Hawk Channel Chase Read Online Free PDF

officers, Dick Wonsetler, drinking lunch at the tide line. Like his boss, Dick was a veteran of the Key West police force. I didn’t know much of his history, but he always looked fatigued, always wore the sneer of a man who disliked his job, maybe his whole life.
    Liska was the cop who had drawn me into photographing crime scenes. It had started when he was a city detective, three or four small jobs that expanded into actual sleuthing. He plugged me into several more gigs after being elected Monroe County’s sheriff and still called once in a while, despite my constant refusal of forensic work. We never talked about the times I had saved his ass. I knew that rubbing it in would only incite him to call more often. Local rules dictated that it was better to store blue chips than to spend them in public. I had never interacted with Wonsetler.
    The men were seated at the far end of the bar, their backs to the water’s glare. Liska held a mixed drink in a tall glass. Wonsetler was waving an empty Corona bottle at the server, ordering a fresh one. The Afterdeck was all but empty, with three other men at the bar, a young woman working behind it and, in the heat of the day, no one at the tables. Odd, I thought, that Liska was with only one of his two operations officers. That fact suggested that it wasn’t a strategy meeting, a business lunch. It was a hump day escape.
    I walked over to shake hands. Up close, Liska looked hangdog and war weary in one of his old disco shirts, the period attire he’d forsaken when he’d quit his city job to run for sheriff. “Did I miss a BeeGees concert? ABBA on the beach?”
    He put a disgusted look on his face, swiped at his shirt with the backs of his fingers. “Some days you don’t give a shit.”
    “Remember you once told me about a certain person having bad luck with a love affair?”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    I knew he was fibbing, probably for a good reason. I assumed it was because of the man to his right.
    I let it drop. “No big deal. I was trying to remember a name.”
    “Thanks for the background,” said Liska. “I still don’t know who the fuck you got in mind.”
    “You’re sporting a cheerful outlook today,” I said.
    “Do my job for a month, Rutledge. Then tell me outlook.”
    I backed away. “I’m going to feel sorry for you, Sheriff, but I’m going to do it over here.” I found a tall chair at the far end of the bar, asked for a menu and, on impulse, ordered a mojito. I had a beer for breakfast. Why not rum before sundown? Just this once.
    Ten minutes later the ops officer went into the restaurant. I assumed he’d gone to the men’s room. I stood, walked over to Liska but said nothing.
    “Look, Rutledge, I don’t play social games. You know as well as I do, the only important gossip in town comes from dental hygienists and legal secretaries.”
    “I’m not looking for trash talk, Sheriff. I need a dose of counseling.”
    Liska considered my phrasing. “First, just for today, call me Fred. Second, you didn’t hear this from me. I sympathize with your plight, you might say. The lady’s got issues. She can be her own worst enemy.”
    “You told me she had a fling a few years ago and got double-whammied.”
    “Right,” he said. “The guy bought the farm in a plane crash and that was when Deputy Lewis, before she made detective, found out he was married.”
    “You also said that she’d had couple of boyfriends after that. They didn’t work out.”
    “I know where you’re going, Rutledge. You’re perceptive and you’re right. Two of them were fellow deputies.”
    “And of those two…”
    “Both left the sheriff’s office before I took over. And, yes, one of them has been in the Keys for the past three weeks. He works for another agency and he and Lewis have been in touch. That’s all I know and all I want to know.”
    “That might explain a few things,” I said.
    “They’re all flaky, from time to time,”