The German Read Online Free PDF Page A

with a single viable name. Harold Ashton had been a good kid, a fine student and athlete, and his parents’ pride. If he had a taste for causing trouble, Tom knew nothing about it.
    “One car, Tom?” Rex asked as he stepped off the sidewalk.
    “Should get us there,” Tom replied. “Less you’ve got some friends we need to pick up.”
    “Nah, sir,” Rex said.
    Rex climbed into the passenger seat and Don slid in the back, and then Tom pulled away from the curb, made a U-turn in the middle of Main Street, and headed back toward the farm route he’d followed into town. As he drove, Rex and Don fell into their usual banter. The two could talk for hours about absolutely nothing, and they were usually funny as all get out to listen to, like Abbott and Costello with East Texas drawls. Today they kept the conversation respectful and professional, and Tom heard the uneasy timbres of their voices. By the time he’d turned left onto Lakeland Road, his men were sharing their thoughts about the Ashton case.
    Don said, “Jerome thinks it’s the Mexicans.”
    Rex snorted and replied, “Jerome thinks everything’s the Mexicans. This time he might be right though. Has to be a drifter at any rate. No one in Barnard would hurt a boy like Harold Ashton. I’d eat my hat if that weren’t true.”
    “Did either of you get any details about what was done to the boy?” Tom asked.
    “Nah, sir,” Rex said. “Just that he was murdered.”
    “I’d say that’s for us to decide,” Tom said. “For all we know, Harold went walking in Jerome’s woods, fell down and hit his head and coyotes and badgers did the rest.”
    “All due respect, Sheriff,” this from Don in the backseat, “The Ashton boy’s been gone for a good two weeks, and Jerome said he’d walked by the place at least a dozen times since then, and he never saw a thing.”
    “Coyotes’ll drag a meal,” Tom pointed out.
    This silenced his men. Tom knew he hadn’t convinced them, though; they just weren’t up to arguing with the boss.
    After kicking up four miles of dust on Lakeland Road, Tom turned onto the dirt track that led to Jerome Blevins’s house. As the house came into view through a thatch of scrub oak, so did four of Jerome’s children: three young boys and a little girl who’d recently traded diapers for the graying sundress that had once been robin’s egg blue. They stood at the edges of the drive like vagabond orphans eager for a meal.
    “Why doesn’t Jerome buy his kids some proper clothes?” Don asked. “The lumber company pays him big for the right to cut on his land.”
    “He’s still got his head in the Depression,” Rex said. “He had it tough there for a lot of years. It made him cautious. Stingy.”
    “Those overalls look like they’re held together with spider webbing,” Don said. “You can about see through the knees. And a little girl like that shouldn’t have to wear rags.”
    “Just keep your mind on why we’re here,” Tom said. “It’s none of our business if Jerome’s kids wear potato sacks or silk trousers. Let’s just see what he’s got to show us.”
    Tom pulled to a stop before the Blevins house, which looked about as flimsy and cheap as the children’s clothing. The porch tilted significantly to the side and the roof above it sagged in the middle like a rope bridge with too little tension; he saw gaps in the boards siding the front of the house, and the glass in the living room window wore a long jagged crack. The oldest boy, whose name Tom couldn’t recall, walked up to the side of the car, invited himself onto the running board, and peered in at the three men. Fingers with dirty knuckles clasped on the door and the boy rocked back a bit like he might give tipping the vehicle over a try, and then he spoke.
    “Daddy says to take you on back. He didn’t want the Mexicans to come and steal Harold’s body, so he’s a-waiting in the woods and I’m supposed to show you where.”
    “That’ll be fine,”