The Bone House - Brian Freeman [52]
It was Cab Bolton.
Cab climbed back into the rented Corvette under Bradley's hostile glare. He had no interest in having a conversation with Mark Bradley right now, but he wanted the man to know he had followed him home. The investigation wasn't over, and if Bradley thought he had escaped with his freedom that easily, he was wrong. Cab also knew, watching Bradley erupt in fury with the ax, that his original opinion of the man had been correct.
Mark Bradley had a temper. Push him hard enough, and he lost control.
Cab did a U-turn and returned to the road that led past Schoolhouse Beach and out to the island's main highway beyond the cemetery. It occurred to him that he'd been in most corners of the world, and he didn't think he had ever felt quite as remote as he did now, on this island at the tip of the Door County peninsula. The entire stretch of land north of Sturgeon Bay felt as if he were driving through a winter ghost town, with shuttered storefronts and long stretches of forest and dormant farmlands. It was beautiful and ominous, like a transplanted corner of New England where someone had posted No Trespassing signs to keep out the rest of the world.
He'd never spent much time in the Midwest. In his head, he'd always thought of it as a place where winter lasted nine months, the cows outnumbered the people, and the land was flat and endless. Nothing he'd seen so far had changed his mind.
On the way back to the ferry port, he found a Western-style saloon in need of paint, immediately adjacent to the road. The sign said Bitters Pub. When he parked in the gravel in front of the bar, his Corvette stood out like a Hot Wheels play car next to the row of dusty pickups and hulking SUVs. He got out and smelled a waft of pine blowing in with the cold lake air. Inside, the odor of stale cigarette smoke choked the bar. He stripped off his sunglasses. He saw a long oak counter with stools on his left, square card tables scattered across a hardwood floor, and two pool tables at the rear. The walls were crowded with knick-knacks like logging saws and skis.
Three men with huge bellies drank beer, played pool, and blew smoke rings. A bored bartender, young and cute, eyed him in his expensive suit with a curious smile. A grizzled fireplug of a man sat at the bar with a mug of coffee in front of him. Cab approached the bar, and the bartender sauntered his way. She had her black hair loose, and she wore a rust wool sweater and frayed jeans.
'Help you?'
'I'm looking for Sheriff Felix Reich,' Cab told her. 'One of his deputies told me I could probably find him here.'
The girl nodded her head at the fireplug seated at the end of the bar. 'Sheriff,' she called, 'somebody's looking for you.'
Sheriff Reich's head swiveled slowly, and he took the measure of Cab from head to toe with the pinched expression of a man biting into a lemon. His eyes started at Cab's spiky blond hair and moved down his long body, taking in his pinstripes, tie, and polished loafers, and then traveled back up again, focusing on Cab's manicured fingernails and gold earring. When he was done, Reich turned away to study the steam rising out of his coffee cup, as if that was more interesting than anything Cab was likely to say.
'What can I do for you?' Reich said. His voice was as gravelly as the back roads on the island.
Cab took a seat two stools from the sheriff, with his back to the bar and his stilt-like legs stretched out into the middle of the hardwood floor. He balanced his elbows on the bar behind him. The white cuffs of his shirt, which were closed with onyx cufflinks, jutted out from the sleeves of his suit coat. He was accustomed to looking like an outsider and immune to the stares and silence when he went somewhere he didn't belong. This place was no different from a hundred others.
'Sheriff, my name is Cab Bolton,' he said. 'I'm a detective with the Naples Police in Florida.'
Reich, who wore a heavy flannel shirt tucked into corduroys, sighed and slid sideways