Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 4-6: Blood Brother, In the Blood, Little Girls Lost. J. Kerley A.

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      Hollis Reamy, retired sheriff of Pickett County, Alabama, stepped to the porch. He pulled off a white hood, showing a wide, sun-browned face and intelligent gray eyes. His hair was more salt than pepper. Reamy patted sweat from his forehead with a red bandana and gave Nautilus the cop appraisal.

      “You’re a husky fella, ain’t you?”

      Nautilus tugged at the lapels of his orange jacket. “It’s interesting. I grew just big enough to fill my clothes.”

      “And right colorful ones they are, Detective. Gimme a moment and we’ll talk about Jim Day.”

      Reamy set aside the beekeeper’s hood and hive-smoker he’d been carrying, resembling a coffeepot drizzling smoke from its spout. He yanked off gloves and jammed them in his back pocket. Pulled off a sweatshirt. He wore a starched white shirt and red suspenders braced his khaki pants. Nautilus looked into the side yard and saw the hives, a dozen white boxes, the surrounding air alive with black dots. He hoped the dots would return to the task of making honey. Reamy nodded to a pair of wicker chairs in the corner.

      “Drag them chairs into the shade while I fetch something cool to drink.”

      Reamy disappeared inside the home, a beige modular with green shutters on several acres in the heart of farmland. The acreage was studded with water oaks, pecans and towering longleaf pines, cones the size of shoes at their bases. Reamy was back a minute later with two glasses of sweet tea.

      “Some folks like Red Diamond tea,” Reamy said. “But I prefer Luzianne. I sweeten it with two parts white sugar, one part turbinado sugar, one part honey. I balance it off with a little mint and lemon.”

      Nautilus took a sip and pronounced it delicious. Reamy nodded appreciation and sat his chair in reverse, arms crossed over the backrest.

      “So the gist is you’re trying to find Jim Day’s personal take on the killing of Earl Ridgecliff all them years back?”

      “My partner thinks it might be important.”

      “And he’s way up in New York?”

      “Yes.”

      Reamy sighed and stood. “Let’s take a drive, Detective.”

      They drove out the main highway, turned on to a tight road bordered by piney woods. Reamy swerved from the road and drove through three hundred feet of woods, branches squealing against his pickup. He stopped in a quarter-acre clearing surrounded by arrow-straight pines. The two men exited, walking a carpet of pine needles.

      “This is where it happened?” Nautilus said.

      “I remember it clear as yesterday. A guy out hunting squirrels found the body, what there was of it. Hadn’t been dead more’n three hours, what the coroner figured.” Reamy raised an eyebrow. “The guy that found the body? He never went hunting again, said it got ruint for him.”

      Reamy’s boots crunched over a deadfall. He paused and surveyed the scene. “Day was closest and got here first. Probably here ten minutes ’fore I arrived. We both parked on the road, afraid of messing up potential evidence, tire tracks, whatnot. I came down a deer trail yonder.”

      He nodded to a dirt path tracing through underbrush.

      “The path’s soft with needles and Day didn’t hear me coming. He was standing in the middle of all that human wreckage, not moving, like he was hypnotized. When he heard me, he snapped out of it and waved. It was a strange moment, but Jim Day was strange. Then the rest of the crew showed up, the Staties, the Medical Examiner and so forth.”

      “Day wrote the official report, not you.”

      “Because he had an eye for detail and a dictionary vocabulary. He took the photos that day, went through twenty packs of film. Shot every bit of meat, every organ, every possible angle. He climbed that tree over there to get pictures from above. Couldn’t get enough pictures.”

      “How much involvement did your department have with the case?”

      “Interviewing the locals, mainly. The State Police СКАЧАТЬ