Killing Time Read Online Free PDF

In his experience, most people either took off in the face of his nastiness, or wanted to fight him. Knox Davis always kept his temper, but one way or another he made it plain he’d take only so much.
    Knox carefully examined the ground; unfortunately, the prints in the dirt all seemed to be Jesse’s, which he could tell because they were small for a man. “You walked around out here?”
    “How else would I look at all six tires?”
    “If there were any prints in the dirt, you ruined them.”
    “Like you could look at a footprint and tell who made it. I don’t believe that crap. Millions of people wear the same size shoe.”
    Knox knew exactly where he’d like to plant a size eleven athletic shoe. He examined the tires, looked for fingerprints on the metal parts, but from what he could tell each tire had one slash in it: stab in a knife, pull downward. If the tractor had been touched at all except for that, he couldn’t tell it. Maybe he could get a fingerprint that wasn’t Jesse’s off it, though—if Jesse hadn’t wiped the tractor down this morning, and destroyed all the other evidence. Knox wouldn’t put anything past him, though he guessed the old fart wouldn’t slash his own tires, because that meant he had to spend the money to replace them. Unless—“You got insurance for things like this, Jesse?”
    “Course I do. Only a damn fool doesn’t have coverage these days, with people running around pretending to fall down on your property so they can sue you.”
    “What’s your deductible?”
    “What business is it of yours?”
    “Just asking.”
    Jesse’s face began to get red. “You think I did this? You think I’d slash my own tires?”
    “If your insurance would buy new tires, and you have a low deductible, that would be a way to save money. You could get new tractor tires for, what, a hundred dollars?”
    “I’ll call the sheriff!” Jesse bellowed. “Get your ass off my land! I want someone else—”
    “It’s me or no one,” Knox interrupted. “As for who cut your tires, I can’t say. My job is to cover all the bases. You’re a base.” He walked around to the back of the barn, taking care to stay out of the soft dirt around the wall where Jesse kept the grass killed. There. The dirt was scuffed. He looked closer, and could make out what looked like one footprint on top of another one, as if someone had walked the same way, leaving as they had arrived. Bigger than Jesse’s foot, too.
    “What about my chickens? You think I killed my chickens, too? Just take a look at them!” Jesse had followed him, still bellowing, and practically jumping up and down he was so mad.
    Knox held up a hand. “Don’t mess up these prints, too. Just stay back, will you?”
    “Changing your mind now, huh? Coming onto a man’s property and accusing him of—”
    “Jesse.” Knox said it quietly, but the look in his eye when he turned his head to pin Jesse with his gaze said that he’d had enough.
    Jesse stopped in mid-tirade, and contented himself with looking sullen.
    “Show me the chickens.”
    “This way,” he muttered, and led the way, back past the tractor, to a small chicken coop tucked up next to a trimmed hedge at the back of his house. “Look at that,” he said, pointing. “Six of them.”
    Six hens lay scattered about the coop. There wasn’t any blood, so Knox guessed someone had wrung their necks. The sheer meanness of some people never failed to surprise and disgust him.
    “Did you hear anything last night?”
    “Nothing, but I was tired and had trouble getting to sleep, so I may have been sleeping too hard. Weird night. All those lightning flashes kept me awake, but I never did hear no thunder. Finally stopped around midnight, and I went to sleep. I guess all this happened after that.”
    “Lightning flashes?” Knox asked, frowning. He didn’t remember any lightning, and he’d been out and around.
    “Kind of low to the ground, too. Like I said: weird. Not like normal