The Blackstone Commentaries Read Online Free Page B

some people and find the fire just below the surface rippling over red coals, transparent and blue and beautiful, just begging for a little air. He knew if you found that, you’d best watch out. That’s what he believed he’d seen in that rear window, and again when he’d opened the door of Trainor’s cruiser.
    A tow truck burst up over the rise like Christmas, all colored lights, thumped off the highway onto the shoulder and slid to a halt about ten feet from Dugan and Mort. The door opened and the driver dropped out of the high cab all in one motion. Forrest Brothers was emblazoned on the door in glitter that would have done any stripper proud, the rich navy-blue background paint making the truck look blacker than the night and real sweet.
    â€œCub,” Dugan called with a short nod. He was unable to suppress a smile as he eyed the scrawny young man with rat’s-nest hair who’d popped out of the cab. Clyde Dean Forrest was wearing his usual olive-colored aviator coveralls unzipped almost to his navel—probably nothing beneath,though no one could prove it, nor wanted to—and Vietnam-type jungle boots, no laces.
    â€œEvening, girls,” Cub replied, flashing his bad teeth and raising two fingers in a V to Eddie up the road. Dugan could see it: in that very same instant, Cub took in Carver standing beside the cruiser, still staring their way with ferocity. “This spoiling your rest on that new Sealy, Mort?”
    â€œLooks like it, Cub.”
    â€œThat’s Carver’s, isn’t it?”
    Mort nodded.
    â€œI thought first it might be Billy Gaius’s car,” Cub said offhandedly, having already computed all the possibilities—given the time and location—and probably also estimated the extent of and, within five dollars, the total cost of the damage. Maybe even the guilty party or parties , Dugan fumed. I should ask . He shook his head, displaying his usual mixture of amazement and disgust where Clyde Dean Forrest was concerned. He’d once told Eddie that maybe a few of the deputies should apprentice with Cub, only they’d be too stupid to see the benefit and too well connected to have to. Plus, they’d have to work.
    â€œStore it for a few days, Cub, but I don’t want it touched, hear?”

III
    Dugan
    â€œBack off this one, Charlie,” Eddie said when the two of them were alone in the car again, pulling onto the highway, leaving Junior Trainor to take the Carver family back down to Damascus.
    Usually Eddie called Dugan “sheriff,” “Charlie” only if he was upset. He could have called him Charlie all the time, at least in the privacy of the car, for all Dugan cared. He thought so much of Eddie, hell, depended on him. But Eddie liked protocol, felt safe with it, like it was a boundary that let him be other things, like he was being now, blunt and a pain in the ass.
    â€œNo one got hurt, Charlie. And for once, no damn newspaper was on the scene. We can control it. ‘Mysterious shots fired up on the mountain, car damaged, under investigation.’ Let it go at that. Everyone will understand. They’ll take it for granted, even forget about it in a couple of days when the next piece of hell breaks loose.”
    Right , he thought. Just back away, take some heat . It wouldn’t be much, mostly from the family. Family shaken up, that would be the story, the outcome. That’s all there was to it. Everyone survived. Things would go on as always.
    He considered it a moment as he stared out the window into the darkness. Suddenly it was all about the status quo. The most popular sheriff in memory, maybe in all of Blackstone County’s history, that’s what people say about me: a man who stands for something. Why, hell, Harlan wouldn’t write an editorial unless to say this shooting was more proof of a job still to be done, the need to support the sheriff. Election’s in November—eight,