Blowback (The Nameless Detective) Read Online Free PDF Page B

are the other guests.”
    She smiled. “Yes. Thank God for that.”
    I would have liked to press it further—she had taken it in each of the three possible directions, and yet in none of them—but before I could say anything else we came out of the trees into the cleared area where Cabin Six was situated. And sitting there on the porch, with his shirt off now and a tumbler of colorless liquid in one hand, was Ray Jerrold.
    He did not remain sitting for long. He saw us at about the same time I saw him, and he got up in one quick jerky motion and came down the porch steps as if they were carved out of blocks of ice. That drink he was holding was either gin or vodka, and it was by no means his first. When he reached solid ground he stopped and leaned his left hand back against the porch railing; his face was damp and splotchy, and even from where Mrs. Jerrold and I had come to a standstill thirty feet away I could see the same half-wildness in his eyes that there had been when he braced Cody.
    He said, “So you found another one, huh?”
    “Another one what?” she said.
    “You think I'm blind? That what you think?”
    “Ray, you shouldn't drink so much in this heat—”
    “Don't tell me how much I can drink.”
    “I was only—”
    He cut her off. “Where you been?”
    “Up visiting Walt Bascomb.”
    “Him too,” Jerrold said. “Jesus Christ.”
    “Now, honey—”
    “Don't give me that honey crap.”
    “Ray, for heaven's sake!”
    “Get over here. Now , damn it.”
    She gave me a look that had embarrassment and apology in it, and maybe just a touch of fright; then she said softly, “Thanks for walking me down, I'll see you again,” and went over to where Jerrold was. He watched her all the way, the fingers of his right hand tight around the tumbler, and when she brushed past him and started up the steps, I tensed a little, leaning forward on the balls of my feet, because I was afraid he might make a grab at her. But he just let her go on past him without moving anything except his head; his eyes followed her all the way into the cabin.
    When the screen door banged shut behind her, his head snapped around to me like a doll's on an elastic pivot, and he raised the hand with the glass in it and pointed it in my direction, and the hand shook enough to rattle the ice cubes audibly. “I don't know who you are, mister,” he said, “but I'm telling you this: Stay away from my wife. You and all the rest of them in this place, sniffing around her ass like a pack of dogs in heat. I won't stand for it much longer, you hear?”
    “I hear,” I said. If I had said anything else, it would only have provoked him; he was in no condition to listen to what anyone had to say except himself.
    I went along the path to where it looped into the trees again and snaked down toward the lake, and he watched me all the way, just as he had watched his wife, without moving any part of his body other than his head. Once I got into the trees I stopped looking back; but when I was far enough into them so that he could no longer see me, I stepped off the path and doubled back slowly and quietly until I had a screened view of the cabin.
    Jerrold was still standing there at the foot of the porch steps, still staring off toward the empty path. Watching him stand like that, completely motionless, made me uneasy. Another full minute went by, and then, as if there had been no abnormal time lapse, he raised the tumbler and kept it raised until it was empty. Then he went up the steps and slammed his way inside the cabin.
    I waited five more minutes, listening, but there was nothing to hear. Whatever was going on in there, if anything was going on, it was a quiet confrontation.
    But I did not like the way this thing was shaping up. It was like watching something bubble and froth in a pot—sooner or later, unless you turned the heat down or off, it was going to boil over, and if that happened, somebody was liable to get hurt. Badly.

Four
     
    I