Marine Corpse (30 page)

I frowned. “What good does that do?”

“Well, I had no trouble hearing what you had to say to me, Mr. Coyne.” He grinned. “People see this thing in my ear, they just naturally talk louder. So I hear them fine. Helluva hearing aid.”

Seelye Smith accompanied me through the reception area. I nodded to Kirk, the receptionist, and turned to Smith. I held out my hand, and he stuck his own mangled appendage into it.

“Good fishing, Mr. Coyne,” he said.

“And good hunting to you. I’ll be in touch soon. I hope you can scare up some answers.”

“I expect I will,” he drawled.

I walked out into the crisp June sunshine, climbed into my BMW, and pointed it at Greenville, nearly two hundred miles to the north and west. I was heading into the vast, still largely untracked Maine wilderness. I couldn’t wait to get there.

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Dead Meat
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MY THANKS ONCE AGAIN
to Betsy Rapoport, my estimable editor, Rick Bayer, my good friend, and Cindy, my dear wife. Their contributions to this story
—
and to this writer’s spirit
—
have been beyond measure.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1986 by William G. Tapply

Cover design by Kathleen Lynch

978-1-4804-2736-5

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