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Back The Outside Man Save as PDF
Chapters (42)
  1. Cover Page
  2. EARLY BIRD BOOKS
  3. Praise for the Writing of Richard North Patterson
  4. Title Page
  5. Dedication
  6. Epigraph
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. Fourteen
  21. Fifteen
  22. Sixteen
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-one
  28. Twenty-two
  29. Twenty-three
  30. Twenty-four
  31. Twenty-five
  32. Twenty-six
  33. Twenty-seven
  34. Twenty-eight
  35. Twenty-nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-one
  38. Thirty-two
  39. Thirty-three
  40. Thirty-four
  41. Thirty-five
  42. About the Author

I staggered up and ran after her, warm blood down my face and neck. There were footsteps in the greenhouse. The door at its rear was open. Then she was outside running pigeon-toed across the lawn, arms flying upward as she stumbled and fell. I caught up to her crawling forward on her hands and knees, hurt sounds coming from deep in her throat. “You bastard,” she was saying. “Look at what I am, you bastard.”

She was no longer talking to me, or about me. I walked in front of her to stop her crawling. Her face bent over my shoes as she began weeping helplessly.

“Come on,” I said.

She looked up, face shiny with sweat and tears. I reached down. She took my hand, struggling upright. “You’re cut,” she said blankly.

“It’s under my eye. You missed.”

Her whole body seemed to wilt and her head lolled. “It was Henry Cantwell,” she mumbled. “I saw his car.” She turned and began stumbling toward the house.

I let her go.

I walked slowly to the car, handkerchief held to my face. When I looked in the rearview, blood trickled from a one-inch gash. It didn’t matter. I was thinking of Henry Cantwell.

Twenty-one

TWENTY-ONE

At the emergency room a mustached young doctor in cowboy boots took six stitches and made jokes while a nurse sponged the blood off my face and neck. When they finished I drove to my office, told people who asked that I’d tripped at home, and shut the door behind me without returning a message from Cade that ordered me to call. I felt trapped and shaken.

I was pulling a fresh shirt from my credenza when the telephone rang.

“Mr. Shaw.” Mooring’s voice was strained. “We’re going to need a precise understanding.”

“I have one, Mooring. You’re a liar, and maybe worse.”

There was a long silence. “Meet me at the club,” he said finally. “Twelve-thirty.”

I hesitated, tracing the stitches with my finger. “Make it noon.”

He hung up.

I looked at my watch. It was eleven-thirty. At four o’clock Rayfield would ask for Mooring’s name.

I began pacing. But I could talk to no one about Joanne Mooring—except Cade. I would have to meet Mooring.

When I arrived the club was teeming: golfers in bright shirts, overdressed matrons with sullen mouths, bankers come to lunch with borrowers and look into their faces. Parking-lot boys eased long cars to rest, chrome gleaming in the sun. On the far tennis court two figures in white scrambled amidst money-green trees.