The Carrion Birds Read Online Free PDF Page B

call Deacon a neighbor rather than
his boss. Something shameful now attached to this distinction, that Tom had once
been the county sheriff, then a successful farmer himself, but now was just
another laborer like his father.
    A car honked behind Tom. Looking over his shoulder
he recognized one of the roughnecks he saw from time to time when he went for
drinks with his father. The man honked again and Hastings waved him past.
    Tom waited for the oil worker to pull around and
then went on, “Look, Pete, that ambulance went by me in a hurry. I’m just
asking.”
    “I can’t, Tom.”
    A hundred feet up the road, Tom saw Sheriff Edna
Kelly walk out from behind one of the cruisers, remove her hat, and wipe the
sweat from her forehead with a small white handkerchief.
    Ignoring the deputy, Tom raised his hand and
hollered a greeting. Kelly looked up, and when she recognized Tom, she motioned
for Hastings to let him through.
    Kelly had once been his deputy. She was athletic in
build with a runner’s thighs and the broad, rounded shoulders of a girl who had
grown up doing farm work.
    “Tomás Herrera,” Kelly said after he’d drawn his
truck up next to where she stood. His name pulled long in mock disbelief. “You
know you can’t be here.”
    Tom shrugged. “I was just driving by.”
    Jeanie moved over across the bench seat and put her
head out the window, looking for a hand from Kelly. The old mutt a gift from
Kelly all those years before when Tom had been asked to step down from his
position as sheriff so that Kelly could take over.
    Kelly let Jeanie get her scent before petting her.
“What are you really doing here?” Kelly asked, standing beside his truck looking
in, a nervous edge to her voice that carried with it the slightest hint of
warning.
    Tom pulled the dog back from the window, feeling
the old girl fight him for only a moment before settling in on her side of the
bench. “Nothing, Edna. Just passing through on my way north.”
    Kelly waited a moment, perhaps wanting him to say
more, and when nothing came, she said, “I can’t have you here. Not after
everything.” The words were hard, but the voice was soft. A lot of history
between the two of them and Tom wanted to believe it counted for something. He
wanted to believe that maybe Kelly didn’t mind his being here as much as she was
saying.
    Still, Tom felt scolded. At thirty-six, she was
more than a decade younger than him, wearing the star he used to wear. The blond
hair he’d always felt an attraction for when she’d been his deputy now kept up
under her hat in a ponytail. All of her seemed new to him, like she’d never been
the person he’d known before. The stress and pressures of the job showing on her
face where new seams had formed in the skin, intensified now by whatever she’d
just walked away from.
    “I’m not here to step on any toes,” Tom said,
reassuring her. “You know I’m helping out Deacon these days, trying to make a
little extra money to get my hog farm back on the level. I saw the truck. I just
thought—”
    “Clint is fine,” Kelly said, cutting in. She gave a
sideways look toward Deacon’s Ford. “You can see him up there in Pierce’s
car.”
    Tom put a hand over his eyes to shade them from the
sun. Up the road Clint Deacon was sitting in the back of one of the cruisers
with the door open. The young deputy Tom had seen around town recently standing
just beyond taking a statement from him. “I didn’t mean to press you,” he said,
trying to be apologetic.
    “I know,” Kelly said. “I’m just worried is all. I
haven’t had much experience with this sort of thing.”
    “This sort of thing?”
    Kelly gave the truck another sidelong glance, but
didn’t say anything more.
    “What are we talking about here?” Tom asked.
    “We’re not talking about anything, Tom,” Kelly
said, stepping close as the ambulance’s reverse lights came on, and the driver
brought the big square body around toward Coronado. “We