Crazy Like a Fox (Lil & Boris #3) (Lil & Boris Mysteries) by Shannon Hill Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t hold that against them, but I was getting tempted. I went for the Voice of God, though I am not nearly as good at it as Aunt Marge.
    “Tell me what he did!”
    Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kim raise her hand like a kid in a classroom. “Um. Do I have to be here?”
    I waved her free. She bolted. Boris stopped his butt-wash to watch her go, his pink tongue sticking out between very sharp white teeth. He looked demonic. Good kitty.
    I leaned back in my chair. I folded my arms. I drew on what little hauteur I have, which isn’t much. Turners don’t go in for hauteur, and DNA isn’t everything.
    Tom caved first. When we were in high school together, way back, I accidentally nailed him in the crotch with a softball. I don’t think he ever forgot it. “I was off that day, it was Punk’s day on.”
    Punk spun in his chair. “Don’t lay this on me! You were acting sheriff!”
    I knew Rucker’d been up to something, but I didn’t think it was that bad. I whistled sharply to get their attention. “What did Rucker do?”
    Tom drew a big, deep breath. Then he jerked his head at Punk and mumbled, “I wasn’t here. I went up to Charlottesville.”
    No way I heard that right. “Come again?”
    Punk snapped, “He went up to Charlottesville.”
    Loudly unspoken was the word coward .
    Tom reddened and tried to loom over Punk. Not hard, since he’s bigger, but some people refuse to be loomed over, and Punk is one of them. “I thought maybe the city cops’d have some idea what was right to do,” Tom defended himself. “It wasn’t just to get out from under Rucker.”
    “The hell it wasn’t!”
    Boris doesn’t like people to yell in my presence. He hissed.
    If Hell has a steam-vent, that’s what it sounds like.
    Punk glowered. Tom growled. I just sat there waiting for the testosterone levels to drop.
    Good thing Aunt Marge taught me patience.
    Too bad I flunked that right along with “ladylike deportment.”
    Punk shifted, his prosthesis making a dull clunk when it hit the leg of the chair. “Fine,” he snarled.
    Finally. Answers. I got my pen ready. “Shoot,” I said.
    Punk’s mouth twisted. “Wish I had.”
    ***^***
    Though he hadn’t shown it where anyone could see it, Punk hadn’t liked working for Vernon Rucker. Not all the county cops did. Some of them had come into policing from the military, like Tom, and some for a chance at a job with a steady paycheck. The rest, as far as Punk could tell, went into the county police department to throw their weight around and show what big tough guys they were. Those were Vernon’s pets, which showed you what Rucker was about, and it was better to stay a lowly nobody than get promoted by licking Rucker’s boots as far as Punk was concerned.
    Punk had gone into the police for the paycheck, but was bitten by the civil service bug, and enjoyed being a cop. Now Rucker was on his turf, and so were his pets. Rucker confined himself to the office, ruffling through papers and files, which Kim had opened to him thinking there might be a chance he’d find a clue. Better odds of seeing snow in August, to Punk’s thinking, and he’d told Kim so before he’d gone out on the daily rounds. Someone had to maintain law and order in Crazy.
    Not so easy. Rucker’s pets were everywhere . They searched Bobbi and Raj’s house because Raj might be a terrorist plotter. Punk got a call from Bobbi’s salon, where one of Vernon’s boys was making snide remarks, not quite under his breath, about mixed-race babies. When Punk ejected his erstwhile co-worker, the guy rolled over to the veterinarians’ office, and used a slim-jim to pop the lock on Raj’s car and search it without a warrant.
    I’ll say up front that the Patriot Act’s use and abuse is a big reason behind my quitting the FBI, and what I hate most about it is what it did to our thinking. Which was make it possible for us cops of all kinds to do darn near whatever we liked, and justify it.
    Before Punk