In Plain View Read Online Free PDF Page A

Amish—”
    “I don’t think he could be Amish,” Ainsley corrected me. “Maybe Mennonite—”
    “Whatever. When a man of serious religious conviction offs himself publicly, in more ways than one, that’s news.”
    Ainsley’s face scrunched again—grossed out, sure, but also trying not to laugh.
    Of course, when a sheriff steals your pictures, that’s a pretty good indicator as well.
    “Why do you think he was Amish?” Melton asked.
    “The clothes.” I pictured the girl in the bush wearing that dark bonnet, even before I thought of the man from the tree.
    “She got some pictures with a long lens before we got out of the van,” Ainsley clarified. “But that guy couldn’t have been Amish. He looked too old to shave, and I heard one of the cops say the Honda over there must be his. Amish don’t own cars.”
    “No cars at all?” I asked.
    “Too old to shave?” Melton said, at the same time.
    “Grown men wear beards,” Ainsley told him. “It’s a sign of maturity.”
    We experienced one of those awkward pauses in which I got caught staring at Ainsley’s baby-smooth cheek.
    “About those pictures?” Melton jumped in. “Could I get a look at those? The paper’d pay, of course. They’d run the story if I had a picture. Nothing too gruesome, though.”
    I thought about it for a minute, glancing back toward Sheriff Curzon. I didn’t have a lot of time here. Autoerotic asphyxiation was the kind of pseudo-serious sex topic they would love at network, a definite ratings grabber. The sleaze factor was high, but if I scored on ratings I’d definitely stay employed. Compromises like that guaranteed I’d be dining on antacids and acetaminophen for the foreseeable future. Yum, yum.
    There was certainly more to this than a simple suicide. I could feel it, the way I’d felt the girl behind me in the bushes.
    What was she doing there?
    I needed to flush this story out into the open where it was fair game. It’s not like my story would be competing with nightly news for a scoop. By releasing one of my photos to Melton, I could make the story public and re-direct Curzon’s fire toward the print media. Without heating up attention for the story, the sheriff would continue to stonewall me and chances were good, I’d end up stuck doing something on the network’s latest local promotional tie-in.
    Time to take a gamble.
    “I might be able to help you out with a photo, Melton. Let me take a look at what I’ve got. What’s your deadline?”
    “Eight o’clock.” Melton passed me a card.
    All of a sudden, I thought to look at my watch. It was past two already. “Damn. How long will it take to get back to the station?” I asked Ainsley.
    “As long as it took us to get here, I guess.”
    Double that damn. I’d never get back to the station for my bike and home again by three o’clock. “We need to go.”
    “Back to the station?”
    “No. I need you to take me straight…to my appointment.”

    3:11:17 p.m.
    Maddy O’Hara was going to be a problem.
    “This is township ambulance number five, currently en-route with a twenty-eight-year-old male, apparent suicide.”
    “This is County ER. Can you repeat?”
    He twisted the cell phone away from his mouth and shouted to the man driving the ambulance. “Siren? Can’t hear a fucking thing back here.”
    The sheriff had sent a car to escort them to the hospital. With both vehicles blaring full lights and sirens, even the dead couldn’t hear himself think.
    What was she doing there?
    He flipped the blanket back and tugged the zipper down. Some genius had decided to start making body bags white instead of black lately, because everybody knew what a black bag meant. Like it made a difference—black or white. What nobody could change was the sound of that big, thick zipper sealing everything up inside. Forever.
    He peeled open the sides of the bag and forced himself to think in the impersonal terms of work. “Male patient…mottled skin…obvious lividity.”