KILLING TIME Read Online Free PDF Page A

until the paper split. The shaved tobacco began to spill out in small slivers, carried down river on the wind. “You must have been pissed-off.”
    Without thinking, McMaster said, “Yeah, felt like wringing her neck.”
    “Did you tell Sidney?”
    “Tell him what? That I was with her? That I felt like wringing her neck? Ed, am I as dumb as you look?” Leland said. “Don’t be a knob. Of course I didn’t. And give me another smoke. ”
    “Eat me,” Dojcsak said .
    “You wish. Now give. ”
    Dojcsak complied, and said, “If you admit to him you knew her, it will look as if you were hiding something. ”
    “Yeah, but if I say nothing and he finds out anyway?”
    “I were you, I’d keep my mouth shut.”
    “You were me, Ed, you wouldn’t be such a knob.”
    They smoked. After a while, Dojcsak asked, “What will you do?”
    “Fucked if I know,” replied Leland. “But I didn’t do it, Ed, which does me no good. If Womack finds out I was feeling her up, he’ll skin me alive.” Leland inhaled deeply on his cigarette. “I could go to my old man.”
    “Why?” asked Dojcsak, “If you did it, you did it.”
    “I didn’t,” Leland said. (Did Dojcsak sense a faint note of desperation?) Observing Dojcsak, his eyes small and hard, Leland said, “Is that what you think?”
    Dojcsak paused before answering.
    “C’mon, Ed; tell me. Is it what you think?”
    “Well, you were the one fucking her, right?”
    “Right, Ed, I knobbed her, like the Kama fucking Sutra I knobbed her. But it doesn’t mean I killed her.”
    “Jail-bait.” Dojcsak grinned. “They call it that for a reason, Lee.”
    “Ed, you’re a knob.” They stood, watching the water, not speaking, each preoccupied with his imagination. Leland broke the silence. “Help me out, Ed.”
    “What do you want from me?”
    “Talk to Sidney, he’s your cousin.”
    “Sure, all of a sudden I’m good for something other than fags.”
    “C’mon, Ed, be a pal.”
    “He’s the Sheriff, Lee. Sure, he’s my cousin, but I hardly know the guy.” Dojcsak inhaled then exhaled, allowing his smoke to be carried by the wind. McMaster remained silent, hoping to motivate Dojcsak by sheer force of his will. Relenting, Dojcsak said, “Okay, I will. What do you want me to do?”
    Leland half-smiled. “Lie, Ed; like a rug, like a dog, like a five-dollar whore. Tell Sidney we were together, you were with me all day.”
    “Why should I do that?”
    “As a retainer, chum,” Leland said conspiratorially. “On something I might be able to do for you in the future, you know? You might want a sniff of teen pussy yourself someday. I mean, the guys say you’re a homo, but…” Leland left the thought unfinished, moving closer to Dojcsak, placing an arm over his friend’s shoulder. It was at once the most distasteful yet natural thing to do. “C’mon, Ed-ee-oh,” he teased, “smell my fingers.”

CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
    “YOU’RE HERE.”
    It was an accusation, an implicit rebuke uttered with mild but conspicuous contempt by his subordinate officer.
    “Sorry,” Dojcsak replied, and as if it was sufficient explanation, “the fog.” He did not bother to mention a stop for take out coffee and a surly service station attendant with whom he had argued, accusing the man of filling his cup only half full.
    “It’s thick,” Christopher Burke agreed, drawing his head like a turtle into the warmth of the upturned wool collar lining his leather jacket. They were standing at the mouth of the alley, a long throat at the end of which lay the body. Dojcsak had parked his car on the street against the curb, facing south in the northbound lane of the town’s main street boulevard, among a half dozen other marked and unmarked State and County police vehicles. It sat fifteen feet away, engine cooling, rhythmic ping of oil dripping to its pan audible even from here.
    Burke hadn’t moved to greet the older man when he arrived. He stood at the corner of a red brick