Very Bad Men Read Online Free PDF

cartridge flipped through the air and landed soft in the pine needles. Down below, Terry Dawtrey reached the fence and leapt up to catch the high horizontal bar with two hands. The slim deputy shouted for him to stop.
    Dawtrey scrambled over the fence, landing awkwardly and pitching sideways into the slope of the hill. Clawing the wild grass to regain his feet. The deputy behind him, shouting through the fence.
    The butt of the rifle against Lark’s shoulder and the crosshairs on the open collar of Dawtrey’s white shirt. As Lark began to squeeze the trigger, Dawtrey’s chin tipped upward and a red-black spot appeared in the hollow at the base of his throat.
    The sound of the gunshot reached Lark and he squeezed reflexively and the rifle fired just as Dawtrey dropped to his knees on the slope. The bullet passed harmless over his shoulder. Lark let the rifle touch the ground and looked down at the slim deputy standing with his pistol between the bars of the fence. Smoke rising from the muzzle. Lark could hear the deputy’s curse traveling up the hillside, could see the man’s face turn away in an ugly grimace. Could see him jam the pistol angrily into his holster.
    Dawtrey lay moveless in the grass, the top of his stubbled head no more than twenty yards down the slope. Lark, on knees and elbows, retreated from the ridge of the hill, dragging the rifle with him. A babel of voices below. The stocky deputy shouting orders.
    Lark stayed low until he was well back from the ridge. Then he wrapped the rifle in the blanket and started walking back to his car.
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    THAT EVENING the shooting led the news. The notorious Terry Dawtrey gunned down by a sheriff’s deputy in the course of an attempt to escape. Lark watched the coverage from his hotel bed. A bag of melting ice forgotten, his headache only a distant rumor.
    The woman with the wondrous smile turned up on one of the stations. A reporter called to her from a crowd, asked for her reaction to Dawtrey’s death. But she shook her head somberly and gave no comment.
    At midnight Lark switched off the television and reached for his notebook. He found an empty page and used his Waterman pen to sketch an outline of the day’s events—because we all need to own our actions.
    Around one o’clock the notebook tipped forward onto his chest. He blinked out of a doze and turned onto his side, found the pen where it had rolled onto the bedspread. He paged back through the notebook until he came to his list: Henry Kormoran. Sutton Bell. Terry Dawtrey. The red letters breathed on the page. Kormoran and Bell were living in Ann Arbor. Lark would let himself sleep late in the morning, and then he would drive down and find them.
    After a moment’s hesitation he drew a line through Dawtrey’s name. He felt entitled, even though things hadn’t gone exactly as planned.
    He had wanted the man dead, and the man was dead. It didn’t matter how you got there, just so long as you got there.

CHAPTER 4
    H ere’s what I remember about that day. Wednesday, July fifteenth.
    The day the manuscript came to me.
    I was in my office at Gray Streets, editing a story. My cell phone hummed at six-thirty in the evening, creeping along the surface of my desk. I left it alone for a moment, searched for a particular page, and wrote a sentence in the margin. Then I picked up the phone and saw Elizabeth’s name on the display. I flipped it open.
    â€œLizzie,” I said. “How would you spell ‘wrassling’?”
    The question didn’t faze her. “Like ‘wrestling,’ only with an a.”
    â€œI tried that, but it didn’t look right. Now I’ve got it with two s’s.”
    She thought it over. “That’s vulgar,” she said. “And colloquial.”
    I swiveled my chair, propped my feet on the windowsill, and said in my most serious tone, “What are you wearing?”
    I knew the answer. I’d