Stiff Penalty (A Mattie Winston Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page B

those of us in the know—directed us to the room that held our victim. Inside the room, behind a curtain, we found Bob Richmond standing at the bedside, one hand cupping his elbow, the other pulling at his chin as he stared at the dead man.
    Bob Richmond is a semiretired detective with the Sorenson PD who was covering in Hurley’s absence. He had gotten shot while working a case with me back in the fall, a case in which Hurley appeared to be the primary suspect. No cop wants to get shot, but in Bob’s case it turned out to be a good thing, in a way. At the time of the injury he weighed north of four hundred pounds and was a heart attack waiting to happen. But after getting gut shot, having several surgeries, and acquiring a new outlook on life and death, he had lost over one hundred pounds and counting. Prior to the shooting, his main form of exercise was shoveling food into his mouth, but nowadays he works out at the gym regularly. The change in him is so dramatic that many people who know him don’t recognize him anymore.
    Richmond’s desire to get healthy and his dramatic success inspired me. Back before he was shot I’d agreed to go to the gym with him in support of his efforts, and while I have taken a few short sabbaticals, the two of us have stuck with it, for the most part. Richmond is much more dedicated and determined than I am, however; there have been times when he has had to drag me along kicking and screaming. I hate hanging out with women who are thinner than my fettuccine.
    As Izzy and I entered the room, Richmond glanced over at us and nodded. Then he looked back at the victim without saying a word, letting us absorb the scene for a minute or two.
    The room looked like a tornado had blown through it. The floor was littered with torn wrappers from all the equipment and supplies that had been used, and a crash cart was parked nearby with several of its drawers partially opened. There was blood on the stretcher and the railings, and a smeared puddle of it on the floor, along with a trail of bloody footprints that meandered around the room. IV tubing, catheter tubing, and several types of monitoring cords snaked their way from various poles and machinery to the bed.
    After taking in the room, I let my gaze shift to the dead man, who was lying on his back on the stretcher, a sheet covering him from the waist down. The first thing I noticed was undoubtedly the first thing everyone else noticed because it was the elephant in the room. Sticking out of the man’s chest was a two-foot-long, wooden-handled implement, the base of which was wrapped in a huge bundle of white gauze. I glanced at an X-ray hanging on a light box on the wall and saw that the handle was part of a large barbecue fork, the tines of which, judging from its position on the X-ray, had ended up in the victim’s heart.
    The fact that a fork played a role in this murder should have been my first clue that this wasn’t going to be a quick and easy case.
    When I was able to take my eyes off the fork long enough to look at the dead man’s face, I saw thinning blond hair, blue eyes that stared sightless at the ceiling, and pale skin, though I couldn’t tell for sure if the coloring was due to nature or exsanguination. His nose was swollen, and there was dried blood crusted in both nostrils. His left eye had a dark purplish area beneath it, and I could see the start of a bruise along his lower left jawline. When I shifted my focus away from specific injuries and took in the whole face, I realized I knew him.
    “That’s Derrick Ames. I took care of him once in the ER when he cut his hand on a table saw. Isn’t he a math teacher at the high school?”
    “Correct,” Richmond said. “He also teaches German. His parents are German nationals who came over here just before he was born.”
    “What happened to him?” Izzy asked. “Aside from the obvious.”
    “Not sure,” Bob said with a shrug. “According to EMS, he came stumbling out of his