Blood Is the Sky: An Alex McKnight Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page B

clean?”
    “Does it really matter who they think he is? Either way, they should have brought him back three days ago.”
    “I just don’t see how this lie is gonna help.”
    He didn’t say anything.
    “Tell me again. You don’t know anything else about this Albright guy? Where he works?”
    “No, I really don’t. Tom didn’t tell me, anyway.”
    “What’s his first name?”
    “Red.”
    “Sounds more like a nickname.”
    “I know. Tom said his name was Red Albright, and he had four other guys, all experienced hunters, that they were heading for this lodge on Lake Peetwaniquot, and that they’d pick him up on the way.”
    “Where, at his house?”
    “They met him at the duty-free shop by the bridge. They said they’d be driving a black Chevy Suburban. I drove him over there.”
    “But you didn’t see them. I mean, you weren’t there
at the duty-free, hiding behind the cigarettes or anything.”
    “No, Alex. I was not hiding behind the cigarettes.”
    “You don’t know anything else about these men, other than the fact that they were going to pay your brother three thousand dollars?”
    “Every one of my cousins has asked me that,” he said. “Every one of my uncles, two of my aunts, and, of course, my mother has asked me that maybe seven times on her own. The answer is no, I don’t know anything else. And I’ll give you the answer to your next question before you even ask it. Yes. Yes, I’m an idiot.”
    “That one I didn’t need to ask,” I said. “So try the lodge again. Maybe their phone works today.”
    “Maybe it does,” he said, punching in the number. After a moment, he hit the End button. “It still doesn’t go through.”
    We rode on another few minutes, through more trees, then over a small bridge. I could see a large bird, maybe a hawk, circling over the road ahead.
    “So when do you call the police?” I said. “I mean, I’m just wondering.”
    He looked out the window. “I want to find him and bring him back home. Without getting him in big trouble.”
    “If you can.”
    “Yeah, if I can.”
    “And if you can’t?”
    “Then I call the police.”
    “Okay,” I said.
    “We take one shot at it,” he said. “That’s all I want to do.”
    “Fair enough.”
    We kept going. Four hours had passed. As we left the park, we saw signs for Wawa, the closest thing to a real town we’d see for the rest of the day, if you didn’t mind the name.
    “You getting hungry yet?” he said.
    “You read my mind. We’ll stop in Wawa, get some gas. See if they have a decent place to eat.”
    The first thing we saw was a goose. It was a good twenty feet tall, and it was standing on a pedestal that had to be another ten feet. A giant goose head thirty feet in the air, looking down at you—that’s apparently how you know you’re in Wawa. There was another goose, this one only five feet tall, in front of the first store we saw, then another goose about the same size in front of the motel.
    “They seem to have a thing about geese in this town,” I said.
    “Where do you think the name comes from?”
    I thought about it. “Wawa means goose?”
    “In Ojibwa, yes.”
    “Now I know.” I drove by a couple of fast-food places and pulled up in front of a place that didn’t seem to have a name. “You don’t mind stopping at a bar, do you?”
    I knew Vinnie didn’t drink, but I’d be damned if I came all this way up into Canada without having a Molson. We got out of the truck and stretched, looking and sounding like two men who’d been driving since well before the sun came up. There were only two other vehicles in the parking lot—one truck that looked about as old as mine, and an Impala that may have been white one day, a long, long time ago. Apparently, this place didn’t draw much of a lunch crowd.
    When we stepped inside, we saw a bar and six empty stools. The man behind the stick looked up at us and put down his magazine. Besides him, there were two men on the other side of