BooksBarbecue
Back Whistle
Chapters (73)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. Part IAnnie
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Part IIHarry
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-One
  27. Part IIIAnnie
  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. Part IVHarry
  40. Thirty-Three
  41. Thirty-Four
  42. Thirty-Five
  43. Thirty-Six
  44. Thirty-Seven
  45. Thirty-Eight
  46. Thirty-Nine
  47. Forty
  48. Forty-One
  49. Forty-Two
  50. Forty-Three
  51. Forty-Four
  52. Forty-Five
  53. Forty-Six
  54. Forty-Seven
  55. Forty-Eight
  56. Part VAnnie
  57. Forty-Nine
  58. Fifty
  59. Fifty-One
  60. Fifty-Two
  61. Fifty-Three
  62. Fifty-Four
  63. Fifty-Five
  64. Fifty-Six
  65. Fifty-Seven
  66. Fifty-Eight
  67. Fifty-Nine
  68. Sixty
  69. Sixty-One
  70. Acknowledgments
  71. About the Author
  72. Also by Linwood Barclay
  73. About the Publisher

Nabler, who would be the first to admit he was not particularly skilled in the areas of marital intimacy, decided to put on a happy face. “You might be surprised. She might take to it. Like a duck to water, as they say.”

Wendell ran the tips of his fingers over the engine’s surface. “You can actually feel the rivets. That’s some nice detailing. And there’s a little engineer in the cab and everything.” He took his fingers away briefly, then delicately touched them to the engine again. “That’s weird,” he said.

“Yes?’

“I get . . . I get a little buzzing in my fingers when I touch it.”

“I wouldn’t think that’s possible. It’s not on a length of powered track.”

“But I feel . . . something.”

Nabler nodded with a sudden understanding. “I know what you’re feeling. That’s what we model train aficionados call the tingle of excitement.”

Ten

Chief Harry Cook had seen his share of bad shit since taking the top policing job in Lucknow seven years earlier. Seen a lot even before that, too, when he was a regular cop and not the guy in charge.

Plenty of car accidents, of course. You had to have a strong stomach for those. First time he responded to one, he lost his biscuits. A tractor trailer with a load of lawn tractors ran a red and broadsided a woman in a little Corolla who’d already proceeded into the intersection. The impact sent the car flying a good hundred feet. When Harry looked into the Corolla and saw what was left of the woman, his stomach rolled over like an empty trash can in a windstorm. He ran over to the ditch to throw up, and, while he had his hands on his knees, had a very brief conversation with himself.

You are either going to be able to do this job, or you’re not. Make up your mind.

He stood, took a couple of deep breaths, and resumed his investigation of the accident, which involved administering a Breathalyzer test to the truck driver, who blew so high he was basically a walking brewery.

There’d been plenty more stomach-churning scenes since then. A bar fight where a bouncer took the jagged end of a broken beer bottle in the neck. Nothing short of a miracle that he survived. Less fortunate was the fellow who worked in the service department of Lucknow Ford whose wife took a baseball bat to the side of his head while he was eating a bowl of Cream of Wheat at breakfast. That guy never woke up, and based on what Harry had learned from the dead man’s bruised and psychologically damaged wife, he had it coming.

And then there was that house fire on the north side of town.