Hard Fall: A gripping, noir detective thriller (Thomas Blume series of Hard-Boiled Mysteries, Book 1) by P.T. Reade Page A
Authors: P.T. Reade
a confused look and then fell face down in the mud, the board still in his hands.
Then I spotted them behind Bennett’s twitching body. Two police cars, with flashing colored lights painting the rain in brilliant hues of red and blue . T wo officers sprinted through the mud, but everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
The police were shouting something. One of them held a stun gun, the hair-thin wires stretched out to where they had attached themselves to Bennett’s back.
Were they shouting to me?
“Blume?!”
I waved them off and pointed into the shed. “The house,” I gasped as best I could. “And there are…graves… bottom of the hill.”
They said something to me, but I didn’t catch it. All I heard was the pouring torrent as it dumped down on me. I lay in the mud and didn’t move for quite some time. I tried to stay awake for what seemed like hours. It might have been seconds.
Eventually I surrendered to the darkness and the steady rhythm of the rain.
ELEVEN
Breaking the habit.
An hour later, I found myself propped up on a stretcher in Billy Bennett’s living room, getting patched up by the medics. Several police were milling around, looking through his belongings, including, I noticed, the two detectives who had harangued me at my apartment. They simply passed by with a grudging nod.
I was drinking stale coffee with my left hand. My right hand was bandaged up. So was my chest. My ring finger and pinky had been broken and my palm had swollen to the size of an apple from warding off Billy’s board. At some point in the skirmish, I had also taken a blow to the side of my head, which had now been dressed by the ambulance crew.
After Billy had been taken into custody, the police had found three bodies in the poorly covered mounds that I had stumbled on. The corpses were too decomposed to identify them at the scene, but one thing was for sure: all three had been children. And with the discovery of Jack Ellington’s Who T-shirt, I was willing to bet he was one of them.
The police were also looking through the journals in the shed. Judging by the muted conversations I overheard, they were pretty sure there were at least two more bodies elsewhere on the property.
It’d been too late to save them, but there had been one saving grace of my fumbling heroics. Charlie Haines, the missing schoolboy, was alive, if not well. The kid had been whisked off to hospital. He had been bruised, catatonic with fear, and would probably require years of therapy, but the cops told me he was expected to make a full recovery in time.
“That was some timing,” I told the officer in charge of the investigation as he passed through.
“It was. It was a weird tip, too,” he said.
“How so?”
We got the call from a former Chief of Police. Bloke hasn’t even been on the force for five years. Then, 30 minutes later, I see him in the station in cuffs. It’s a damn shame.”
“Yeah, it is,” I said. Secretly thankful for Atkinson’s last minute act of bravery. He may have been a self-righteous asshole, but it seemed Henry Atkinson had finally had a crisis of conscience and turned himself at the last minute, saving my life, Charlie’s life, and probably many more. Whether it had been my confrontation with him that had caused Atkinson to do the right thing, or pure guilt, I would never know. But that wasn’t important. What was important was that Charlie Haines’ mother would get her son back tonight. She would never know the pain that Elizabeth Ellington had felt. The pain that I had felt.
Amir had been right. In my determination to solve my own family’s murder, I had accomplished nothing but a spiraling descent into boozy self-pity. When I had tried to help someone else though, someone who still had a shot at happiness, I had actually been able to make a difference. Considering how much pain I was in, that felt
Then I spotted them behind Bennett’s twitching body. Two police cars, with flashing colored lights painting the rain in brilliant hues of red and blue . T wo officers sprinted through the mud, but everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.
The police were shouting something. One of them held a stun gun, the hair-thin wires stretched out to where they had attached themselves to Bennett’s back.
Were they shouting to me?
“Blume?!”
I waved them off and pointed into the shed. “The house,” I gasped as best I could. “And there are…graves… bottom of the hill.”
They said something to me, but I didn’t catch it. All I heard was the pouring torrent as it dumped down on me. I lay in the mud and didn’t move for quite some time. I tried to stay awake for what seemed like hours. It might have been seconds.
Eventually I surrendered to the darkness and the steady rhythm of the rain.
ELEVEN
Breaking the habit.
An hour later, I found myself propped up on a stretcher in Billy Bennett’s living room, getting patched up by the medics. Several police were milling around, looking through his belongings, including, I noticed, the two detectives who had harangued me at my apartment. They simply passed by with a grudging nod.
I was drinking stale coffee with my left hand. My right hand was bandaged up. So was my chest. My ring finger and pinky had been broken and my palm had swollen to the size of an apple from warding off Billy’s board. At some point in the skirmish, I had also taken a blow to the side of my head, which had now been dressed by the ambulance crew.
After Billy had been taken into custody, the police had found three bodies in the poorly covered mounds that I had stumbled on. The corpses were too decomposed to identify them at the scene, but one thing was for sure: all three had been children. And with the discovery of Jack Ellington’s Who T-shirt, I was willing to bet he was one of them.
The police were also looking through the journals in the shed. Judging by the muted conversations I overheard, they were pretty sure there were at least two more bodies elsewhere on the property.
It’d been too late to save them, but there had been one saving grace of my fumbling heroics. Charlie Haines, the missing schoolboy, was alive, if not well. The kid had been whisked off to hospital. He had been bruised, catatonic with fear, and would probably require years of therapy, but the cops told me he was expected to make a full recovery in time.
“That was some timing,” I told the officer in charge of the investigation as he passed through.
“It was. It was a weird tip, too,” he said.
“How so?”
We got the call from a former Chief of Police. Bloke hasn’t even been on the force for five years. Then, 30 minutes later, I see him in the station in cuffs. It’s a damn shame.”
“Yeah, it is,” I said. Secretly thankful for Atkinson’s last minute act of bravery. He may have been a self-righteous asshole, but it seemed Henry Atkinson had finally had a crisis of conscience and turned himself at the last minute, saving my life, Charlie’s life, and probably many more. Whether it had been my confrontation with him that had caused Atkinson to do the right thing, or pure guilt, I would never know. But that wasn’t important. What was important was that Charlie Haines’ mother would get her son back tonight. She would never know the pain that Elizabeth Ellington had felt. The pain that I had felt.
Amir had been right. In my determination to solve my own family’s murder, I had accomplished nothing but a spiraling descent into boozy self-pity. When I had tried to help someone else though, someone who still had a shot at happiness, I had actually been able to make a difference. Considering how much pain I was in, that felt
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