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

“How’s that?”

Beason winked, like they were suddenly old buds. “The Hernandez brothers have agreed to cooperate in exchange for a plea deal. They’ll provide us with the answers we need.”

“What about Donita Willets,” Cutter asked. “It’s not suddenly moot to her.”

“I’m not saying that,” Beason growled. “But I can only do one thing at a time.”

Cutter gave him a half grin. “That’s what you have us for. You’re going to keep a lid on this? Right? It leaks that the Hernandez brothers are talking, that just turns up the heat on Donita Willets.”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job,” Beason growled. “Of course we’re keeping a lid on it. I wouldn’t even have told you if Warneke hadn’t ordered me to. It’s bottled up tight. No one outside FBI leadership and the US Attorney’s office.”

Only fifteen or twenty people then, Cutter thought. Buttoned up all right. Like the Hell’s Angels’ famous credo: “Three could keep a secret – if two of them were dead.”

Chapter 34

It was relatively easy for Schimmel to steal a skiff after he’d tossed the kid. Everyone had been focused on the rescue, allowing him time to give the fuel priming bulb a couple of squeezes and set the choke on the outboard. It was a thirty horse, not a great deal of compression, but yanking on the starter rope was excruciating and sent arcs of pain across his chest and under both arms. The motor coughed and sputtered, but started after the third try.

Schimmel sat on an overturned paint bucket at the tiller, throttle cranked wide open, running blind across Gastineau Channel through chowder-thick fog. Fortunately, it was the wrong time of the year for cruise ships, or he would have risked being crushed and chopped to chowder himself. The cops would be after him as soon as they pulled the kid out of the water. They’d probably shoot him if the kid drowned, or beat the shit out of him at the very least. What was he supposed to do? Let that big guy catch him? He didn’t know what that guy was selling, but he didn’t want any part of it.

Halfway across it dawned on him that the cops had radios. The channel was barely a mile wide, less in most places, but they didn’t even need to drive across the bridge to catch him, or wait to fish the kid’s body out. They’d just call across and whatever troopers or JPD cops who happened to already be there would be waiting for him on the other side, probably all lined up at the harbor ready to blow his head off as soon as he rounded the breakwater.

He turned south, down the channel, past the tank farm and the sewage treatment plant to his left. He thought of running all the way to Stephens Passage. Auclair would hide him if he could get to the Valkyrie, but that was a no go. The wimpy fuel can in the skiff was only about half full, not nearly enough juice to get him thirty miles, especially not at this speed.

He turned to look behind him, winced at the pulse of pain it shot through his razor wounds, then slowed a hair, straining his ears, listening for pursuing boats in the fog.

Feeble lights told him he was abeam Douglas Harbor to his right. He slowed even more, cheating more to the middle of the narrow channel, hoping he could sneak past any waiting cops.

Schimmel had to get out of town – not so easy when the only way in and out was by boat or plane. Childers would know. Yeah. That was it. He’d give Dallas Childers a call. Childers would come meet him, tell him what he should do.

Tears welled in Schimmel’s eyes when Childers picked up on the second ring. He was gruff, dismissive when he answered, but he was always that way. It didn’t mean anything.

Schimmel gave a quick rundown of what had happened, trying not to cry, leaving out the part about taking the shaman’s rattle from the dig.

“So what do you think I should do?”

Silence.

Schimmel didn’t worry. Childers was probably trying to figure out the best way to get him out of here.

“I know a place,” Childers finally said. “It’s kind of a climb, but it’ll get you away from the cops.”

Schimmel listened to the directions and then turned the boat farther south toward the old Treadwell Mine. He felt better knowing that Childers was on his way. Yeah, he was gruff, unpolished, but he was the closest thing Dean Schimmel had to a friend.

Chapter 35

Harold Grimsson pounded the arm of his leather chair with the flat of his calloused hand. Dollarhyde’s voice poured from the speaker of the cell phone on the table beside him. The condescending bastard was telling him there was absolutely no way to kill the Hernandez brothers.

“Oh,” Grimsson said, sloshing the whiskey in his other hand as he smacked the chair again. “There’s always a way.”

“True enough,” Dollarhyde conceded. “If you accept the risks that go along with it.”

“What do I pay you for?” Grimsson’s voice rose nearly an octave. “Let me ask you that. I told you I wanted those little pendejo rats dead, what? Two weeks ago? You assure me that you’ll take care of it and then come back with nothing but excuses. My ancestors would have cut your head off with an axe!”

“Mr. Grim—”

“Don’t you Mr. Grimsson me! You gave me certain expectations when I hired you. Was it all a bag of shit?”

“No,” Dollarhyde said. “It was not all a bag of shit.” His voice was even, unflappable, as it always was, the mocking, ginger-ale-sipping, self-righteous son of a bitch. “I suppose I could get myself arrested and then shank both brothers myself during chow…”

Grimsson found himself nodding in agreement. He scooted forward in his chair and took a bracing slug of whiskey. Finally. A good idea. “Now you’re thinking like the guy I pay