Resolution: Evan Warner Book 1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

troopers took the suspects to county lockup. The third one stayed to help Uncle Danny interview all the witnesses.
    There were plenty of notes to take. Fourteen people claimed to have witnessed the majority of the incident from various angles. Which was a decent number. We had around two hundred guests, but they were spread across a fairly large area.
    Forgetting to turn on my camera turned out to be a nonissue. The consensus of the witnesses was unanimously in my favor. A terrible tragedy had been averted by swift and concise action.
    Case closed.
    As for the backstory, Jeremy’s mother, Rianne, was more than happy to share all the juicy details with anyone willing to listen.
    In a nutshell, she had remarried within the last year. In doing so she’d taken a nice step up in the world into a higher tax bracket. Her former husband, Jeremy’s father, was jealous and resented paying support for a child he felt estranged from. According to her, he had been increasingly hostile in recent months. It would have been easy for him to find a few goons on his construction crew willing to kidnap his son for some extra cash. Evidently that hostility had finally spilled over into a definitive course of action.
    I stood there listening to her for as long as I could stand. As she droned on I started hearing the Brady Bunch theme in my head, with my own personal spin on the lyrics.
    That’s the way we became the Dysfunction Bunch.
    “You’ve got to find my ex-husband,” Rianne kept saying to Uncle Danny. “Send someone to get him now. Before he tries something worse.”
    “Troopers are looking for him,” he assured her.
    “I won’t feel safe until he’s locked up.”
    “Worry about Jeremy for now,” Uncle Danny reminded her several times. “Concentrate on making him feel safe.”
    I kept an eye on Rianne the whole time the witnesses were giving statements. She looked to be in her mid or late twenties. About my age. There was no doubt in my mind that she was thoroughly enjoying her fifteen minutes of limelight. She would ramble until gradually there was no one left to talk to. She’d fade off toward her campsite. Away from the hub of activity. Then return again for another round of dramatic expressions of her shock and fear and gratitude. I accepted her thanks graciously the first two times. By the third time it was getting old.
    The final straw was when she got her kid involved. She pushed Jeremy over and compelled him to thank me. He stood there looking embarrassed, eyes down. Like he wanted to crawl under a rock and hide. He was five years old. No way could he comprehend the gravity of the situation. All he knew is that he was scooped up and then dropped. And now his mother was pushing him up to some big guy he didn’t know, telling him to thank the guy for something he didn’t understand.
    Definitely not the way for Rianne to stay on my good side.
    “Tell Mr. Warner how thankful you are,” she said.
    The kid said nothing. He wanted to disappear.
    “Go on,” she said, giving him another push. “Thank him.”
    “Don’t,” I said calmly, looking her straight in the eyes.
    “Don’t what ?”
    “Don’t drag me into this charade. Your kid already has enough shit ahead of him in life as it is. Don’t include me on his list of miserable memories.”
    That said, I turned my back on her. Started to walk away. Even then I was prepared to let it go.
    But she wasn’t.
    She zipped around me fast, in a wide circle, and cut me off.
    “Excuse me?” she said. “What charade?”
    I stopped, working hard to hold my tongue. Not for her. For the kid.
    Shy kid. Father heading to jail. Mother a total drama queen. Who knows how many stepfather’s he’ll end up having before he’s old enough to escape the nightmare.
    “What charade?” she asked again. Her hand was on her heart. Like she was thanking the academy for a great award.
    I said, “You really don’t know when to quit.”
    “And you have no manners. We were only