Going Nowhere Fast Read Online Free PDF

a shoe salesman from Flagstaff," Cooper went on. "Forty-six years of age, married, with a couple of kids, both grown. No criminal arrest record, no outstanding warrants. Wife reported him missing two days ago—that's how we ID'd him." He looked up from the little notebook in his hand to face us again. "None of this sounds familiar to anybody?"
    Once more, he watched as three heads swiveled from east to west. Nothing about the expression on Bad Dog's face gave me reason to believe the ranger's questions were making him particularly uncomfortable.
    Cooper sipped a cup of coffee, pausing, I thought, to mull over his next move, and then consulted his notebook again. "His wife says he should have been driving a late model Chevy subcompact, license number DMK four-two-six, but so far we haven't found it. Of course, he could have entered the park in a rented car or on a bus, or merely as a passenger in someone else's vehicle, but if he did, that's been difficult to prove. Just as it's been difficult to prove when, exactly, he arrived here. We're working on the assumption he got here yesterday, the same day he died, because we've found nothing to indicate he spent Monday night here—we've checked with all the hotels, and every guest is accounted for. Again, that doesn't rule out the possibility that he slept overnight inside a rental car, or inside somebody's motor home, et cetera, et cetera, but…" He shrugged and shook his head. "For now, we don't think so."
    He finally closed the little notebook for good and looked up again, openly surveying our faces.
    Suddenly, his mustache didn't look so adorable to me anymore.
    "Folks, I'll be frank with you," he said. "I have no business calling you in here. This case belongs to the boys in the Sheriff's Department now, it's out of my hands. But since they've been kind enough to keep me abreast of how their investigation's going, I thought it would only be fair of me to do the same for you."
    He paused, presumably waiting for one of us to thank him. We just let him wait.
    "You see, it's like this. They don't think Mr. Bettis came all the way out here just to see the Canyon. The man had lived in Flagstaff for over twenty years—he and the family probably saw all of this place they could stand to see a decade ago."
    "So he came out here to meet somebody," Big Joe said.
    Cooper turned, impressed, and nodded his head. "Yessir, Mr. Loudermilk. That's their guess."
    "And they think that somebody is one of us."
    "I didn't say that, sir."
    "But that is what they're thinking, isn't it?"
    The ranger thought carefully about his answer, then said, "Let's just say, sir, that they find themselves wondering why Bettis died in your trailer, using your facilities, when he had so many other options available to him. Why break into a stranger's trailer to use the can—" He glanced at me, blushing, and said, "'Scuse me, Mrs. Loudermilk. I meant to say the bathroom, of course." He turned to Joe again. "Why break into a stranger's trailer to use the bathroom when there are public rest rooms all over the park?"
    "Maybe he couldn't find a public rest room," I suggested.
    "Or maybe he couldn't wait to find one," Big Joe added.
    "Hey. When you gotta go, you gotta go," Bad Dog said, throwing in his two cents.
    Cooper gave our son a disapproving look, momentarily forgetting Dog's father and me altogether. "Maybe," he said, without a trace of warmth in his voice.
    "I mean, man, I can remember more than a few times when I couldn't find a public head, and I had to—"
    "You been traveling with your parents long?" Cooper asked abruptly, cutting Dog off.
    "What?"
    "I asked if you've been traveling with your folks here long. The three of you have been together, what—a few days? A few weeks? What?"
    Dog stole a pitifully conspicuous glance at me, all but admitting that he had forgotten how the three of us had agreed to answer Cooper's question if it happened to come up.
    "Come on, son," Cooper snapped. ''I'm asking you a