The Goodbye Man
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри
- Серия: Colter Shaw #2
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: G. P. Putnam’s Sons
- ISBN: 978-0-525-53597-3
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Goodbye Man». Краткое содержание книги:
Shaw had no clue what the man was talking about.
Velma and Teddy Bruin were visiting from Florida, where they were Shaw’s neighbors. Both of their properties — each several acres in size — fronted a large and picturesque body of water in the north central part of the state. It was reportedly gator free.
Never believe it when somebody selling you lakefront property tells you there are no gators.
In fact Shaw had never seen any of the reptiles but he was inclined to accept that rule.
Teddy, early sixties, was round and rosy and — as his names, both family and nick, implied — had a bear-like quality, enhanced by a lengthy beard of the sort favored by Civil War generals. The man wore a brown hat, a slouch — the Australian military one. The right brim was pinned up to the crown, so a slung rifle wouldn’t bump it. Not all that helpful if you weren’t on the parade grounds, as the uneven tan on Teddy’s face proved.
Slim Velma, about the same age, wore her gray-blond hair up in a do that dated to the 1960s, sprayed into the shape of a beehive, which Shaw believed was the style’s actual name. Like her husband, she was in trekking khakis.
While they were indeed Shaw’s neighbors, the couple was much more than that. They ran the business side of Shaw’s operation, scanning the media for reward offers and supervising a bot that did the same online. They also took care of the finances and accounting, tasks that utterly bored Colter Shaw and at which he therefore was inept.
He had yet to tell Velma that he’d given away the Ecumenical Council’s entire $50,000. Shaw was forever discounting rewards, if the offerors were in tough straits, or giving them extended payment plans. Velma didn’t approve of his generosity and was quite vocal about championing his financial well-being.
The couple and Chase were making a cross-country trip in their camper (Shaw had bought his own Winnebago largely because of the test-drive he’d taken in theirs). A visit to California, of course, meant a side trip to the Compound to visit Shaw and his mother.
Shaw examined something protruding from Teddy’s pocket.
“Is that an air horn?” Shaw asked.
“For bears,” was the raspy reply.
The black bear population in California hovered around forty thousand, which was a lot of bears. There’d been attacks over the years, though to Shaw’s knowledge the only black-bear-related fatality in the entire state in recent history involved a bear’s killing a mountain lion that was attacking a hiker, saving the human. The unharmed bear wandered off, leaving the man with a sense of breathless relief and more than a little regret that he’d neglected to get a video.
The creatures were generally docile and timid. And, yes, they did not like loud noises. If Shaw was concerned about bears, though, especially during cub season, he carried pepper spray.
Velma chided her husband: “Air horn versus a bear. Isn’t that like bringing a knife...” She paused.
Shaw knew the expression: bringing a knife to a gunfight.
However, she finished with: “...to a fight where the other guy has a bigger knife?”
Teddy and Shaw laughed.
Velma said, “We didn’t see any. Bears. I was hoping.” She frowned as a thought arose. “Hey, Colt. I got the check for the thousand sixty dollars — the reward Erick Young’s family offered. But I haven’t heard a stitch about the big one. The fifty K. Should I call somebody about it?”
Busted...
“Well. About that, Velma.”
There was nothing to do but tell her the truth.
The woman sighed. “Let me get this straight. You gave away a fifty-thousand-dollar reward, and then, for no money whatsoever, you spent the last few days nearly getting killed by Charles Manson and family.”
He sought grounds for dispute but found none. “Pretty accurate.”
“Lord, Colter, you’re not made of money.”
“You got a Barkley stuffed dog out of the situation.” Shaw nodded at the toy he’d bought for her on the drive here.
“Be still my heart.” She grunted, which given her melodious voice was a pleasant tone nonetheless. “Set a spell, Colt.”
“The boondocks’re growing on you, bride.” Teddy chuckled. “‘Set a spell’? You’ve never used that expression in your entire life.”
She opened her arms. “Look around you. You gotta talk Western.”
Shaw said, “Got some things to take care of right now. I’ll see you at dinner.”
Shaw walked into the kitchen where his mother was chopping vegetables.
Mary Dove resembled a lean frontierswoman, her gray hair in a braid. Her present appearance wasn’t very different from that of years ago, when she was a star medical professor, grant director and psychiatrist/general practitioner in the Bay Area. Her quiet yet unyielding demeanor also was largely unchanged. After Ashton’s death, most in the family assumed she’d resume her life in San Francisco. Colter had known she wouldn’t, though. Here she’d remain, practicing general medicine and physical therapy, hosting retreats on topics like women’s health and psychopathology, and delivering the occasional baby.
“Well?” She gestured vaguely in the direction of Echo Ridge, miles away and not visible from the cabin.
“Found it.” He told her where the package was, that he’d get it in the morning.
Mary Dove was incapable of registering surprise but her son thought that maybe, just maybe, her eyes widened a millimeter or two.
“We’ll talk when you do. Decisions’ll have to be made.” Mary Dove’s voice was firm. After all, what Shaw had found at Echo Ridge was this secret that had led to her husband’s and others’ deaths. She was not a vindictive woman by any means — revenge, as Victoria had suggested, is a waste of time at best and leads to misfortune at worst. But self-preservation and survival of the family? That was paramount. Shaw had seen his mother calmly lift a .30–30 to her shoulder and squeeze off a round to drop a rabid wolf. To learn Ash’s secret meant to understand a lethal threat. And once you comprehended a risk, you could minimize it.
Or, better, eliminate it.
Mary Dove now poured two cups of coffee, added some milk to each. Shaw took them from her and walked into the living room of the cabin and looked out the window. He said, “Always liked this view.”
“Beautiful,” said Victoria Lesston, who was sitting on the couch. He handed over a steaming mug and sat down beside her.
75
When she’d fallen, she’d fallen into water, not upon rock.
In anger or dismay, Samuel hadn’t planned his assault; he’d simply picked the target he could succeed with. He knew he’d never beat Colter Shaw. So he’d flung Victoria over the cliff, assuming that a rocky shore lay below. Or perhaps not assuming anything at all.
In fact her landing bed was the deep lake that stretched to the foothills below the soaring peaks in the distance.
Shaw had run to the cliff’s edge. And peered down to the place where Victoria floated faceup, bobbing, bobbing.
Samuel too floated but his back was skyward.
Shaw had called Special Agent Slay’s number, gave his location and said, “Now. EMTs.” Then he assessed. Eighty feet. Not an impossible dive but one whose trajectory would have to be planned perfectly, and practiced.
No time for that. He pulled off his shirt, shoes and socks. Then he’d climbed down to a narrow ledge about twenty-five feet below the crest.
Shaw gazed down. The shade of the water suggested it was deep.
No time for percentages. Victoria was going under.
He leapt, windmilling his arms to stay vertical, which never worked as well as you’d hope, he’d learned. Jumping from this height he hit the water at twenty-five miles per hour. He reflected in the three-second descent that one can still float with two broken ankles.