Bone Rattle by Marc Cameron (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📕

the heavy timbers of the wharf toward a line of parked cars. She balanced a flat of coffee cups on top of the extra-wide stroller.

The skinny guy looked out of place, uncomfortable, like he’d been dropped off at the wrong address or escaped from solitary confinement.

“See that guy with the scruff and the red bandanas tied around his hands?”

“Yep,” Cutter said.

Cutter estimated the man was about six feet tall. Thin, but not the healthy kind. All bone and skin, like an addict – the kind of person Lola would have said survived on the “smell of an oily rag.” He had a bouncing stride that looked as if he was loping when he walked. One arm stayed close to his chest, the other hovered over his belly, elbows tight, like he had a broken rib or some other injury that hurt him when he moved. He was probably thirty, but carried himself like a very old man.

Cutter shot the reporter a quick glance, then returned to Bandana Hands. “What about him?”

“I saw him sitting in a truck in front of the federal building yesterday.”

“Post office, maybe?” Cutter said.

“Maybe. But he was there when I left for lunch and there when I got back. I was waiting for a call from Donita. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I can tell when someone’s watching me, and he definitely was.”

“You know him?”

“Never saw him before yesterday.”

Cutter was already on his feet. He peeled two twenties off the roll in his pocket and left them on the table.

The double doors in the lobby slid open automatically when Cutter approached, letting the cool air from outside hit him in the face like a damp washcloth. Bandana Hands crossed under the glow of a streetlight, shooting a nervous glance over his shoulder as he walked north from the Wharf building. His collar was turned up against a steady drizzle, but he’d left the hood of his raincoat down, presumably so he could keep his head on a swivel. He was hinky about being followed, which made Cutter want to follow him all the more.

Lori Maycomb stood inside, well away from the entrance.

“Wait here,” Cutter said, and stepped out the door at a trot. He moved obliquely, like he was going straight to the restaurant. Bandana Hands flicked another look over his shoulder, saw Cutter, sized him up like a grazing gazelle deciding if it was time to run. He looked at the hotel entrance – then froze, mid-bounce. His face fell, not really a frown, more like he was melting in the rain. Cutter followed his gaze to find Lori Maycomb standing at the hotel doors.

“Fantastic,” Cutter muttered to himself.

Bandana Hands tucked his head – and bolted.

Chapter 31

Cutter knew a thing or two about chasing people. The smart ones – and there were very few of those – just took off, trying to make the most of any head start. Experienced crooks did the same, even if they weren’t smart. Bandana Hands was neither.

Animals – humans included – tended to follow the path of least resistance when they moved. Some trackers called this the “natural line of drift.” Grumpy called it “funneling.” “Ten guys walk out of hunting camp to take a dump at different times of the day, nine of them get funneled to the same spot and end up planting a boot in somebody else’s crap.”

It was human nature to take the easier way, to let the terrain dictate direction of travel.

Bandana Hands followed that logic – at first.

The Gastineau Channel lay to his left, a twenty-foot drop from the wharf. The streets and alleys of downtown were to his right, but that was all uphill. Bandana Hands’s legs told him it was better to run parallel to the street instead of crossing it and having to work to gain elevation.

Cutter was fast and this guy was injured. It wasn’t anything close to a fair footrace. Cutter gained ground with every stride. Pumping his arms. Feeling the familiar bump when his elbow touched the Colt Python on his hip. It was good to open up, to run all out after someone who needed to be caught. He’d already zeroed in on the spot between Bandana Hands’s shoulder blades where he’d give a little shove. Tackling was for rookies who’d never broken a rib on some felon’s boot heel. Another ten steps and it would all be over but the paperwork.

Then Bandana Hands saw the lady with the jogging stroller. Maybe that had been his goal all along. He juked between two pickup trucks, rounding up so he was face-to-face with the startled lady. The back door of her Subaru was open, where she’d been bent over fastening one of her kids into a car seat. The other, a child of two or three, stood at her mother’s thigh, all but eclipsed by an oversize yellow rain coat.

Bandana Hands scooped up the child as he ran by, wincing with pain, but digging into a sprint.

Directly toward the water.

Cutter was right behind him, ten steps away, maybe less, but it didn’t matter.

Bandana Hands ran along the edge of the boardwalk until he cleared a waiting tug boat that was moored stern to the wharf, and then tossed the screaming toddler over the side like a piece of garbage.

Five more steps and Cutter would have had the son of a bitch. No little shove now. A human sled ride to the ground, face-first. But the kid was in the water. New terrain that dictated Cutter’s direction of travel.

He took a scant second at the edge to locate the yellow raincoat sinking beneath the surface. The water was black as stone. For all he knew, there were stones down there, big ones, just deep enough they didn’t scrape the bottom of a boat, but plenty shallow to break your neck if you dove from the wharf.

The glint of yellow raincoat faded from sight, so he jumped anyway, feetfirst.

Cutter braced himself, waiting for impact, but felt only