Krampus: The Yule Lord Read Online Free PDF

figured he could always sell it, had to be someone out there who needed a toy-making sack. He started out of the truck when something in his jacket clunked against the door. He pulled the pistol out of his pocket. “Shouldn’t need this,” he said, then snorted. “Of course, there’s no telling with Linda.” He stuck the gun back in the glove compartment.
    Jesse knocked on the front door and waited. When no one came, he knocked again, louder.
    “Hold your beans,” someone yelled. “Be right there.”
    He heard shuffling feet, then Polly opened the door and stared at him through the screen. She gave him a pitying look.
    “Are they here?” Jesse asked.
    He thought she wasn’t going to answer him at all, when finally she sighed. “Why you wanna go and do this to yourself?”
    He tried to peek past her into the living room.
    She looked back over her shoulder. “I ain’t hiding ’em under my couch. They ain’t here, Jesse. Not one of ’em.”
    “Over at Dillard’s,” Jesse said. It wasn’t a question.
    Polly said nothing.
    “Damn it!” Jesse stomped his boot on the doormat. “Tell me something, Mrs. Collins. Just what the hell does she see in that son’bitch?”
    “I done asked her the same thing about you once.”
    “The man’s pushing sixty. You think that’s right? For Linda to be going out with a man near about your age?”
    “Linda’s never been real good at picking men. At least Dillard’s taking care of her. That’s more than some folks can claim.”
    Jesse cut her a hard look.
    “Comes home after work like he should. Has a nice truck. Nice house.”
    Jesse turned his head and spat loudly. “That house was bought with dirty money.”
    Polly shrugged. “Better than no money.”
    “I gotta go.” Jesse turned and started down the steps.
    “If you’re wise, you’ll steer well clear of that man.”
    Jesse stopped, turned around, and looked Polly straight in the eye. “Linda’s still my wife, y’know. A little fact that everyone seems to have forgot but me.”
    “I’m just saying don’t go stirring him up. You don’t need that kind of trouble. No one needs that kind of trouble.”
    “Well, if he thinks he can just take another man’s wife, then it’s my job to set him straight.”
    She laughed, a mocking sound that set Jesse’s teeth on edge. “Jesse, you wanna think you’re mean, but you just ain’t. That much I do know about you. Now Dillard, on the other hand, now there’s a man cut from mean stock. His daddy was shot six times in his life and is still here to tell about it, while them men who done went and shot him—every one of them’s lying beneath the stone-cold ground. And his granddaddy, well, that man was so mean they had to hang him before he was twenty-two. Dillard’s got deep roots in this county, got the law on his side. Can send you away, one way or another. So you need to dial it down a notch while you still can.”
    Jesse’s face flushed. He didn’t need Mrs. Collins to lecture him about Dillard Deaton, or Police Chief Dillard Deaton, which sounded much more important than it really was, as there were only two full-time police officers in Goodhope. It wasn’t the badge that troubled Jesse but the fact that the man was ear-deep with Sampson Boggs, better known around town as the General. Boggs and his clan ran every sort of racket: gambling, dog fighting, prostitution, welfare fraud, and could sell you any drug you could name. Chief Deaton’s sworn civil duty seemed to include keeping the law off the General’s back in return for a cut on the take—been that way as long as Jesse could remember.
    Dillard’s ties ran deeper still: the Boggs clan and Dillard’s kin had a long, crooked history together. Dillard’s old man had taken those bullets Mrs. Collins had spoken of running moonshine for the Boggses back in the day. Blood ties meant something in Boone County, and feuds and disputes were more often than not settled outside the law. And a man