The Dead Past Read Online Free PDF

stomach that it was a miracle he ever backed out of the driveway. They said he'd fallen off the wagon after seven years of Alcoholics Anonymous; once a drunk, always a drunk.
    When I was released from jail three months later Anna had come out of her coma. Maybe we both felt a little like we were being reborn together, with the rest of our family gone, and the two of us now orphaned.
    She told the police about my father being forced off the road by a black sedan, and how, after a burning swirl of tearing metal the car went into a ravine, and through a haze of agony she'd seen a man climbing down the rocks. At first she thought he'd come to help, and tried with her remaining strength to attract his attention, to no avail. Thrown from the back seat and pinned beneath the overturned car, she couldn't move or even whisper—that's what had saved her life. Seconds before passing out, the truth clarified as she watched the man carefully take my mother's jaw in his hands and snap her neck. My father survived long enough for his killer to pour half a bottle of scotch down his throat.
    Broghin listened to Anna's statement and reopened his single sheet file. Whatever evidence there might have been was three months old. In my cell, I'd fumed and mulled the facts over; afterwards, you could say I wasn't the most stable person in the world as I went to hunt for reasons. I threatened to separate Wallace's gluteus from his maximus if he didn't exhume my father's body and make a toxicology report out on the amount of alcohol in his bloodstream, there hadn't been enough time for any alcohol to get into my father's system. He should have done it the first time, but Wallace is an alcoholic too and probably enjoyed believing that no one ever reformed. Perhaps I was crazy, but I cared as much about getting an apology as I did catching my parents' murderer.
    Anubis barked when a police cruiser pulled up outside.
    Sheriff Franklin Broghin opened the car door and shifted his considerable bulk to get out of the seat, wrestling with his gun belt. He would come up to my chin if he could ever stand close enough to do it—his eighty-pound belly forced him back a good two or three feet. He could never get nose to nose with anybody, never look anyone square in the eye.
    "Let me handle this, Jonathan."
    "This has somehow already gone beyond our handling. It started off that way."
    She nearly grinned. "I think so, too. I wonder why that is?"
    Broghin didn't even glance at the murder site as he trundled up the path. My heart started hammering and my breath hitched; whenever I saw him I could only think of the three months my father had been in the grave and shamed. Anubis looked on and perked and snarled.
    "I'm not ready for this today," I said.
    "Don't let your temper get away with you, dear. Let's listen to what the man has to say."
    "I'll listen so long as he doesn't yell in my face and poke me in the chest." Broghin had a nasty habit of poking people in their chests. He was doing it to me, screaming about how my father was a lousy bum, when I flung his desk chair at his head.
    I met him at the door, sticking my chest out like a pubescent girl, waiting for him to jab me with his frankfurter fingers. Instead of having a smirk already curling his lips, he actually gave me a friendly smile and reached out to shake my hand.
    "Hello, Johnny, nice to see you're back for a little visit. It's been a while since the last time. You should come on home more often."
    "Ah," I wanly replied, "okay." I stepped out of his path as he took off his coat and approached my grandmother. Anubis stood without a sound and glared. The dog was always one word away from killing someone.
    "Keep that damn animal away from me, Anna. You know he's just waiting for the right moment to tear my yahoos off."
    Yahoos? I decided my grandmother never had an affair with Broghin . Forgetting all the other jerkwater town close-mindedness he'd exemplified over the years, it simply wasn't acceptable