Dead Boogie by Victoria Houston Read Free Book Online Page B

are you saying no foul play is involved? We received a call that three women had been found shot to death—”
    “All that I can confirm is that we have a traffic fatality on a back road in the township of Loon Lake. No more information will be made available until the family or families of the deceased are informed. Now turn off that camera or you will spend the night in the brand-new Loon Lake jail—do I make myself clear?”
    “Sure.” Dave gave her a sheepish look. “Had to get something, Chief. I persuaded the news director to let me cover this instead of Shania Twain’s bus. Ray Pradt’s the one who called and insisted I get out there. I see his truck—is he around?”
    Just then he spotted Ray crossing the road toward the pickup. “Hey, guy!” said Dave. “Looks like I’m outta luck. Chief Ferris said no can do on this so-called accident. How ‘bout we shoot a quickie on that incident with the smelly fish this morning. That way at least I got something for the six o’clock news—where’s that hat of yours?”
    “Dave, I can’t do that right now. I just … I can’t,” said Ray, backing off.
    “Don’t do this to me,” said Dave. “Hell, you’re the one got me to drive all the way out here—”
    “I—I—” Ray couldn’t finish. Tears glistened on his cheeks. He ducked into his truck.
    The cameraman watched him, then turned to Lew. “That’s a first. You can always rely on that guy for B-roll. Well … now—why do I feel something big is happening out here?”
    Dave took his time unloading his equipment, then climbed into the driver’s seat of the van. Lew had walked back to talk to Bruce but Osborne remained nearby, ready to buffer Ray if Dave changed his mind.
    Through the rolled-down window of the van, he heard the reporter call in to the station, “Bob, send Rory over to cover Shania Twain. I’m gonna stake out St. Mary’s—the morgue. Once the families ID the corpses, we got a story. How big? Not sure yet—but it’s weird out here.”
    Osborne waited to follow the ambulances into town. Lew had asked him to meet her at the morgue, where she would need help with the families once they had identified the victims. Teaming up to interrogate sources and suspects had worked so well in the past that she had come to depend on Osborne’s presence. It was yet another reason why she kept him on as a deputy.
    “Y’know, Doc, it’s not the two of us asking questions,” she had said one summer evening as they were wading the Prairie River, “it’s the two of us listening. I hear answers to my questions—but you hear between the lines. You pick up on answers to questions I haven’t asked yet.”
    Osborne gave silent thanks to this unexpected benefit of his profession. Years of practicing dentistry had taught him the source of a problem might not be in the actual symptom, but in a patient’s history or in nearly forgotten details.
    “And when you’re with me, people tend to open up more easily.”
    “Oh, come on—that’s because they’re afraid of dentists,” said Osborne, embarrassed by the compliment.
    “Hardly,” said Lew. “I doubt anyone’s afraid of you, Doc. You have such a quiet, reassuring way—you make people feel comfortable. Even a crook responds to kindness and patience.”
    Osborne was grateful for the darkening sky—she couldn’t see him blush. And who knew if it was the hatch two nights later or the lightness in his heart that prompted four brook trout to torpedo his Grizzly Kings.
    Ray drove off first, then the emergency vehicles. Osborne pulled onto the road behind them—toward the main highway and in the opposite direction of the clearing.
    For a third of a mile, the road continued to run straight, but then it made a sharp ninety-degree turn, following the property line of an old farmstead. Osborne slammed on his brakes and hit Reverse. He backed around the sharp corner for a good look: a windbreak of sturdy oaks. You hit those trees at fifty, sixty