Prayers for Rain Read Online Free PDF

Victoria seized up that spring. The Cherokee was great for the rare bounty hunt because it had come with a steel gate between the seats and the stow bed in back. Tony sat on the other side of the gate, his back against the vinyl seat cover over the spare tire. He stretched out his legs like a cat settling into a sun-baked windowsill and cracked open his third beer of the early afternoon, then burped up the vapor of the second.
    “Excuse yourself, man.”
    Tony caught my eyes in the rearview. “Excuse me. Didn’t realize you were such a stickler for, ahm—”
    “Common courtesy?”
    “That, yeah.”
    “I let you think it’s okay to burp in my ride, Tony, then you’ll think it’s okay to take a leak.”
    “Nah, man. Wish I’d brought a big cup or something, though.”
    “We’ll stop at the next exit.”
    “You’re all right, Patrick.”
    “Oh, yeah, I’m swell.”
    We actually made several stops in Maine and one inNew Hampshire. This will happen when you allow an alcoholic bail jumper into your car with a twelve-pack, but, in truth, I didn’t mind all that much. I enjoyed Tony’s company in the same way you’d enjoy an afternoon with a twelve-year-old nephew who was a little slow on the uptake but irrevocably good-natured.
    Somewhere during the New Hampshire leg of our trip, Tony’s Game Boy stopped blipping and beeping, and I looked in the rearview to see that he’d passed out back there, snoring softly, his lips flapping gently as one foot wagged back and forth like a dog’s tail.
    We’d just passed into Massachusetts and I’d pressed the seek button on my car radio and tried to get lucky and pick up WFNX while I was still a good distance from their weak antenna when Karen Nichols’s name floated out of a tangle of static and air hiss. The digital call numbers raced by on the radio’s LED screen, paused for just a moment on a thin signal at 99.6:
    “…now identified as Karen Nichols of Newton, apparently jumped from—”
    The tuner left the station and jumped to 100.7.
    I swerved the car slightly as I reached for the manual tune button and brought it back to 99.6.
    Tony woke up in the back and said, “What?”
    “Sssh.” I held up a finger.
    “…police department sources say. How Miss Nichols gained entrance to the observation deck of the Custom House is not yet known. Turning to weather, meteorologist Gil Hutton says to expect more heat…”
    Tony rubbed his eyes. “Crazy shit, huh?”
    “You know about this?”
    He yawned. “Saw it on the news this morning. Chick took a buck-naked header off the Custom House, forgot that gravity kills, man. You know? Gravity kills.”
    “Shut up, Tony.”
    He recoiled as if I’d swatted him, turned away from me, and scrounged through the twelve-pack for another beer.
    There could be another Karen Nichols in Newton.Probably several. It was a mundane, pedestrian American name. As boring and common as Mike Smith or Ann Adams.
    But something cold and spreading through my stomach told me that the Karen Nichols who’d jumped from the Custom House observation deck was the same one I’d met six months ago. The one who ironed her socks and had a stuffed animal collection.
    That Karen Nichols didn’t seem like a woman who’d jump nude from a building. But, still, I knew. I knew.
    “Tony?”
    He looked up at me with the injured eyes of a hamster in the rain. “Yeah?”
    “Sorry I snapped at you.”
    “Yeah, okay.” He took a sip from his beer, continued to watch me warily.
    “The woman who jumped,” I said, not even sure why I was explaining myself to a guy like Tony, “I may have known her.”
    “Oh, shit, man. I’m sorry. Fucking people sometimes, you know?”
    I looked at the highway, tinted a metallic blue under the harsh sun. Even with the air-conditioning running at max, I could feel the heat needle the skin at the nape of my neck.
    Tony’s eyes were wet and the smile that rolled up his cheeks was too big, too wide. “It calls to you