Another Dead Republican Read Online Free PDF

and the door, the room was filled with boxes; floor to ceiling, side to side, with barely enough room to open the door more than half way.
     
    I looked at Scott. I said, “It’s always best to begin at the beginning.”
     
    I took down the top box from the first stack on my right. He took one from the top of the heap in the middle of the floor. We each took our box to the large desk. I carried my box around to the back and pushed aside more of the paraphernalia from the top of the desk to the far sides. The stuff from the box Veronica had started on, I put to the far left side. Scott and I put our separate boxes on the half of the middle closest to us.
     
    Scott paused before opening his box. “Maybe we should go through the desk first. He might have kept the most up to date or most important stuff in there.”
     
    I agreed.
     
    I started with the center top drawer. As I looked through his desk I thought perhaps I’d find something that redeemed Edgar as a person. A picture of him with a warm fuzzy puppy? Edgar serving food to the homeless in a shelter? And if I found something, would that redeem the life of a mean spirited, racist, sexist, homophobic son-of-a-bitch? What would redeem such a person?
     
    Unbidden into my imagination came the old joke. A man dies and shows up at the pearly gates, and St. Peter asks what good work have you ever done for your fellow man. The guy thinks for a long time and finally says that he once gave twenty-five cents to a homeless man. St. Peter calls out loudly to the Lord asking what he should do with the guy. There’s a long pause and a then a great voice says, give him back his twenty-five cents and tell him to go to hell.
     
    I wondered if that joke would have even more resonance with me if I believed in heaven, pearly gates, St. Peter, and/or god. Probably not.
     
    But the center drawer confirmed the mundane: pencils, pens, erasers, scissors, paperclips, markers, transparent tape, stapler. Drawers only on the right: the top one had an unopened ream of blank copy paper and a box of manila folders, the second different sizes and colors of blank note pads. In the largest drawer on the bottom were three thick books on computer programming followed by two books on how to build guns.
     
    I flopped each book out on top of the desk. Page after dense page of instructions on building computers, programming computers, and making guns, but nothing of financial significance to help Veronica at this moment.
     
    Edgar read these? I had no notion of his IQ level. Certainly, from the bigoted and ignorant comments he made, he showed no inclination to use any intelligence he did have in the service of sense and reason. And really, when someone says they don’t believe in evolution, how can you not think they’re an ignorant rube?
     
    The gun books were fascinating in a can’t-look-away-from-a-train-crash way.
     
    “Check these out.” I showed them to Scott. “Maybe he built the gun that killed him.”
     
    Scott said, “That’s ghoulish and scary.”
     
    “Did he go around armed?”
     
    Scott said, “The few times we saw him, I never noticed a gun.”
     
    I opened the box I’d gotten from the storage closet. On top was a brochure from a local pizza place for a dollars-off bargain. I checked the expiration date; four years ago. The next item was a receipt printed out from a porn site for 39.99 for one month on Mona Moans For You. The date was six months prior. It was a payment for a one-month non-recurring membership.
     
    I held it up and showed it to Scott. I said, “He was definitely straight.”
     
    Scott said, “Not as comforting a thought as we might like.” He glanced at the picture. “She looks nice in a big breasts kind of way, if you like big breasts.”
     
    I said, “I’m indifferent.” I checked the bookmarked sites on the computer. “It matches one of these.” I examined the desk top. “She’s on here, too. I’m just not sure I care.”
     
    The