Killing Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Take care,” he said as he closed the door, and she gave him a little wave as she started the car and drove off.
    Knox returned to his own car, wishing he hadn’t seen her. She made him feel guilty, as if he should still be mourning as deeply as she did. He couldn’t. He didn’t want to. He wanted to find someone else to love and laugh with, have sex with, someday get married and have kids with, though damn if he had much chance of that, considering the rut he’d dug for himself.
    He pulled his mind back to the job and drove out to the Bingham farm to see what he could make of the vandalism. Sometimes people had a good idea of who had done it, or the neighbors had seen something, but in Jesse’s case just about everyone who knew him disliked him, and he had no nearby neighbors. He was one of those people who blamed everything that happened to him on someone else; if he had trouble with the engine in his truck, he immediately thought someone had poured sugar in his gas tank. If he lost something, he thought it had been stolen and filed a report. But they couldn’t just blow him off; they had to investigate every time he filed a report, because all it took was for him to be right one time and they’d catch hell if they hadn’t done their jobs.
    Slashed tractor tires and dead chickens weren’t produced by Jesse’s sense of persecution, though. Either the tires were slashed or they weren’t, and the chickens were either dead or running around pecking at bugs. At least there was something concrete Knox could see.
    The Bingham farm was set on a pretty piece of property, with wooded hills and neat fields. Jesse’s one good quality was that he took care of the place. The fences were always mended, the grass cut, the house painted, the barn and sheds in good repair. Jesse didn’t have any help on the place, either; he did it all himself even though he was in his late sixties. He’d been married once, but Mrs. Bingham had showed the good sense to leave him flat more than thirty years before, and go live with her sister in Ohio. Word was they’d never gotten a divorce, which to Knox’s way of thinking was a smart way to save money. Jesse sure as hell wasn’t going to find anyone else to marry him, and Mrs. Bingham was so put off marriage by her experience with him that she wasn’t interested in giving it another whirl.
    Knox parked his car beside Jesse’s truck and got out. The house’s door opened as he started up the front steps. “Took your time getting here,” Jesse said sourly through the screen door. “I’ve got chores that I need to be doing, instead of sitting on my butt waiting for you to decide to show up.”
    “Good morning to you, too,” Knox said drily. Seeing Jesse always surprised him. If there was ever a man whose appearance didn’t match his personality, it was Jesse Bingham. He was short, a little pudgy, with a round cherubic face and bright blue eyes; when he opened his mouth, though, nothing pleasant came out. The effect was that of a rabid Santa Claus.
    “Are you gonna do your job, or stand there making sarcastic remarks?” Jesse snapped.
    Knox took a firm hold on his patience. “Why don’t you show me the tractor and chickens?”
    Jesse stomped his way toward the barn, and Knox followed. The tractor was parked in the shelter of a lean-to attached to the barn, and even from a distance Knox could see that the wheels were sitting flat on the ground. “There,” Jesse said, pointing. “Little bastards got all six of them.”
    “You think it was kids?” Knox asked, wondering if a gang of kids had been extra busy last night.
    “How the hell would I know? That’s your job, finding out. For all I know, it was Matt Reston at the tractor place, so he could sell me some new tires.”
    “You said ‘little bastards.’ ”
    “Figure of speech. Don’t you know what that is?”
    “Sure,” Knox said easily. “Like ‘asshole.’ Figure of speech.”
    Jesse gave him a suspicious look.