1 A Small Case of Murder by Lauren Carr Read Free Book Online Page A

fighting to keep her finger from again squeezing the trigger of the gun, Joshua felt a sharp pain shoot up from his groin to his chest. That pain was replaced by another in his up-per arm where she planted her teeth. Determined to win the fight, she bit down harder.
    “She’s biting me!” Joshua kept his grip on the gun that she refused to release while he called out for help.
    Her teeth tore into his flesh.
    J.J. attempted to pry her jaws open while Murphy pounded her wrist with his fist to force her to let go of the weapon.
    “Bastards!” she cursed in a shrill voice.
    She lunged at J.J. when Joshua took possession of the battle’s prize. The wild look in her eyes and the sight of his father’s blood on her lips caused the teenager to retreat.
    “Stop it!” Joshua landed a punch across her jaw.
    The girl with the snake tattoo collapsed to the floor in a heap.
    The intended victim was the first to his feet. Tad leapt over the railing between him and the congregation to get to the fallen girl.
    The pastor sat up to look down at the girl lying motionless below the pulpit like a dead animal sacrifice.
    Her top had become disheveled in the fight to reveal another tattoo.
    At first glance, the serpent seemed to be guarding his prey. A closer look revealed a pentagram tattooed on the girl’s left breast beneath the head of the snake. The serpent was guarding the symbol of Satan, the lord of the underworld.
    The silence evaporated into a hum of murmured questions that built to an echoing roar.
    Donny shouted, “Dad hit a girl!”
    “I’m sorry, Reverend. She left me no choice.” Joshua apologized to the pastor, who stepped down from the pulpit on trembling legs.
    Tad pointed to Jan. “Call 911. We have a potential drug overdose here.”
    She rushed back to the office to make the call.
    “What’s that?” Donny pointed out the tattoo that adorned the young woman’s left breast.
    “She worships Satan,” the pastor whispered, while looking around as if searching for other members of her “church”.
    “Who is she?” Joshua asked anyone who would answer.
    Tad responded to the query. “She’s Vicki Rawlings, Reverend Orville Rawlings’ granddaughter.”

After the shooting, Joshua watched with awe while Tad tended to the unconscious Vicki Rawlings. Her attempt to kill him was irrelevant to saving her life.
    When the paramedics loaded the assailant into the back of the ambulance, Joshua observed the stark contrast of Vicki’s roots from the girl with the serpent tattoo wrapped around her body. A black MG convertible rested in the parking space ahead of the ambulance. Next to the personalized tag that read “RWLNGS4”, was a bumper sticker proclaiming “Jesus Lives!”
    “She’s out of danger,” Tad announced when he joined his cousin in the hospital waiting room after a nurse sterilized and bandaged Joshua’s bite wound with liquid stitches.
    Murphy and J.J. excused themselves from flirting with two nursing students by the vending machines to learn what Tad had to report about the girl with the gun.
    “Medical danger,” Joshua said. “Where’s her family?”
    “It’s Sunday,” Tad reminded him. “They’re at Rawlings’ church putting on a show of a functional family.”
    “Are they simply going to leave her here?”
    “At least until after their Sunday night service. Then, one of them will slip in under the cover of darkness and whisk her away to a psycho ward someplace for the customary three days of confinement until they have to take her home.”
    “She shot up a church, man,” Murphy said. “What about the police?”
    Tad told him, “Vicki is the county prosecuting attorney’s daughter.”
    Joshua wasn’t satisfied with the explanation. “She took a shot at you.”
    Despite his attempt to appear unaffected, Tad uttered a sigh that betrayed a note of emotional exhaustion. “That girl has been stalking me for over three years, and no one has been able to stop her yet.”
    Joshua