his head. “No, I don’t think I’ll share that with you. Not just now. All I want to know is why you did it. How did you think you could get away with it?”
    Jeremy’s eyes darted some more, scanning the woods for any reinforcements. “If you’re talking about your daughter and her friend—if you’re talking about the real murderers—nobody’s gonna believe a word they say.”
    “Oh, I think they will,” Carter said. He took a step forward but stopped when Jeremy raised the pistol higher. He showed the boy his palms as a peace offering. “This doesn’t help.”
    “Nobody will believe them,” Jeremy repeated.
    Carter decided to probe a little deeper. “I’ve got the security video,” he bluffed.
    “You couldn’t !” The kid knew his mistake as soon as he heard himself.
    Carter smiled. “Couldn’t? And how would you know that?”
    Jeremy trembled. “Y-you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Yeah, I do,” Carter said. “And so do you. Let’s drop the charade and set the record straight, okay?”
    The boy raised the gun higher again. “I could shoot you.”
    For an instant, Carter thought that was exactly what he was going to do. He flinched, but he didn’t back off. “Who would you blame that one on? There’s no hiding secrets like this, Jeremy. People try all the time, but murder is just too big a crime.”
    “I didn’t murder anyone.” His voice broke again.
    “I believe you,” Carter said. Clearly, it wasn’t what Jeremy was expecting to hear. “I think you believed that the gun was empty.”
    The kid’s eyes got huge and he nodded enthusiastically. “Yes!” he said. He nearly shouted it. “That’s right. I didn’t think it was loaded. I just wanted to scare him.” He paused as the inevitability of it all settled in on him. “It wasn’t my fault,” he said. “If that guy hadn’t hit me, the gun never would have gone off. It wasn’t my fault.”
    Carter said nothing. What was the sense in pointing out the fallacy of his reasoning now? As the world closed in on him, legal technicalities would be of little interest. “Can you answer my question, though?” he asked.
    Jeremy looked confused.
    “How did you think that you’d get away with it in a town this small?”
    “He didn’t think he’d get away with it.” The voice from Carter’s right startled him. He turned to see Frank Hines emerging from a line of trees. He half expected to see a weapon drawn, but both of the sheriff’s hands were empty. “He was punishing me.”
    Jeremy’s fear turned to panic, and he became a little boy. “I-I’m sorry, Dad,” he said. “He came back to the house, and I didn’t know what to do.”
    Frank Hines waved off his son’s whimpering with a shooing flip of his hand. “I know,” he said. “Your mother called me.” To Carter, he said, “You must be proud of yourself.”
    “Not especially,” Carter said. What was there to be proud of?
    “You broke your big case,” Hines said. “Ruined a bunch of lives. That’s all in a day’s work for you, isn’t it?”
    Something in the sheriff’s tone put Carter on edge. He kept watching those hands,