A Minister's Ghost Read Online Free PDF

approached the armchair gingerly. If you woke up Eppie too quickly, he was liable to swing something at you or call his dog on you, which was worse. The dog, Bruno, was nowhere to be seen, but I knew it was lurking.
    I stopped five feet from the sleeping giant.
    â€œProfessor Waldrup,” I announced.
    He smiled, eyes still closed.

    â€œDoc,” he squeaked. “That you?”
    â€œI’m afraid so.”
    â€œChrist.” He looked me up and down. “You look tired. Up all night?”
    The boys at the Mustang stopped talking so they could listen to us, but were still pretending to look at the car.
    â€œI came to see you,” I told him.
    I knew what a figure I must have cut, over six feet tall, hair prematurely white, skin pale from too much indoor thinking, and dressed in black. I always tried to give the illusion of having casually thrown on whatever it was I wore, but the truth was more embarrassing. I enjoyed presenting a strange image. The details and origins of that enjoyment provided a lifetime of introspective analysis.
    â€œYou come to tape-record me playing something again?” He sat up and blinked hard three times.
    â€œSadly, no,” I said slowly.
    â€œOh.” He sniffed, looked away, and shifted in his seat. “You come to see that Volkswagen I got back there.”
    I was always surprised at the leaps Eppie’s logic took, and the accuracy he enjoyed with them. He surmised that I was helping Skidmore with the accident investigation, as I had been known to do in the past.
    â€œDon’t get up,” I suggested, “just point.”
    â€œNaw,” he told me, twisting sideways in preparation to throw his bulk forward. “You gonna have some questions.”
    â€œYou saw something questionable?”
    â€œMe?” He laughed. “No. But I know you. You can’t shut up with them questions.”
    â€œI have a lot to learn—” I grinned—“so I have to ask.”
    â€œThat’s the damn truth,” he groaned, leaning forward.
    His hands strained on the arms of the chair, turned white as he pushed himself up and away, launching himself in my direction.
    I followed behind him as we rounded the office. The boys allowed themselves to watch us, silent.
    I cleared the corner and was stopped in my tracks by the gnarl of
orange metal that sat in cleared space with police tape around it. It looked like a giant, crumpled autumn leaf.
    The next thing that struck me was that one of the doors was completely ripped in half, as if a chain saw had torn into it.
    Eppie leaned against the back side of the shack and I approached the wreck, a little light-headed.
    â€œTrain ripped the door like that?” I managed.
    â€œThe police did that, or fire department, one,” he said softly, “to get the bodies out.”
    The bodies. How could there have been anything left to get out? The car was a concave orange C, nearly two-dimensional. The engine had been ejected out the back end and was lying on the ground behind the wreck. The steering wheel had popped through the windshield. I couldn’t even image how that had happened.
    â€œTook ’em two hours to get the bodies out,” Eppie said, anticipating my line of thinking. “The good thing is, that curve in the tracks had the train slowed a little bit, I guess, and the direction of the hit pushed the car off the tracks so the train didn’t carry it all the way until it stopped.”
    â€œWhere did the train stop, did they say?” I asked.
    â€œIt didn’t completely come to a halt until it was past the old station.” He took a deep breath and started my way. “They told me it would have been a whole lot worse if the train had been going at full speed.”
    I turned toward him, glad to take my eyes off the wreck.
    â€œFirst, I don’t know how it could have been worse, but second, the train wasn’t going full speed when it hit? Who said