Irish Eyes Read Online Free PDF Page B

lined the walls, each with hand-lettered signs for the major liquor food groups: scotch, whiskey, vodka, gin, wine, and beer. A large cooler for beer and wine stood to the right of the cashier’s cage.
    “What were you doing here?” Mackey asked.
    “Bucky’s idea,” I said. “We’d been to the Shamrock Society’s St. Patrick’s Day party, over at the Knights of Columbus hall on Buford Highway. I made him leave early, to take me home. He wanted me to meet his new girlfriend.”
    “Dugan? She was there?”
    “She never showed up. Guess she was still on a case. I got bored. We got kind of pissy with each other after that. On the way home, he just pulled in here, said he’d be right out. Istayed in the car, locked the doors. I was halfway asleep when I heard the shots.”
    “You didn’t see anybody go in or out?”
    “No, but like I said, I was leaning back with my eyes closed. There was only one other car in the lot, an old white LeSabre.”
    Mackey walked to the door and looked out. Blue and red lights twinkled atop the sea of emergency vehicles in the parking lot. “The LeSabre’s still out there. Probably the girl’s. How about that other car? That yours?”
    “No. It’s Bucky’s.”
    He shook his head. “Hell. I forgot. The little red sports car. Deavers’s wet dream.”
    He stood in front of the counter, looking up at the Plexiglas shield. “Deavers didn’t say why he wanted to stop? Did he mention that he wanted beer or cigarettes or anything?”
    I hesitated for a moment. I didn’t want to get Deavers nailed for drunk driving, but on the other hand, the hospital would take blood samples, and the blood samples would turn up alcohol. Besides, what was a DUI charge to a guy with two bullets in his brain?
    “No. He just said he’d be right out. I assumed he wanted beer or something. I was ragging him about how he’d already had enough beer at the party. I was afraid he’d get stopped for DUI.”
    I was standing beside Mackey, looking at all the handlettered signs on the wall. “No Credit.” “No Two-Party Checks.” “Absolutely No Sales to Minors.” “Do Not Remove Single Beers from Six-Packs.” The house had a lot of rules.
    A camera was mounted high on the wall, directly behind the cash register. A little red light flashed below it.
    “I hope to God that thing was working,” I said.
    “It better be,” Mackey said.

5
    T raffic on Ponce de Leon Avenue had come to a standstill. Police cruisers blocked all four lanes of the road in front of the shopping center and uniformed officers directed traffic onto side streets. A fire truck rolled up as I walked out of the store with Mackey. More police cruisers were jammed into the parking lot, units from every jurisdiction within a thirty-mile radius of the city. Three Georgia Highway Patrol cruisers were parked on the sidewalk. Uniformed officers stood around, talking on radios, pacing back and forth in front of the closed stores. Yellow crime scene tape was looped all the way around the entire shopping center. A dull thudding noise overhead made me look up. A yellow helicopter hovered over the roof of the liquor store, a searchlight pointed toward the ground.
    “Washington’s gonna take you to the office, get a statement from you,” Mackey said. “He’ll give you a ride home if you want.”
    I sighed. “I’ve already told you everything I know. As soon as you get what you need, I’m going to the hospital. I want to see how Bucky’s doing.”
    He nodded.
    Washington plunked a magnetic blue bubble light on the top of his detective’s sedan as we snaked our way around parked cars all the way down Ponce de Leon to City Hall East, just two miles down the street in a huge red-brick building that once housed a regional Sears-Roebuck distribution center.
    He was chewing gum, his jaws working like a jackhammer. “You say Deavers was talkin’? Even after he was shot?” He was trying to sound casual. “Maybe it won’t be so