Marcie's Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

of coffee in his hand when Karen followed Broo ks and Louden into the station.
    “Come on in,” he gestured to her.
    The station was busier this morning than it had been last night. A woman in a lime green dress sat at one of the desks in the central area behind the counter. She star ed at a computer monitor, typing industriously. She wore a wireless headset on her right ear. A beefy o fficer sat at the desk closest to the metal door leading into the back , talking on the phone . His legs were up on the corner of his d esk, boots sticking out , and he watch ed Karen with a bemused smile. To her infinite disgust , he flexed his pectoral muscles beneath his tight uniform shirt and raised his eyebrows.
    Karen went in and sat down in the cheap wooden visitor’s chair across from Branham’s desk. “Didn’t we just do this a couple hours ago?”
    Branham smiled and held out his cup. “Coffee?”
    “No thanks, had some already . I take it you don’t have any female police officers in this town.”
    “No, we don’t. Haven’t had any applicants, to date.”
    “Why am I not surprised.”
    “Although,” Branham went on, leaning back and sipping his coffee, “that may change before long. The local college has a pretty good criminal justice program and I’ve been told the enrollment in the last two years has been forty percent female. Last year was the first year we did a little recruitment thing for the seniors before graduation, and maybe we’ll get some interest from female grads if we keep doing it .”
    “Yeah, well, just make sure you don’t send Hulk Hogan out there as part of your recruiting team,” she said, hiking her thumb over her shoulder. “No woman in her right mind would want to work with that fucking hippopotamus.”
    Branham laughed. “ Who, Grimes? He’s not so bad.”
    “Says you. You’re not female.”
    “Glad you noticed.”
    Karen leaned forward and dropped her left palm flat on top of Branham’s desk so that her engagement ring made a loud clack on the scratched wooden surface.
    Branham glanced at her hand and looked up into her eyes.
    “Enough fun and games,” she said. “Where’s this c hief of yours who’s going to release Lieutenant Donaghue this morning and let us get the hell out of here ?”
    “ He should be in shortly .”
    Karen leaned back in the chair and looked at him evenly. “I saw a guy this morning you need to bring in . White, tall, maybe six - three, six - four, two thirty, mid-forties, medium length wavy brown hair , beard, yellow shirt, black jeans, black shoes, got into a white Dodge pickup truck parked right near the donut shop and drove west down Bluefield.”
    “That why you were bothering people on the sidewalk?”
    “ Know who he is?”
    “Know who who is?” a voice grated from the doorway.
    Branham sat up straighter in his chair. “Chief, this is Homicide Detective Karen Stainer from Maryland. She works with Lieutenant Donaghue in their, uh, Major Crimes division up there . He contacted her with his telephone call.”
    Askew shifted his weight so that he could look at Karen around the door frame. “ Thought he was calling a lawyer. ”
    “ Do I look like a lawyer? I understand your case took a major crap when your witness failed to identify the l ieutenant. I expect you’ll be releasing him in the next five minutes or so .”
    “No t likely , missy. One witness doesn’t make or break a case. Didn’t they teach you that where ver the hell it is you come from?”
    Karen leaned back and stared at him. “ You know ,” she said slowly , as though speaking to an idiot, “ when I was a little girl we moved from Ponder to Fort Worth . We had a little black dog, and one day he got loose from our front yard and ran out into the street . I r a n out after it, right into traffic. My daddy pulled me out from in front of a truck just before it knocked me into next week . Turned out it wasn’t even our dog . O urs was asleep at the foot of my mother’s