Lone Wolf Read Online Free PDF Page A

Thorne. “Fishing, and checking out some property for a project I have planned. I’ve got my eye on thirty acres just up the shore a bit, planning to put in a big resort for sport fishermen that will—”
    “Yeah, whatever,” Thorne said, holding up his hand as if he were halting a car in traffic. “So, that’s everyone.”
    “Yup,” said Bob. “I’ve been up here for three weeks now, gotten to know everyone who’s up.”
    “And no one was expecting any visitors?”
    Everyone muttered no under their breath. “Well, that’s a puzzler,” said the chief.
    “What about up there?” I said, pointing up the road, where the farmhouse, hidden by trees from where we stood, sat beyond the gate with all the warning signs.
    “I don’t think it would be anyone from up there,” said Thorne.
    I thought,
Huh?
But I said, “How can you know that? Twenty minutes ago, we thought this was my father.”
    “I’m just saying, I don’t think it’s anyone from up there,” said Thorne. “Doesn’t look like it to me.”
    This was a baffler. A cop who didn’t want to make every effort, consider every possibility to learn the identity of a guy who’d been mauled to death? I kept pressing. “At least you should go up there and talk to whoever lives there.”
    “Orville,” Bob said softly, “you’re going to at least have to ask them a few questions.”
    “What’s the deal?” I asked. “I don’t understand. Why can’t you go up there and talk to them?”
    Bob smiled sympathetically. “Last time Orville talked to those folks, they hid his hat on him.”
    “They did not!” Chief Thorne said, putting his hand up to the top of his hat and shoving it down more firmly onto his head. “We were just horsing around, that’s all, no harm done.”
    “Orville, no one blames you. They’re a weird crew. Listen, I find them kind of intimidating, too. We can go up there with you. They won’t take your hat if there’s a bunch of us there.” Bob tried to say this without a hint of condescension, but it still came off as a bit patronizing.
    Even so, Thorne was mulling it over. It was clear that he didn’t want to go up there alone.
    “Okay, Bob,” he said. “Why don’t you come along, too.”
    “I want to come,” I said.
    “I don’t think that’s really necessary, Mr. Walker,” Thorne said, glancing at me, and there was something in his eyes then, just for a second, that looked familiar to me. It was the second time since I’d arrived that I felt I knew him from someplace.
    I wanted to ask him if, by some chance, we’d met before, maybe when I’d been up to see Dad here before, but instead said, “This body’s on my father’s property, and in his absence, I think it’s appropriate for me to know what’s going on.”
    This was, of course, bullshit. Thorne was the law, and he could take, and leave behind, anyone he damn well pleased. But, evidently, he wasn’t aware of that.
    “Okay, fine then,” he said. The three of us started walking up the lane. No one spoke for a while, until Thorne said to me, in a tone that bordered on the accusatory. “So, you’re from the city.”
    “Yeah,” I said.
    Thorne made a snorting noise, as if that explained everything. Bob Spooner gently laid a hand on my back, then took it away. “Your father’s told me a lot about you,” he said.
    “Really?” I said.
    “Says you’ve written some books, whaddya call it, that science fiction stuff. Spacemen, that kind of thing.”
    “Some,” I said. “But not so much these days; I’m a feature writer for
The Metropolitan.
”
    Bob nodded. “Yeah, he told me that, too. Good paper. Don’t see it all the time, but when I do, there’s lots to read in there.”
    We were coming round the bend now, approaching the gate decorated with its numerous warnings for trespassers.
    “I guess they don’t like visitors,” I said.
    “They don’t like much of anything,” Thorne said.
    The three of us stood at the gate, Bob resting