Antler Dust (The Allison Coil Mystery Series Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

He needed to come up with a version of events to tell Applegate: a reason why he had skipped off without joining him on his hunt. Or his crusade. For Dean Applegate, the most unlucky and least talented hunter George Grumley had ever known, each trip out of the tent was a frightening cocktail of raw emotion mixed with zero stalking skill.
    Trudy kept flashing through his mind. He wondered what his wife knew about Rocky’s attempted extortion. In reality, Grumley figured, the whole thing was self-defense. More than likely Trudy had no idea Rocky would make the threats. There wasn’t a challenging bone in her body.
    A slight pounding in his temples told him it was time for a drink. Water searches would be impossible after dark; staying on the trail would be challenge enough in this storm.
    Grumley veered off the trail and picked his way through a tight stand of aspens to the streambed. He set his rifle and the dart gun against a tree, put his boot down through a few inches of fresh powder and pressed with all his weight on a layer of ice. It creaked for a few seconds and gave way. His boot landed in six inches of cold creek. Lying prone, Grumley dipped his lips in the water. He sucked slowly, steadily. It would be impossible to drink too much.
    “George?”
    Grumley flipped over like a cat on fire.
    Applegate stood ten paces away, waving both hands to show they were empty.
    “What the hell?”
    “It’s me.
    “You little—”
    “I spotted you back in here.”
    “Jesus H.”
    Grumley stood up. Applegate stepped closer, a fucking Gomer Crockett in head-to-toe catalog camouflage. He looked worried though. Applegate’s tentative posture and bug eyes suggested things were bad.
    “Have you been following me?” said Grumley.
    Applegate shivered badly. His jaw was not solidly connected to his head. The thin cotton parka would be okay for the mountains in July, but not in October.
    “I think I killed a guy,” said Applegate.
    “Think?”
    “It might be one of the protesters. It wasn’t another hunter, anyway, because he wasn’t carrying a gun. We gotta tell somebody.”
    “Where did this happen?”
    “Back up the valley. Not far.”
    “When?”
    Applegate looked around to the right and also to the left as if studying the aspen would help him remember. His face was a picture of fear. He was not thinking.
    “I don’t know. Twenty minutes, maybe thirty. I’ve been wandering around. I made it halfway back to camp, then wasn’t sure which way to go. I found the main trail here, sat awhile. Then I thought I’d try to find him again, the protester. I was thinking ... he might not be dead.”
    “You said you killed him.”
    “I know, I know. But he might be in shock. I didn’t really check. I didn’t feel for a pulse or anything. But he’s probably dead. He was there, draped in this brown thing. Like a cape, only bigger.”
    “Cape?”
    “Like a big piece of curtain or a blanket.”
    “Do you think you can find the way back to this guy?” said Grumley. “Sometimes it’s not so easy. Everything starts to look the same.”
    “I think so.” Applegate stood up.
    “Be sure so.”
    “I am.”
    Grumley stepped over to his rifle and the dart gun propped against the tree. He stood between them and Applegate, who surely had been too confused to notice he’d been carrying two guns. That might be a problem. No matter what Applegate was taking in and remembering, Grumley didn’t need the confusion, didn’t need a question from Applegate about two guns. Grumley gave Rocky’s dart gun a gentle tap with his foot and it fell silently into the snow, cutting its own grave.
    ****
    Applegate hunkered down for a moment as they were coming down the slope and held his palm above his eyes like a golfer shielding the sun to read the grain on a putt. But there was no sun, only steadily falling snow
    “There,” he said, pointing to a clump of buckthorn.
    The body was wrapped around the base of the bush, the windbreak sparing it