Free Rockinghorse by William W. Johnstone Page B

walking stick.”
    â€œYes?”
    The trooper grimaced. “Well, sir. I got a nasty letter back from the lab boys. You see, that blood wasn’t pure human.”
    Lucas looked at him, the events of the day leaping into his brain, cloudy, but still real. “What do you mean, pure human?”
    Kyle sighed. “There was . . . well, hell, I don’t know how to say this. It was blood. But the lab boys—lab people—I guess I’d better get used to saying it, say there was . . . things in the blood they just couldn’t quite identify. I didn’t say that right.”
    â€œ Things? ”
    â€œWell, sir, that blood was old, the lab folks said. They said it was like somebody uncovered a bottle of blood that was kept uncontaminated for years and then mixed it up with old animal blood”
    â€œYou’re serious!”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œTrooper, I hit somebody out there in those woods. Or some thing . Whatever. I heard it scream in pain.”
    â€œWell, I tell you this, Mr. Bowers. I surely hope whatever in the hell it was you hit is long gone from around here. ’Cause I’d sure hate to meet that son of a bitch face to face.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œWell, sir, one smart-aleck down at the lab said the only type of creatures who might have had blood like was found on your stick have been extinct for about a million years.”

7
    That night, lying in bed beside Tracy, Lucas told her what the state trooper had said. She was silent for several moments. Finally she sighed heavily.
    â€œIs somebody playing some macabre joke on us, Lucas? ”
    â€œMacabre is right. But what do you mean? What would be the point of it?”
    â€œPut that lawyer’s mind to work, Lucas. Who stands to gain if we leave here without selling this house?”
    â€œI’ve thought of that, Trace. I even brought a copy of the original will down here with me. I’ve gone over it very carefully. It’s like I said before. With Ira declared dead, all her monies went toward the upkeep of this . . . elephant.”
    The house seemed to sigh.
    â€œDid you hear that?” Tracy asked.
    â€œI sure heard something. Anyway, if my parents had lived to sell the house—but I don’t think they would have had any better luck than we’ve had—the monies would have been equally divided between the three of us: Mom, Dad, and me. There is no one else that stands to gain a thing by driving us out of here.”
    â€œExcept for Lige.”
    â€œHoney, I don’t think that man has enough sense to pull off something of this scope. Not without a lot of help. His embezzlement efforts were textbook crude; no better than the average child could do. All that saved him—until we arrived—was that no one down in Atlanta questioned his receipts. And he really isn’t in as much trouble as I want him to believe. The estate paid him X amount of dollars, with no direction as to where the monies were to go. Surprisingly sloppy. And, something else. He really hasn’t squirreled away all that much money. Just about a thousand dollars a year; he says he’s been here twenty-five years, and he’s banked about twenty-five thousand dollars. He didn’t drink or gamble it away. He told me face to face he put money back for his retirement.”
    She turned in the bed to face her husband. “I don’t trust him, Lucas.”
    â€œOh, I don’t either.” He told her about Jim’s warnings about Lucas’s window peeping. “I tried to pin him down about his past the other day and I never heard so many side-stepping replies and outright lies since I worked in the PD’s office. I finally gave up. I guess I’m going to have to drive down and see this Mr. Garrett in Atlanta. Maybe he can fill in some blanks.”
    â€œHave fun.”
    * * *
    â€œI’m sorry, Mr. Bowers,” the receptionist told him. “But