Damage Read Online Free PDF

dressed, grab a fast food breakfast on the way to the Citizen-Gazette. Seated at his desk by six-forty-five, he could crank out two, maybe three, articles for the day's edition of the newspaper.  
    The notion formed in his slowly waking brain that it might be Monday. Mondays meant only one article, a holdover from the previous week. What did he have? The groundbreaking photos from Sunday. Photos were great eye candy. They took up lots of space when you had nothing else to offer, and they required only three or four sentences each. He also could tap out a sloppy ten inches about Lonesome Pines, sprinkling in quotes from Wallace and Upton to stretch it out. Nothing to win a hard-working reporter a Nobel Prize, or even honorable mention from the North Carolina Press Association, but a decent showing for a Monday.
    So, why did the clock tell him it was five in the morning instead of his usual six? Ray sat up and turned off the clock radio. He could see only a moonless black sky through gaps in the blinds covering the bedroom window.  
    Then he remembered his scheduled ride along with his cousin, Billy, the sheriff's deputy. He had just enough time to get dressed and swing through for a chicken biscuit before making the eleven mile drive to the Sheriff's Department in Whitlock. He knew from experience Billy arrived punctually at five-thirty. He couldn't be late, or Billy might leave without him in order to stay on schedule for his morning rounds.
    Too many cars choked the drive-thru at the restaurant for Ray to get breakfast, so he sifted through the ashtray under his car stereo for change to buy something from the vending machines at the Sheriff's Department. He needn't have bothered. He arrived and was escorted to the break room where he normally met up with Billy, and there found a tray of fresh pastries and containers of juice on the round table in the corner of the room. He wasn't entirely certain it was acceptable for him to help himself. There were no witnesses in the room to see him if he grabbed a muffin, but too many people were roaming the hallways of the building for him to feel entirely comfortable with the idea.
    A wiry deputy with a neck too slender for his narrow collar entered the room. He had a pinched face and a small head covered in short-cropped black hair. When he spoke, Ray wondered if someone nearby was throwing his voice. The sound that came out of his mouth was far too deep for the man.
    "You looking for someone?" the thin man asked.
    Ray shook his head. "No. I'm just waiting on Deputy Merrill."
    "He ain't here yet," the deputy said, eying Ray suspiciously until, for no apparent reason, a broad grin stretched across his simple face. "You going with him today?"
    "Yes," Ray said. "I'm his cousin, Ray Waugh. I work for the Citizen-Gazette. I'm doing another article on a day in the life of a sheriff's deputy. You and I met the last time I was here, sometime last year."  
    He held up the camera hanging around his neck as if it helped illustrate who he was and why he was there. The deputy gave the camera a quick glance before returning to grinning stupidly at Ray. After an uncomfortable pause, Ray held out his hand and approached the other man, asking his name. Before the deputy could answer, a new person popped through the break room doorway and stopped abruptly to avoid a collision.  
    "For God's sake, Dean, stand clear of the door," the short man said in a slightly effeminate voice.  
    Ray knew him. He had interviewed the year before when he ran against the incumbent Edgar Redmond for county sheriff. Richie? Mitchell? The name momentarily escaped him. At least he remembered the man was a detective. Deputy Dean turned to look down at the stocky detective in the snugly fitted gray suit, but he didn't immediately move out of the way. He eventually took a step to one side to let the him enter the room. The detective ignored the disrespectful behavior. Still smirking, Deputy Dean nodded a farewell to Ray and