Eleven Little Piggies Read Online Free PDF Page B

Who’s got the weekend duty this week?’
    â€˜Um . . . it’s one of Kevin’s guys . . . Josh Felder.’
    â€˜Is he the kind of nerdy one I’ve heard him talk about?’
    â€˜Yeah. The introvert with the great searching techniques.’
    â€˜Good. We don’t have a whole lot for him to do, do we? Nobody he has to take to court?’
    â€˜I don’t. I don’t know what Kevin’s got. Why?’
    â€˜Let’s get him to look up everything he can find on the Kester family and related branches, huh? What they own, what they owe, any dirt he can dig up?’
    â€˜OK, good idea, yeah.’
    â€˜And then let’s get all your People Crimes people together first thing Monday morning. Get LeeAnn to sit in and take notes, and we’ll map out strategy. See where we stand, huh?’
    â€˜I guess.’ He didn’t disagree. He just said those two half-hearted words, and then didn’t say goodbye.
    â€˜What?’ I knew it was dumb to ask – but I can’t stand phone calls that end on a dissatisfied note. And he knows that. Damn! I took a big tired breath and said, ‘Say what you want in plain English right now or forget it, because I froze all day in that field and I just did “This Little Piggy” ten times with Ben, so I’m almost out of juice.’
    â€˜Well, if you’re too tired I guess it can wait—’
    â€˜Ray, goddammit – state your problem!’
    â€˜OK, I know you said we don’t have any money for overtime, but Rosie and Clint are worried about a locked outbuilding, between the horse barn and the house on the Kesters’ farm, that they couldn’t get into. When they asked Mrs Kester about it, she said that’s the smokehouse and the walk-in cooler. They use it for all kinds of meat preparation, I guess. She says her husband always kept it locked and she didn’t know where he kept the key.’
    â€˜That sounds like bullshit.’
    â€˜I know. But she was, you know, crying . . . so they let it go and concentrated on getting somebody to come and stay with her.’ He stopped talking and breathed into the phone.
    I can’t stand agitated breathing either. I said, ‘OK, what else?’
    â€˜Well, soon as they got back and heard Andy say he’d found the pickup, but speculating with me about no signs of innards in the snow there, they started saying we should get a warrant to search that locked building. Because if we wait till Monday whatever’s in there could be gone.’ He paused. ‘If, you know, there’s anything in there that has anything to do with the body in the field.’
    Like all the blood and guts that should have been where we found the body. Damn!
    â€˜I see what you mean but now it’s Saturday night, and . . . What are you thinking? Are Rosie and Clint still there with you?’
    â€˜We’re all at the station, yeah. They didn’t want to go home till they heard what you had to say about it – they thought maybe they should get back out there now and . . . look at that locked building.’
    â€˜Just the two of them? Or are you thinking of mobilizing the National Guard over this?’
    â€˜You think it’s a bad idea.’
    â€˜I didn’t say that, come on . . . You think they’re onto something, huh?’
    â€˜I think they were the ones on the scene and they didn’t get such a strong feeling for no reason at all. I thought maybe,’ he cleared his throat, ‘I might go back out there with them, carry the warrant and take a little of the heat off.’
    So there it was. Ray was just as tired as I was. I’d called him away from his quite new bride on his day off but he was willing to put his body where his mouth was, to back up his troops. I looked at the rock and then at the hard place. After about thirty seconds I told