Byline murders, the

The Byline Murders Prologue Somewhere west of Chicago?s Loop (about two a.m.) The two thugs who yanked Sid Coffin from the Conover hotel lobby into thirty minutes of mind-blowing terror had to know by now he had somehow freed himself from the grisly horror in their bloody van. It was Sid?s luck the murderers felt they needed a drink before continuing westward from the city to dump him and the already butchered half of their cargo. Now, chilled and filthy, he cringed against the outside wall of the clapboard two-story road house called Bud and Alma?s. He was in complete darkness, but he felt as visible and as easy to attack as a duck soaring in innocent flight over a multi-gun blind.