Free Before The Killing Starts (Dixie Killer Blues Book 1) by Harper James

trying to
squeeze the juice out of a lemon. He felt the pain now, sharp and bright, as he
watched his blood drip onto the desk. He could feel a sliver of glass caught in
his flesh and squeezed tighter still.
    'Not one hundred per
cent, no,' Alvarez said. 'Miguel's a retard, a bit like . . .  but I thought I
should let you know. So you can make your own mind up.'
    Chico closed his eyes
and breathed deeply, concentrating on the throbbing pain radiating out from his
hand, clean and cathartic, keeping at bay the other, far worse, torment that
waited its turn somewhere close behind.
    'Chico?'
    'Yes, yes, thank you
Enrico. That was the right thing to do.'
    Chico heard Alvarez chuckle softly on the
other end of the line.
    'Lucky you sent him to
see if I stole your money, eh?'
    Jesus wept.
    Chico cut off a strangled groan in his
throat. He held his cut hand to his brow, felt the wetness of his blood on his
skin and counted to five in his head. No, make that ten.
    'I hope he didn't give
you that impression, Enrico,' Chico said in a calm, measured tone. Where it
came from he had no idea. 'That was never a possibility in my mind.' He coughed
a cheerless laugh. 'Given what you just told me, I think we can assume he was
trying to cause trouble between us.'
    Chico didn't really care whether Alvarez
believed him or not, but it never hurt to say what people wanted to hear.
    'I'm sure you're right, Chico,' Alvarez said, managing to make it sound like whatever .
    Chico cut the call and threw the phone at
the wall. Everybody in the room looked at their shoes, the damp patch on the
ceiling that always came back however many times they painted it, anywhere,
basically, apart from directly at Chico. He bent and picked up the jagged base
of the glass and threw that at the wall too and went to wash the blood from his
hand.
    In the bathroom he
picked a long sliver of glass out of the deepest cut and held his hand under
the water until it ran clear. He couldn't believe what he'd just heard. But
then again, it didn't surprise him. In the mirror his face looked resigned more
than angry, as if someone had finally told him something he’d never wanted to
hear but had always known was coming. In the end everybody disappointed you,
everybody let you down, it was just a matter of how long it took.
    We enter the world alone,
we leave the world alone.
    He could see a vein
throbbing in the center of his forehead, smeared with his blood. He put his
finger on it and held it down but couldn't find his pulse anywhere. He'd been
let down before and it would happen again, but this time it hurt more than he
could have imagined. And to think that not more than a few short hours ago, he
had wished to himself that Dixie was his son, rather than that . . .
    If he had been a weaker
man he suspected he would have wept but he hadn't wept since he stood in the
desert all those years ago, his father balanced on his shoulders.
     
     
     

 
     
    Chapter 16
     
    As soon as he'd finished
on the phone with Ellie Evan put a call in to Ed Guillory. Guillory was a
detective with the local police department and they'd almost become friends
after the case that had thrown then together. Since then Guillory had helped
Evan out on a number of occasions, probably because he thought Evan was such a
nice guy. And—as Evan liked to point out whenever he got the opportunity—Evan's
taxes were paying his wages after all.
    Unfortunately, it wasn't
Guillory who answered the phone; it was his partner, Ryder. Evan and Ryder had
got off to a bad start and it had gone rapidly downhill from there. Their
mutual animosity was a constant source of amusement to Guillory.
    'How's the diet going, E-Z?'
Evan said when Ryder picked up. Evan knew they were never going to have a good
relationship, so he may as well have a bit of sport with the guy.
    'Up yours, Buckley,'
Ryder responded with all his usual ill-humor. 'And don't call me that. Friends,
colleagues and all the other normal human beings I meet