The Hour Before Dark Read Online Free PDF

something. “You think I’m going to say Pola.”
    “No,” I said.
    “I saw her on Monday,” Bruno said. He didn’t add: She asked about you. Perhaps Pola Croder, who had been my high school sweetheart, hadn’t thought about me in years. “She looks good. She’s a remarkable woman, I think.”
    “So who’s asking about me?”
    “Withers.”
    I shrugged. “He’s got my number.”
    “I know. He told me. He’s waiting for you to get here. He’s the only reporter we let in the house last night.”
    “He’s still there?”
    “No, he went home. I thought he was your old best friend.”
    “Yeah, I guess he is. Sorry,” I said. “I feel like crap. You look like crap. Must be hell out there. Burnley must be buzzing with this one.”
    “None of it means shit,” he said. His usual understatement. “Look, we’ve got a special boat—borrowed just for you. I brought an extra coat in the back. It’s pretty damn cold out there right now.”
    “I hate winter,” I said. “Dead trees. Dead everything. Dead dead dead.” Then I added, “Sorry, that was a weak attempt at humor.”
    Bruno made some noise in the back of his throat that was both muffled cough and disapproval. “Breaking the tension is good, I guess,” he said. “Me, I got Jumblies.”
    “Jumblies” was Raglan-speak for mixed-up feelings. Granny used the word, and after she died, I made up stories for my little sister and brother about creatures called Jumblies that hopped in peoples’ mouths and made them confused.
    I guess I had Jumblies in me at that moment, too.
    Ten minutes later, in the car, we drove onto the highway.

    5
     
    “Who did it?” I asked, as a blur of wintry Boston sped around us.
    “Like I know. They haven’t quite figured it out. Who does that... kind of thing? Psychos? Maniacs?”
    “God,” I said, covering my face with my hands. “I don’t even want to think of Dad like that. I can’t believe it. I just can’t. Brooke okay?”
    “Guess,” Bruno said. Then he added, “No, I mean. No. How can she be? I’m not okay. It was awful.”
    “You saw the body?”
    He glanced at me, sidelong. I felt some sort of repressed fury, as if he never wanted to think about seeing our father’s corpse again for as long as he lived.
    We didn’t talk until we were nearly to the coastline.
    I watched the speedometer, cringed when the back end of the little car slid on a patch of ice or rattled across a pothole, and just hoped we’d make it at all.
    “You wouldn’t believe last night,” Bruno said, finally.
    Then he told me.

    6
     
    Bruno had been with a buddy of his, having a beer at the local pub in the village, when Brooke called him on his cell phone.
    He ran out of the pub and down to the police station—a few blocks away. When he got there, he saw Brooke shivering, covered with a blanket. Her hair wet. It was the blood. She’d lain down in the blood, next to our father. She'd gone catatonic or something. She was covered with blood, only it looked brownish and not red at all (as he had expected). She didn’t recall the hours that had passed. Then she’d gotten up and left the smokehouse, dragging herself back inside, called me. Then she  called Joe Grogan.
    Brooke had been screaming in the house afterward, just standing in the living room screaming. The Doones called over because they heard the noise, and Brooke picked up the phone but had hung it up again before saying anything. Paulette Doone  called the police. Paulette had told them she thought she’d seen someone over by the smokehouse earlier, and with the screaming she heard later, she was afraid something awful had happened.
    By two or three in the morning,  cops arrived, including an investigative detective and her team.
    Helicopters came over from the Cape, bringing reporters, landing out at the Point as a helipad. Bruno had no idea that so many people would suddenly appear out of nowhere.
    Bruno was up most of the night, answering questions, sitting