8 Sweet Payback Read Online Free PDF

out
at the driveway caught his attention. His deputy, Rico, was attempting to
restrain a very agitated woman. Helen Starkey.
    She had apparently recognized Beau
when he drove up and now she wanted his attention. He walked over and started
to speak but she overrode his words.
    “This is your fault, the lot of
you!” she shouted, the lines in her face fixed in anger and a deep furrow
pinching her brows together. Her chin-length gray hair had probably been
brushed this morning, but now it flew out in wild tangles and her flowered
rayon dress wasn’t nearly adequate in the chill air. She didn’t seem to notice
being cold.
    “Mrs. Starkey, I—”
    “I mean it! If you all hadn’t let
him out—”
    “Ma’am! Hold on. Let’s just talk a
minute.” It was a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation. She’d been
furious when her son went to prison, now she was furious because something
happened right after he got out.
    “I’m sorry about your loss,” Beau
said quietly. “I truly am. No one could have foreseen this. We were told it was
a hunting accident.”
    Helen Starkey settled down only
marginally. She stared at Beau with flashing blue eyes.
    He met her gaze evenly. “I need to
know what happened, Mrs. Starkey. Did Jessie go hunting this morning?”
    Joe Starkey had stepped up. He was
dressed in camouflage pants, heavy boots and a flannel shirt. Beau made eye
contact. “Mr. Starkey, maybe you can tell me what you know.”
    “I told ’em I didn’t want ’em huntin ’ today,” Helen said, pushing her way into Beau’s
line of sight once more. “I just wanted ever’body to
stay home, have a nice day together . . . I made a roast.”
    Beau made eye contact with Rico
and suggested that he take Mrs. Starkey home. She walked a few steps away but
refused to get in the deputy’s cruiser.
    Beau turned again to Joe Starkey.
“So, you and Jessie went hunting?”
    Joe’s eyes shifted left and right.
Turkey season didn’t open for another week, and he knew he was in trouble.
    “I got me a permit,” he said, a
bit defensively. “Jessie and me used to go every spring. The boy had such a
good time. Well, he just got home and we wanted to go. He was so eager. I
didn’t figure it’d do no harm. What’s the difference I shoot the bird today or
a week from today?”
    “The difference is the law and you
know that, Joe. But I’m not here to bust you for hunting out of season, even
though I probably should. I need to know what chain of events put your son into
that ambulance.”
    It sounded harsh, Beau realized,
but he had a feeling he would get a huge runaround unless he kept the guy
focused.
    Starkey’s gaze shifted again, as
if he was having trouble concentrating, and Beau wondered whether he’d been
into the liquor already this morning.
    “You and Jessie got up early, I
suppose?”
    “Yeah, well, you gotta be out
before daylight to find turkeys. So we did. We got up, dressed, headed out. Got
out to the woods about six.”
    Beau looked toward the mountain,
wondering if any of the forest near here was within the legal hunt area. He
knew the Wild Rivers area and Taos Valley Overlook were not, but wasn’t sure
about others. Again, beside the point right now. He waited for Starkey to start
talking again.
    “So, anyways, we’re walking around
out there in the dark, decide on a place to sit, and then we just wait for
sunrise. Figured we had about fifteen minutes before we could, uh, legally
shoot.”
    Again, Beau had the feeling that legally didn’t much factor into this
man’s way of doing things. Again, he stayed quiet.
    “Anyways, Jessie says he gotta
take a leak, so he lays his gun down beside me and he goes off around the
bushes somewhere. I can hear him walking over there.” He squeezed his eyes
shut. “That’s when I hear a shot.”
    He drew a deep breath. “I’m
thinking somebody’s starting at them turkeys a little too early, but then I
hear a crash in the dry leaves on the ground. I give