Casting Bones Read Online Free PDF Page A

percent of your cases are solved, and you’re telling me we might already have the killer?’
    Strand stepped on the gas and the Buick shot forward.
    â€˜Those interviews you and I did at the lobster place?’
    â€˜Yeah?’ Archer detected a slight odor of alcohol on his partner’s breath.
    â€˜One of the line cooks got a year from the good judge. For some petty theft when he was a minor.’
    â€˜Priors?’
    â€˜Looks like it was his first.’
    â€˜A year? Sounds a little harsh.’
    Strand wrapped his hands around the hard plastic steering wheel, staring intently at the narrow street as shops and small houses rolled by.
    â€˜He thought so too. Complained about it to some of his coworkers. Anyway, five minutes after I talked to him, he walked off the job. He was two hours into an eight-hour shift.’
    â€˜Maybe he got sick?’
    â€˜Maybe. But that manager, Marcus Walker, says the kid was one of his best workers. Today, he never said anything to anyone. Just took a powder. I got the call five minutes ago. We’re going to the guy’s house. I got a feeling about this, Q. We’ve got a disgruntled ex-con who found a way to get his payback. What do you think?’
    â€˜I hope you’re right.’
    â€˜Even if we solve it, I can’t begin to tell you how much pressure there’s going to be. The victim was a white judge. And this guy, this cook, he was a black thief. You were in Detroit. You know how these things play out.’
    Archer nodded.
    â€˜We’ve always been a town with a race relations problem.’
    Among many other problems, Q thought.
    Strand only slowed slightly at the stop sign, glancing both ways, then stepping on the gas.
    â€˜You didn’t hear so much about it before Katrina. I mean, on a major playing field, it didn’t get that much attention.’ Strand took a deep breath, delving into a theme he was passionate about. ‘You knew it was there, but it was an undercurrent. Then Katrina hits and boom, the national press, they played it up really big. White cops shooting black looters. People saying Bush delayed national aid to run the blacks out of New Orleans. Oh, it got nasty. Q, you know you’ve always had the R problem in Detroit, but here it wasn’t so in your face. You know what I’m sayin’? Now the world pays a whole lot more attention to us. Black versus white, my friend. Detroit’s got nothing on the Crescent City.’
    A white judge oversteps his bounds and a black ex-con extracts his vengeance. There could be riots in the street.
    â€˜Are you rooting for the kid to be the killer?’
    Strand took his eyes off the road for a brief moment to look at Archer. ‘I’m rooting for us, Q. I became a cop because,’ he paused, ‘well, because I wanted to be on top. I like being in control. You either lead, or you follow, you know what I mean? I want to be the guy who calls the shots.’
    â€˜You want to be on top?’
    He nodded. ‘I grew up as a scrawny kid in a neighborhood where you got shoved around a lot. By adults, by other kids. I always ended up on the wrong side of a fist, an open hand, a knife and a gun. I swore that when I grew up, if there was shoving going on, I was going to be the one doing it.’
    â€˜I get it. You need to be in charge.’
    â€˜You and I both know a lot of cops with answers weaker than that. So it’s a power thing. So what? There are benefits, dude, so don’t be critical.’
    There were dozens of reasons. Q had become a cop because of his family. Not so much the history of the Archer family, but because of Archer family problems. His dad had been a cop, but when Archer chose law enforcement, it was his way of righting the ship. His two brothers had tilted it just short of going under. Quentin Archer wanted to prove that not all of his father’s offspring were as bad as Jason and Brian Archer. Both had been