Bill Hopkins - Judge Rosswell Carew 01 - Courting Murder by Bill Hopkins Read Free Book Online Page A

could answer, the volunteers began drifting in. Tina finished the download and handed the camera to Rosswell.
    He said to her, “More later.”
    “Yes.” She winked again.
    Beep . A MISSED CALL message popped up on Rosswell’s phone. It was a call from Frizz early that morning. Beep. A VOICEMAIL notice. Rosswell clicked to play. “I’m finishing up at home and then I’ll call Neal,” Frizz said. “Stay right there at the park.”
    “Great service,” Rosswell muttered.
    Frizz appeared and instructed the assembled searchers. Most were local farmers and ranchers, with a healthy dose of teenage boys driving four wheelers. All of them were high on testosterone, searching for adventure.
    Rosswell hoofed it across the courthouse square to Merc’s Diner, hoping to find a certified genius, the town drunk, and his personal snitch, embodied in one person. Ollie Groton. Several of Ollie’s jail stays could be credited to Rosswell, but Ollie never took it personally. A judge needs a snitch to keep himself informed on the activities of the criminal classes. Ollie promised Rosswell that he’d spill the secrets he found and Rosswell promised Ollie he wouldn’t ask where the secrets came from. Information was handy when sentencing a perpetrator. Clearly, Rosswell wasn’t supposed to have a snitch, but no one need ever know.
    The restaurant coffee shop, operating in a refurbished hotel, served as the headquarters for the local gossip mill. Folks traipsed back and forth, carrying tales like ants carrying sugar. The interior of the cedar-sided building was as crusty and ancient as most of its customers. The rumor was that the booths were built from the wood of barns torn down before the Civil War. Merc Leadbetter kept the place immaculate, although no matter what he did in the way of cleaning, he couldn’t hide the floors worn slick or the graffiti carved into the booths. Such things, according to Merc, “gave the place character.”
    For gainful employment, Ollie had built a healthy business installing, maintaining, and repairing computers. When not busy at his job, he sat eating, drinking coffee, and sopping up the local chatter at Merc’s. He soaked up tidbits of information like a dry sponge thrown into a rainstorm. Ollie was the gossip’s gossip.
    Some of the less charitable folks in the county said that “Merc’s” actually meant “mercury,” which described the taste of the tuna sandwiches. If there was mercury in Merc’s tuna, then Ollie’s brain was as full of it as an old-time thermometer.
    Ollie kept his entire body shaved and boasted a star-shaped tattoo on his bald head. The purple tat beaconed his location in the coffee shop, especially since he’d given his skull its daily sheen of Vaseline. He sat alone. Rosswell slid into his booth.
    Ollie said, “You look like shit.”
    “You have a purple tattoo on your bald head and you say I look like shit?”
    Ollie squeaked, a high-pitched sound a mouse might make after the bar of a trap slammed across its spine.
    “I feel like crap,” Rosswell said, rubbing his face. He could still smell the corpses. He suspected that he smelled like them also. “I need to stand in a shower for a couple of hours.” His eyes were more blood-shot than usual.
    Without asking him, the waitress brought his standing order, a 20-ounce cup of the strongest coffee this side of New Orleans. He snagged the sugar jar and shook it, working the lumps loose, stirring ferociously.
    Ollie said, “The coffee danged near melted the spoon.”
    “The way I like it.” The coffee was blacker than midnight on a cloudy night at new moon and thick enough to need two hands for stirring. Rosswell heaped in sugar until the jar ran empty and the liquid became syrupy. The brew smelled sweeter than an angel. He dipped his forefinger in the boiling sludge, then touched it to his tongue.
    The waitress tapped her pencil on her order pad. “Anything else?”
    Rosswell said, “No, thanks.” He waited