The Fall Guy Read Online Free PDF Page B

figured it was Jeff Wilkins, but now I wasn’t so sure. Wilkins exchanged his vehicles the instant they got a scratch or a rattle. Rough timing and busted mufflers weren’t good for business. The car that ran me off the bridge had both. Plus, it was a V8 at least twenty years older than anything Wilkins drove.
    â€œWho, O’Toole?”
    I shrugged.
    Headlights shone in the distance. Both Swan and I turned to see a large flatbed truck bumping down the hill. I recognized the knocking sound of Bud’s tow truck long before I could make out his name on its dusty side. It came to a rattling stop behind us. A tiny gray-haired woman climbed down. The business still carried Bud’s name, but more often than not Bud was flat on his back with pain. It was his wife who took the calls. Nancy always looked like she’d been dragged out of a hen house. Hair like straw, skin like a turkey wattle and a scowl to match. When she saw my truck, though, she couldn’t hide a grin.
    â€œThis is a first for you, Rick!”
    I’m not much of a drinker. Even if I had the money, I don’t like how stupid it makes me act. The guys tease me down at the Lion’s Head when I stop in for a beer or two. But the truth is, it’s those third and fourth beers that cause all the trouble. Sometimes a loosened tongue is not a good thing.
    â€œRick thinks he was run off the road,” said Constable Swan.
    Both women laughed. I glowered. “Just get my damn truck out of the creek and I’ll prove it.”
    I was hoping the old V8 would have done some damage to my back end. I was also hoping that screw was somewhere in the bottom of my truck. Not that Swan would believe I didn’t plant it.
    The cop moved her cruiser so her headlights lit up the creek, and Nancy wasted no time wading out into the water and hitching the winch up to the wheels of my truck. I cringed as she slowly flipped it over in the water. But the truth was, she was good. A damn sight better than Bud, whose strength always gave out on him at the worst times. Nancy has been doing most of the garage work and all the towing in three counties since Bud was diagnosed. She looked like beaten shoe leather and had the charm of a scalded cat. But she moved those levers and gears like she was hauling a late-model Cadillac instead of a thirty-year-old pickup. Water poured through the windows as it bounced upright.
    Back down to change the hitches, then up to work the gears again. By now quite a crowd had gathered, including Swan’s shift supervisor, Sergeant Hurley, and a paramedic team, who seemed more interested in the damage to my truck than to me.
    They checked me out, bandaged a bump on my head I didn’t even know I had, cleaned the cuts on my arms from the windshield and told me I should see a doctor in the morning. Fat chance of that. All the headlights were aimed at my poor truck as it came up through the bush.
    Its hood and windshield were crushed, the front bumper was gone and all the lights were broken. But it was the sight of the tailgate that made me smile.
    â€œLooks like something hit you pretty good there, Rick,” Nancy said.
    Swan’s supervisor headed over for a closer look, and Swan hustled over to join him. Sergeant Hurley had been at the detachment for a hundred years, almost, and nothing much got by him. He was the one who took me to identify my mother, and he’s had a soft spot for me ever since. Sometimes he even tries to give me fatherly advice. Or what he figures is fatherly advice. I wouldn’t know, and neither would he.
    Any move hurt like hell, but I wasn’t missing this moment. I dragged myself out of the cruiser and limped down to the edge of the road where my truck sat dripping. Hurley was peering at the tailgate with his flashlight.
    â€œAnd you think someone did this deliberately?” he asked.
    â€œThey did. An old Ford V8 with a hole in its exhaust. I heard it earlier today over