When It All Comes Down to Dust (Phoenix Noir Book 3) Read Online Free Page B

walking distance. It was the rudest, most unfriendly town she’d ever been to – nobody wanted anything to do with anybody they weren’t related to, or didn’t go to church with, or hadn’t grown up with, anybody who wasn’t exactly like them. But she wasn’t looking for friends, so it was an easy place to live.
    One Sunday morning, she got up, ate breakfast and decided to take a walk. As she walked down the hill, the breeze brought the sound of the city as a warm whisper across her skin. She walked to the Walnut Street Bridge, which was claimed to be the longest pedestrian bridge in the world, though it wasn’t even the longest one in America. That day it was busy, with families sitting on the benches, couples holding hands as they strolled, other people jogging or walking. An old man sat on a portable stool, blowing on a saxophone.
    About halfway across the bridge, Laura stopped and leaned on the rail and looked down at the river. It was as beautiful as she could have wanted, and as peaceful as she could have wanted, and she just didn’t want it.
    She didn’t know why, but she knew that what she wanted was Phoenix. She wanted its furious dry heat and its sprawling ugliness and its kaleidoscopic mix of people and its sense that, every time you stepped outside your front door, you might get laid or get killed or anything in between. She wanted the Dairy Queen and the Denny's. Although she wanted to live, she also wanted the bars where swarthy men with bad mustaches will kill you just for something to do. She wanted the blues clubs, full of men in sharp clothes that later fall from their bodies like broken promises. She wanted the dark nights that are as hot as summer days elsewhere, and she wanted the sound of mariachi music and police sirens that blast through the still air. She wanted the brown landscapes, flat and empty except for advertising billboards. She wanted the indifferent mountains. She wanted the pickup trucks and the mesquite, wanted the sprawling development that ate up the desert at the rate of one acre every hour. She wanted the stories of the place, ghost stories, work stories, stories of killing and loving. She wanted the Virgin of Guadalupe, wanted the lowriders, wanted the geckos crawling on the walls of apartment buildings, wanted the men with dark skin and white cowboy hats, their women with big hair and big dangling earrings and tight clothes. She wanted the wide streets and constant sunshine. She wanted it and loved it, loved it like the heat of the Phoenix summer that threatens to make everything melt.
    She wanted it, and she didn’t want this beautiful river or this historic bridge or the lazy music of the saxophone.
    That evening, she ate dinner by herself at a Thai restaurant on Market Street, then walked to her apartment. Two of her neighbors were lying on a blanket on the grass outside, gazing at the sky. Laura looked up, and saw nothing. The sky at night in Chattanooga is dark and dead, like the screen of a computer that’s been disconnected. The night sky over Phoenix, though dark, pulses and glows, like a screen that’s just on “sleep”.
    She had a truck in those days, an ancient Chevy. The next morning, she loaded her stuff into the bed of it, and what she couldn’t fit she just left behind. She gave a pissed-off Tubby Franklin a sedative she got at the vet, put him in a cat carrier, and put the carrier on the passenger seat. She drove right across Tennessee, North to Nashville and then West to Memphis, then took Highway 40 through Arkansas, Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, New Mexico. She stopped only for food and gas and sleep, and to feed Tubby Franklin and let him piss and shit. She always ate with her truck in sight. While still in Tennessee, she’d parked at a rest area and slept for a few hours in the driver’s seat, and then woke to find an entire family – Mom, Dad and some kids – trying to take things from the bed of her truck. When she jumped out and yelled at