"Rain, Anthony Vincent - Three Palms" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rain Anthony Vincent)

"If that covers Melbourne into Routledge."

"Yes, it does. You want Florida Today. We have all those archives on computer."

She led me over to a terminal, brought up the web site and typed in a password. She smiled and walked away.

I scanned back issues of the newspaper starting in the winter of 2000. It didn't take long. There wasn't much news in this town.

The biggest cover stories were devoted to NASA, and most of those were about the Space Shuttle. NASA was just twenty minutes up the coast. Hence the nickname, Space Coast.

The local crime stats and brief stories were on the second page. On March 20th of 2000, there was a three-paragraph article with the headline "Sporting Goods Store Robbed." It went on to state that Jack's World of Sports in Routledge had been broken into and a thousand dollars in cash stolen on March 19th. The money had been taken from a closet which was serving as a makeshift safe while the real deal was being repaired. Two men had been seen hanging around and acting suspicious in the parking lot earlier in the evening.

I found a small follow-up article about two weeks later headed "Titusville Man Arrested." It was only a few sentences long and stated that Jackson was arrested for robbing Jack's, and no other arrests were expected.

Then I found the article from three weeks ago. Jackson had assaulted a man named John Lee Thomas at the Melbourne Greyhound Park on a Tuesday morning.

The article stated that Mr. Thomas owned Orange Kennel, which was housed at the racetrack. Apparently, Jackson had gotten onto the kennel's private property, where Mr. Thomas stopped him. Jackson claimed to be looking for the men's room, while Mr. Thomas said that Jackson was acting suspiciously. Either way, they got into an altercation, track security called the police, and Jackson was arrested.

I printed out copies of both articles and thanked the librarian.

"You're welcome, sugar," she said.

* * *

The three dogs at the front were no more than a blur of colors and flying dirt. They were disciplined, ignoring each other except for positioning, and paying attention only to the mechanical lure. In a fraction of a second, red number seven pulled away and damn near caught the lure.

After he crossed the finish line first, to cheers and groans, he loped a bit longer and then headed towards his trainer, who patted him low on the chest and led him away.

Most of the bettors were seated in the dining area, avoiding the sun and watching the race results on monitors. I picked up a brochure at the next table. It stated that last year's total purse at Melbourne Racing Park was just over two hundred thousand dollars. The figure was low, but it looked like the crowd was mostly retirees, so it wasn't too surprising.

I asked one of the waiters where I could find Mr. Thomas. He pointed to an older man in a Hawaiian shirt and khaki pants down by the open dog boxes.

Thomas was speaking to one of his employees, who had several dogs leashed together sitting next to him. The dogs looked off across the dirt oval, occasionally nuzzling one another, but basically acting mellow in the hot afternoon. Not a bad idea, I thought.

I introduced myself to Thomas and explained to him why I was there. He excused the employee, who had to wait while one of the dogs relieved itself by the edge of the track.

Thomas was a gregarious man in his fifties. He punctuated his sentences with a finger jabbed into the air, generally in my direction.

"No way that boy was lost looking for a restroom," he said. "Only ones relieving themselves down here are the dogs, son."

He looked behind him at the track.

"The article stated that you two struggled."

Thomas laughed. "Well, he sort of pushed me to get away. He was more scared at getting caught than anything, I guess." Thomas put a meaty hand up to his brow to block the sun, then started jabbing the air again with the other hand. "I was sure he was up to no good, but I only wanted to scare him, and I don't have time to give a statement and go to court and that. I dropped the charges."

That would explain why Donny Jackson was walking around instead of sitting in jail.

"You say he was killed, son?"