Last Ragged Breath Read Online Free PDF

around the side of the table, then to the front of it, then down the other side. “Deputies come to your door this afternoon and say a body’s been found on your property. You don’t ask where. You don’t ask who.”
    â€œThat ain’t a lie. That’s just a lack of curiosity.”
    The sheriff halted her pacing. She was directly in front of him now, timing the pause and the position to coincide with this particular point in her questioning. He turned his head to one side. He didn’t want to look at her. He didn’t want to look at anybody.
    â€œThe lie came after that, Dillard,” she said. “As you well know. By then, we had a preliminary ID on the victim. Deputy Mathers asked you if you’d ever heard of a man named Edward Hackel. You said no.”
    â€œI forgot. Forgot I knew him.”
    â€œYou didn’t forget.”
    â€œWell, then—I was confused.”
    â€œYou weren’t confused. You knew him well, didn’t you? And when I asked you just now when you’d seen him last, you said you don’t remember.”
    â€œI don’t.”
    â€œYou sure as hell do remember. You took a swing at him the day before yesterday. In public.”
    â€œWell, if I did, he deserved it.”
    â€œWe have witnesses, Dillard. Several of them.” Harrison started her rounds all over again. She was behind him now. He didn’t turn in his chair. He didn’t watch her, as most people did when she circled the table. He kept his head angled toward the floor, just as he’d been doing since he first arrived here, brought in by Deputy Charlie Mathers.
    â€œIn fact,” she went on, “you’d had many angry confrontations with the victim. He wanted your land. And you didn’t want to sell. Isn’t that right?”
    Dillard snorted. His headshake was vigorous and prolonged. Yet a flicker of tension showed up along his jawline, causing it to flex and settle. It was not the sort of detail Harrison was apt to miss.
    â€œMy business,” he said. “Not yours.” But his voice had shed some of its confidence.
    â€œA lot of people heard you repeatedly threatening him with physical harm.”
    He pondered that. “Okay,” he said. “Fine. So I knew the man. And, yeah. I’d called him an SOB, a time or two. Said I was gonna knock him flat on his ass. Still didn’t have nothing to do with him ending up that way.”
    â€œConvince me.”
    â€œUse your head,” he said, his voice rising until it was just short of a shout. “If it was me what done it, then why’d I leave him right out in the open like that? If you think I’d murder that rat bastard and not try to hide the body, then you figure me for the biggest fool that ever was.”
    Harrison took another break from her pacing, pausing once again in front of the small table. The brim of the sheriff’s hat extended so far over her small face that the nature of her expression was unavailable to onlookers. She liked it that way. Not being able to read another person’s eyes was unsettling. It rattled a lot of suspects, even more than her questions did.
    This was the first major case she’d handled on her own, and she was determined to wind it up quickly. Efficiently. Gather the evidence, make an arrest, assist the prosecutor in getting ready for trial. Harrison liked Nick Fogelsong, and admired the hell out of him, but sometimes she’d found his methods a little too … slow . Yes. That was the word. A little too slow. Ponderous, even. He spent a lot of time—too much time, maybe—thinking about things. Contemplating. Must be those books he was always reading, Harrison had told herself. They could turn you into a chin-stroker. A philosopher—a word her daddy always deliberately mispronounced as “ fool -losopher.” She preferred action. She knew that a female sheriff was not exactly the norm in these