Dead Man's Bones Read Online Free PDF Page A

technology that made the bones seem less like an archaeological discovery and more like the remains of a person—a cave explorer, he thought immediately, struck and killed by a falling rock.
    The two boys had beat a nervous, hurried retreat to the main cavern. Brian didn’t believe in ghosts, he said, but secrets seemed to hang like dust in the air over the silent, grinning skull. He was glad to get out into the light. He told his story to Alana Montoya, who went to have a look for herself before she drove down to Donna’s to call the sheriff.
    The longer Brian talked, the more comfortable he became, and I stopped worrying that he was going to be permanently scarred by his discovery. He went back to the cave on Saturday, but the people who were running the dig told him that it had been temporarily closed down. They weren’t able to answer any of his questions about the skeleton.
    Blackie could, though—Blackie Blackwell, the Adams County sheriff and a longtime fishing and poker buddy of McQuaid’s. On Monday afternoon, he dropped by the house to talk to McQuaid about their annual fall hunting trip—they’re partners in a deer lease near Brownwood—and ended up joining us for an early supper.
    The friendship between Blackie and McQuaid goes back to the time when both were lawmen, McQuaid a Houston homicide detective and Blackie the newly elected sheriff of Adams County. I met McQuaid somewhat later, when he was testifying for the prosecution against the woman I was defending, a much-battered wife who had finally taken a fatal revenge on her husband. The jury found that the woman had acted in self-defense and acquitted her, but McQuaid didn’t let that come between us. I was hardly suprised when, after I had moved to Pecan Springs, he walked into Thyme and Seasons and told me that he had left the force and taken a teaching position in the Criminal Justice department at CTSU.
    But McQuaid has learned from experience that academic politics can be just as deadly as street fights (even deadlier, sometimes), and that classroom teaching, without the stimulus of real-world investigation, can get tiresome. A few months ago, he reduced his teaching load to part-time—he has just one class this semester, seven to ten on Monday nights—and hung out his shingle as a PI. M. McQuaid and Associates, Private Investigations . (By “associates,” he doesn’t mean me, of course. He plans to use people like Bubba Harris, a retired Pecan Springs police chief.)
    This change in career direction has also changed our lives. There’s less money, which is rather worrisome, especially since the shop isn’t bringing in very much just now. And there are other worries. McQuaid’s first case, in which I became inadvertently involved, began with a routine investigation of an embezzlement at Morgan’s Pickles and included two murders and an exchange of gunfire. The second—a missing teenager found living with her new boyfriend in Houston—was far less thrilling, and the third (on which he is currently working) is a blood-chilling, spine-tingling case of résumé fraud. He hasn’t confided any details, but this ho-hum stuff is definitely okay with me. I nearly lost McQuaid to a bullet several years ago. He still walks with a limp and, when he’s tired, with a cane. As far as I’m concerned, the more commonplace and less life-threatening his investigations, the happier I’ll be. I can get all the drama I want in my life, and then some, from watching reality cop shows on television.
    The shop is closed on Mondays, which means I’m not as rushed as I am on other nights. Since we were having a guest, I was making curried chicken. McQuaid and Blackie like theirs extra hot, so along with curry, rice, veggies, and a large green salad, I opened a jar of McQuaid’s six-alarm chutney and spooned it into a red bowl. Martha Stewart I’m not, but since we had company, I set the pine-topped kitchen table with my favorite antique Appleware. I added