The Do-Right Read Online Free PDF Page A

parked.
    Phelan knocked on the door. Waited. Tried the knob, no dice. He went around the back to a screen porch that looked to be an add-on. Or it had been a screen porch before plywood was nailed over its large windows. A two-by-four had been pounded across the door; the hammer lying there in the dirtsuggested that Dennis Deeterman might be recently away from his desk. Maybe. Phelan could hear something. He beat on the door. “Ricky. Ricky Toups, you in there?”
    He put his ear to the door. Something . Phelan pounded again, louder. “I’m looking for Ricky Toups.”
    A low huffing, rhythmic. Intermittent creak. What was that sound? Like a rusted rocking chair.
    He jogged back to his car, shoved a flashlight from the glove compartment into his pocket and snagged a pry bar. Ripped off the two-by-four. Opened the door. Directly across the porch was the door that led into the house. Phelan stepped over there, .38 drawn, and rattled it: locked. Already he was smelling piss in the hot, dead air. Then herb and cigarettes and some kind of dead-fish bayou stink. That creaky noise came from the far left, high up. He found a switch by the locked door and flipped it. Not a gleam.
    He stuck the gun in his belt and strode into the dark room. His shin banged into something scuttling fast in the opposite direction. The thing slashed his calf shallowly and long, like a pissed-off girl keying her boyfriend’s car, and rushed over his foot. Phelan yielded right-of-way, then bent down to rub his leg and felt the tear in his trousers. He craned back in time to see his assailant’s ringed tail flee out the door.
    A raccoon.
    Irritable might not cover Dennis Deeterman. “Ricky Toups, that you in here?”
    He shined the white circle up and left, to the source of the creaking.
    Christ Almighty .
    Phelan’s jaw sagged. On the top of metal shelves was a half-naked gargoyle, perched there. No, clinging. Blue-jeaned haunches with a smooth, sheened back folded over them,fingers clawed around the metal, head cut sharply toward Phelan. Blinking eyes protruded from sunken holes. The down-turned mouth wheezed.
    â€œYou got asthma, right.”
    Ricky Toups’ head bobbed loosely, flapping sweat-dark hair that had been dishwater blond in last year’s school photo.
    â€œWhat’s going on, Ricky?”
    â€œHe got m-m-mad at—” The kid flung out a hand, pointing.
    Phelan heard a cat’s hiss.
    A cat, why not.
    He zigzagged the light downward over matted orange shag littered with marijuana debris, the arm of a bamboo couch, crushed beer cans.
    Behind came faintly from Ricky’s labored breathing.
    Phelan wheeled. His light fell on the toothy jaws flapped wide in another hiss. Damn thing wasn’t but two feet long, but it meant business.
    He flipped the flashlight to his left hand, his stump telegraphing a deep blue ache clear to his elbow as he fisted his hand around the flash’s barrel. The little gator paddled forward and clamped his shoe. Phelan grabbed the spiked tail. It flung his hand side to side as it flailed. He yanked, its jaws dug in like a trap’s. Phelan hopped for the door, dragging the foot with the gator. Once he was outside, he ripped the knot from his shoelace and kicked. Shoe and gator sailed off into the weeds.
    Cussing, Phelan jogged back through the door into the black oven and laid a hand hard on what turned out to be Ricky’s bicep. The boy slumped off the shelf into his arms. Phelan looped the boy’s arm around his neck. They were hobbling toward the door when Ricky’s ragged exhalation became a shriek.
    The shaft of light from the door revealed part of a black pile that blended into the darkness. Phelan squinted at it. What? Most of him failed to make sense of what he saw. But not his skin—it was crawling off his belly, his nuts squeezing north of nutsack.
    The pile shifted until only a tip remained. Then the tip disappeared into blackness.