Red Highway (21 page)

The sheriff kneels, dips his fingers in the blood. It is fresh. Straightening, he taps two of his deputies on their shoulders and jerks his head to indicate the darkened furniture shop that looms quietly over the narrow street, its big plate glass window made opaque by a drawn shade. The deputies nod their understanding and signal to the others. In the charcoal-gray of early morning, the search for Virgil Ballard comes to a halt.

“We know you're in there, Ballard.” The sheriff's voice is awkward through hours of unuse. He clears his throat raspingly before going on. “Throw out your gun and come out with your hands in the air.” The rain patters through the stretch of silence. After two minutes, the lawman indicates the first two deputies. “Go around back and force your way in.”

When they have gone, McCracken sweeps his eyes around the rest of the men and grasps his shotgun tightly. The others understand. They reach the glass-paneled door and wait. Water seeps through between the rolled awning and the wall of the shop and bleeds down the black window like nervous perspiration.

There is a crash from inside the shop. The deputy nearest the door responds by kicking and bursting the lock, and the lawmen rush inside. They pause in the opening, shotguns ready. The interior is a jumble of indistinct black shapes with a wide aisle cutting through them to the back of the shop. The light is gray and indistinct, filtering in through the smashed door and lying across the scene like a dampened sheet.

“Back here, Sheriff.” The voice comes from the back of the shop. “We found him.”

Lanky Jake is the first to reach the open space before the back door. He whistles. The sheriff is next, followed by the rest of the deputies.

The two men who had come in the back stand on the other side of the bed display, looking like pallbearers at a funeral. Virgil Ballard is stretched facedown across the bed. His face is buried in the pillow, partially obscured by his disheveled blond hair. The converted Luger lies on the floor, inches beneath the fingers of his limp hand. The blood on the tangled bedsheets is still fresh.

“He must of taken a pound of lead.” Jake's voice is hushed.

“Blood till hell won't have it,” drawls another.

The sheriff nudges the thick-set deputy at his side. “Go get the feds.” The deputy withdraws grudgingly.

“Lookit his legs.” An older deputy directs his flashlight on the foot of the bed. The pin-striped trouser legs are stained an ugly brown.

Jake hisses an astonished oath. “Christ, how'd he get this far on two busted legs?”

The sheriff places a fat cigar between his teeth and lights it. “Them kind of people ain't human. That's how they keep goin'.” He shrugs it off and turns away, blowing volumes of gray smoke toward the open front door. “Jeez, will you lookit that rain? Probably keep it up all day long.”

A Biography of Loren D. Estleman

Loren D. Estleman (b. 1952) is the award-winning author of over sixty-five novels, including mysteries and westerns.

Raised in a Michigan farmhouse constructed in 1867, Estleman submitted his first story for publication at the age of fifteen and accumulated 160 rejection letters over the next eight years. Once
The Oklahoma Punk
was published in 1976, success came quickly, allowing him to quit his day job in 1980 and become a fulltime writer.

Estleman's most enduring character, Amos Walker, made his first appearance in 1980's
Motor City Blue
, and the hardboiled Detroit private eye has been featured in twenty novels since. The fifth Amos Walker novel,
Sugartown
, won the Private Eye Writers of America's Shamus Award for best hardcover novel of 1985. Estleman's most recent Walker novel is
Infernal Angels
.

Estleman has also won praise for his adventure novels set in the Old West. In 1980,
The High Rocks
was nominated for a National Book Award, and since then Estleman has featured its hero, Deputy U.S. Marshal Page Murdock, in seven more novels, most recently 2010's
The Book of Murdock
. Estleman has received awards for many of his standalone westerns, receiving recognition for both his attention to historical detail and the elements of suspense that follow from his background as a mystery author.
Journey of the Dead
, a story of the man who murdered Billy the Kid, won a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, and a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

In 1993 Estleman married Deborah Morgan, a fellow mystery author. He lives and works in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Loren D. Estleman in a Davy Crockett ensemble at age three aboard the Straits of Mackinac ferry with his brother, Charles, and father, Leauvett.

Estleman at age five in his kindergarten photograph. He grew up in Dexter, Michigan.

Estleman in his study in Whitmore Lake, Michigan, in the 1980s. The author wrote more than forty books on the manual typewriter he is working on in this image.

Estleman and his family. From left to right: older brother, Charles; mother, Louise; father, Leauvett; and Loren.

Estleman and Deborah Morgan at their wedding in Springdale, Arkansas, on June 19, 1993.

Estleman with actor Barry Corbin at the Western Heritage Awards in Oklahoma City in 1998. The author won Outstanding Western Novel for his book
Journey of the Dead
.

Loren signing books at Eyecon in St. Louis in 1999. He was the guest of honor.

Estleman and his fellow panelists at Bouchercon in 2000. From left to right: Harper Barnes, John Lutz, Loren D. Estleman, Max Allan Collins, and Stuart M. Kaminsky.