Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
His dogs followed him.
He turned, and giving distracted head scratches to his pups, it occurred to him he hadn’t enjoyed a night at home since Winnie died.
Not one.
But that night, he wasn’t alone with a drink, his dogs, and a game, a show or a book, the night dark and closing him into a quiet, lonely house that had once, long ago, been full of life.
That night, he’d had something a whole lot more.
And fuck, but he liked it.
On that thought, Harry gazed around his kitchen.
Even if his mom and dad had plans when they’d moved into that place, they hadn’t gotten around to finishing them, so it hadn’t been updated in decades, only the appliances replaced when the others gave out.
It was a kitchen that was all he’d known, since he bought this house and land from his father, and he grew up there.
It was a kitchen he didn’t cook in very much, because he was a busy man with a busy job, and it sucked cooking for one.
A kitchen he didn’t realize until right then he didn’t like all that much. And it wasn’t about Winnie. She’d mostly only been in it to make toast, pour a bowl of cereal, grab a mug of coffee, or eat the food he made her.
It was that it was the kitchen of someone who didn’t give a fuck. The wallpaper was dated and looked like something out of Stranger Things. The countertops were nicked. The floor was linoleum, and it had held up, but it was butt-ugly.
It was a kitchen that was an indictment of the life he’d been living. The time he’d allowed grief to steal from him.
But standing there, after being asked out by a strong, sweet, beautiful woman, Harry refused to get mired down in these thoughts.
It was what it was.
But things were changing, he was changing.
And tomorrow, it would be Saturday.
Date night.
He was getting back in the game.
But he knew he wouldn’t be if it wasn’t Lillian doing it with him.
And he was all the way down with that too.
TEN
Fork Maneuvers
Harry
At five the next evening, Harry was in his office.
He’d received word that day the dentist practice was incorrect. They’d checked their unit, and Sonny and Avery’s charts had been purged when their dentist retired, because they were old enough to be purged.
They apologized profusely, they’d wanted to help, but Harry expressed gratitude and reminded them they’d done nothing wrong.
They’d just have to wait for the DNA.
He’d come into town early (he was picking up Lillian in half an hour to take her to Luigi’s) to check if he’d heard anything from Coeur D’Alene (he hadn’t), or if there was any shit he had to deal with that he could get out of his way so he could hit the ground running on Monday.
There, he’d found a file on his desk with a Post-it on top from Rus, his friend, but also his lead detective, that said, You’re right. Shady. And worth a look. Let me know.
It was one of the files they’d tagged as suspect from Dern’s term.
Harry opened it, even if he’d already been through it closely.
He read it again.
It was the case of the apparent suicide of Clifford “Muggsy” Ballard.
Harry had been working at the department then, and by that time, the department had split down the middle. Men (and there were no women back then, not deputies, nor were there any people of color…at all) who were serious about the job were in Harry’s camp, and the others who were there to get what they could out of a position of authority and power were in Dern’s.
Harry had been one of two investigating deputies, the other one was in Dern’s camp.
However, neither of them worked this file directly.
Unusually, only Dern worked it. And very quickly, it was ruled suicide.
Though Harry remembered it, not only because that was unusual, but also because a woman came in, had a loud argument with Dern, and came out, shouting, “You’re a useless piece of dirt, sheriff!”
When Harry asked Polly who the woman was, he was told it was Muggsy’s mother.
The file was slim, with just some photos of the scene that Harry had to admit, if you took ten citizens off the street, showed those to them and said, “You’ve got twenty seconds to decide what happened here,” all ten would say it was a suicide.
However, the report was only three-quarters of a page long, and noted only friends and acquaintances suggested deceased had shown recent signs of depression.
Nothing else was done, including testing for GSR on the deceased’s hand.
It was the ME’s report that caught their eye.
Where she checked “suicide” on the report, there was an asterisk. And at the asterisk, it said see notes in report about bruising.
Harry had never seen anything like that.
Upon reading these notes, the medical examiner described the body had bruising and swelling about the face consistent with taking a beating, and defensive wounds on his arms. All of which happened very close to death, though in her estimation, not directly prior to it.