"Capron, Bill - Color Blind Detective - Ups Green" - читать интересную книгу автора (Capron Bill)

We both listened, "This is she." I hung up the phone.

Dave dropped me off at the top of the canyon again and headed for Kalispel to get the cops. We figured it'd be better for Dave face-to-face than trying to explain it over the phone. Anyway, I didn't want to be involved. Sometimes the cops, not without good reason, don't take so well to my meddling ways.

As I was getting myself comfortable under a wide fir, I saw Edgerton's big silver Caddy come roaring down the driveway. My guess was she'd called him on his cell phone. I didn't like the look of it; the hen had panicked, the chickens were coming home to roost. I started making my way down the bluff, working hard not to trip and break a leg. The little girl was still on the lawn. I kept her in sight as I slid down the hill. The Third didn't even look at her as he went by. I wished I had a gun, but who'd have thought it.

I was at the corner of the house when I heard the shot. I dashed for Elouise, grabbed her, put my hand over her mouth and stuffed her under my arm. Pushed by a strong following wind, I ran for the line of trees on the north end of the canyon, a hundred yards from the house.

The woman's voice, pitched high with fear, screeched into the wind, "Elouise, where are you?"

Elouise squirmed, but I held her tight. Tamarella, aka Misty, walked around the house with the revolver at her side. The hammer was cocked. We waited.

Fifteen minutes later the Caddy went screaming out to the main road. I took the little girl back to the front yard, set her down and told her to play. I've got a real way with kids. Yeah, right.

Misty had torn the place apart looking for her metal box, probably before Edgerton had arrived. Pots, pans, plates and silverware were all over the kitchen floor, the closets were emptied, sheets, blankets, clothes everywhere. Edgerton Fuller,III, was dead in the bedroom, a bullet hole in the back of his head. I went out to the garage and pulled the garbage bag from beneath the crawl space. I put the precious box back under the bed, about four inches from Fuller,III's outstretched hand.

I scurried back up the bluff. The siren's wail pushed me faster. I breasted the top just as two cruisers braked to a stop. Dave jumped out of the back door of the first one and rushed to Elouise. He lifted her to his crooked arm. She was laughing.


* * * *
Sometimes in life things end like they begin, at least if the newspaper accounts were to be believed. I recalled the barmaid's words, "I been out, screwed up big time, came home. Now I'm afraid to go anywhere else." So it was that Misty returned home, and at the first sign of the cops, was back on that hiking trail trying to lose them. The cops got no help from the lumberjacks - for some, in their mean world they'd probably make her a patron saint - but they found her huddled in that tree house above the gorge. She babbled all the way down the mountain, blaming that smooth-talking city feller, poor Fullerton,III. She claimed Fullerton,III, shot himself; then when she realized the evidence was against her she said he attacked her, was going to kill her, that she defended herself. Of course that was another lie The coroner showed Fullerton,III, had been dead from a blow to the back of the head before the bullet scrambled his brains. Eventually Misty led the cops to where she and Fuller,III, had buried poor Tamarella.

Two months later my brother sent me a newspaper article from one of the Idaho dailies, an investigative report on the Fullerton murders. He highlighted the comment from the barmaid, Maria Cantarra, sister of the little killer. "Just a couple days before Misty showed up, this big man comes into the bar, wanting to know about Misty and this guy, Fullerton,III. He said he was a private investigator, a PI. Just couldn't be, you know what I mean? Brown socks, black shoes, blue-black pants and a reddish-brown shirt. I mean, a PI, he'd dress cool, right? I think it was the devil hisself coming after my bad baby sister."


-the end-