Five Minutes Alone Read Online Free PDF

guy, and both Hutton and the railway guy are making phone calls while Kent stands there waiting, her hands stuffed in her pockets. I’m not sure why, but I give her a brief wave, she smiles, and gives a brief, small wave back. I smile back. What’s it been? Two minutes since we last saw each other?
    I angle off the tracks and take my old man knees down to the car Dwight was borrowing. It’s a beat-up station wagon that, according to the registration sticker on the windshield, is fifteen years old. It looks like it was driven off the lot under the condition it must never be washed. There are scratches and dents all over the bodywork, nicks in the paint from gravel, some chips in the windshield. The tires are balding and one has almost no tread on it at all. Even the fluffy dice hanging from the mirror are sun faded, some of the dots having disappeared.
    I put on a pair of latex gloves. The driver’s door is closed, but hasn’t latched shut, so the interior light has remained on all night I imagine, and the battery will be dead, but I don’t test my theory. The keys are in the ignition. Soon they will be dusted for prints. The whole car will be. The keys consist of a car key, a house key, and what I’m guessing is a padlock key. Later this morning the car will be towed into a forensics lab and people smarter than me will be able to figure out if Dwight Smith drove it last. In the glovecompartment there’s a map, a small torch, a pocketknife, some CD covers, and some loose CDs. Some country and western, some heavy metal, some rock from the seventies; some I like, some I hate, some I’ve never heard of. I check under the seats, behind the seats, all through the car. No blood. Doesn’t look like it’s been vacuumed clean. Just dirt and dust and bits of dried leaves.
    On the passenger seat is a bottle of water. The label on it says Water Bro. It’s part of a new range of products aimed at men. It started a few months ago with some aggressive advertising and some well-placed products in supermarkets. The Bro Range—or Brange. You can buy Chips Bro, Cola Bro, Salad Bro, Bread Bro—there are dozens of products available. I’ve been using the Shaving Foam Bro over the last month, but can’t bring myself to try out the Clean Teeth Bro toothpaste. The brand has been so successful that six weeks ago they opened two fast-food restaurants in the city. The water bottle is half-full. I take off the lid and sniff the contents. A guy getting ready to jump in front of a train would be drinking something harder than water, I’d have thought, but not in this case. Could be Mr. Spontaneity didn’t stop off for some gin on his way out here.
    I close up the car. Hutton has gotten off the phone and is chatting to Kent. I head over to them. The railway guy is still in the process of his call, his free arm making big gestures in the air as if he’s painting on an invisible canvas.
    “What have I missed?” I ask.
    “We’ve just made a positive ID on Smith,” Hutton says. “Fingerprints were confirmed.” He’s nodding while he tells me, and Kent is nodding too, and it must be nodding Saturday because I find myself joining in.
    “So what do you want us to do next?” I ask.
    “Talk to his boss. Then talk to his brother and then go to his house and then speak to his probation officer. Get an idea of what Smith was up to, what his state of mind was. We don’t want people thinking we didn’t try to cover all the possibilities because we didn’t like the guy. If we don’t, then tomorrow’s headline will beaccusing us of dismissing any crimes that involve unpleasant people being hurt. We may not like him, but we have to treat him the same way we’d treat any other person who was killed.”
    “You have his address?”
    “He lives in a boarding house in town—you know the one—it’s run by a guy who calls himself the Preacher.”
    I nod. I remember the house and the Preacher. Earlier this year a private case I was working on