Bloody River Blues Read Online Free PDF

different still—not silver-gray, not the golden shade of last night. Now the surface had a rusty sheen to it, mirroring a redness in the sky that came, Ralph Bales believed, from garbage pumped into the air by refineries outside of Wood River, across the Mississippi. The wind was steady and it bent grass and weeds on the riverbank but hardly lifted any ripples from the ruddy water, which plodded southward.
    Ralph Bales remembered a song that he hadn’t thought of for years, a sound-track song from twenty-five years ago, the Byrds’ closing number in Easy Rider . He heard the music in his head clearly but could not recall the lyrics, just snatches of words about a man wanting to be free, about a river flowing away from someplace, flowing to the sea . . .
    The door to the camper opened.
    Yep, it was him. The beer man, the witness. He was followed by a tall, gangly man with a droopy mustache. Together they stepped to the back of the Taurus and wrestled the motorcycle out of the trunk.
    The Colt appeared from under Ralph Bales’s coat, and he looked around him slowly. A mile away, a semi downshifted with a silent belch of smoke. A flock of gray birds dotted past. In the middle of the muddy river a scarred and patchy tug fought its way upstream.
    The two men were talking, standing together over the cycle. The mustached man pointed to what looked like a dent in the mudguard, then he jiggled the chrome rack. The beer man shrugged, then wheeled the motorcycle toward the road.
    Ralph Bales was waiting for the friend to get in the Taurus and leave but then decided he should kill both of them. He lifted his Colt and rested the square notch of the sight on the beer man’s chest. The silver truck approached. He lowered the gun. It roared past, engulfing the men in a swirl of papers and dust.
    Ralph Bales lifted the gun once more. The road was empty now. No trucks or cars. Nothing between him and his targets thirty feet away from the phone booth and its floor of shattered glass.

Chapter 3
    HE CLIMBED ONTO the battered, muddy yellow motorcycle and fired it up, then gunned the engine several times. Pulling on a black helmet, he popped the clutch suddenly and did a wheelie, scooting a precarious ten feet before the front tire descended again to the street. He skidded to a braking stop and returned to his mustached friend.
    Ralph Bales steadied the gun with his left palm and began to apply the nine pounds of pressure required to release the hammer.
    The beer man pulled on dark-framed sunglasses and zipped up his jacket—for one slow moment he sat up completely straight, perpendicular to Ralph Bales, offering a target that was impossible to miss.
    At this moment Ralph Bales lowered the gun.
    He squinted, watching the man sit forward and tap the bike into first gear with his toe. It skidded away on River Road with a ragged chain-saw roar of the punchy engine. His friend shouted at him and shook his fist, then leapt into the Taurus and, with a huge spume of dust and gravel, roared over the curb and chased the cycle down River Road, laying down thick tire marks.
    Ralph Bales eased the hammer down onto an empty cylinder and slipped the gun into his pocket. He looked up and down the road, then turned, jogging back into the murky shadows of the riverfront streets. He walked up to the Cadillac. He rapped on the driver’s window.
    “Jesus, I didn’t hear it!” Stevie shouted, tossing the paper in the backseat, the sheets separating and filling the car. He flipped the car into gear. “I didn’t hear the shot, man!” He glanced through the rear window. “I didn’t hear it!”
    Ralph Bales casually flicked his fingers toward Stevie.
    “Let’s go!” the young man shouted again. “What do you mean? What are you doing?”
    “Move over,” Ralph Bales mouthed.
    “What?” Stevie shouted.
    “I’ll drive.”
    Stevie looked back again, as if a dozen Missouri Highway Patrol cars were racing after him.
    Ralph Bales said, “Put it in