Killer View by Ridley Pearson Read Free Book Online

jealousy of other women—but they both knew the real reason: the two girls in the backseat. Motherhood had not only not come naturally; it had barely ever come at all. He had watched her descend from the initial glow of motherhood to the reality of being overwhelmed. Year by year, she had grown more resentful of losing her own freedom. She might have survived a single child, but the needs of two proved too much. When early frustrations had evolved into resentment, manifested as screaming rants and threats that shaded dangerously close to child abuse, she’d done the only thing available: removed herself from the home. She’d used the affair with Tommy Brandon to keep friends and neighbors in the dark, as well as to renew her own sense of self-worth; but he suspected her failure as a mother was rotting away what little chance at happiness she dreamed of. For him, whatever feelings he’d had for her had dissolved with her inability to cope. In the end, he’d realized he’d never really known her. Never mind that the added burden of single parenting drained him. Never mind that her departure and absence influenced every moment, his every decision, even something as simple as a drive to school. They had reached a disconnect. With divorce now inevitable, he reminded himself to keep it from getting bloody: the girls had to be protected at all costs.
    BY THE TIME he reached the sheriff’s office, an unremarkable one-story brick building with the jail’s coiled-razor-wire exercise area slung off the back side, he pushed Gail aside, expecting that Nancy would have found Mark Aker while hoping she might have word on the missing teenage girl as well.
    Instead, he saw Tommy Brandon and two other deputies across the street from the office, the lights of one of their cars flashing.
    Walt parked and joined them, his heart sinking. Crazy Dean Falco was chained to a tree.
    “The sheep are all dying!” Falco shouted for Walt’s sake. “The environment is a killer. All corporate profiteers should be hanged!”
    Falco himself had been arrested and tried no fewer than six times for similar stunts. He usually found a small group to join him, but, typically, in the summer months, not in twenty-degree winter weather. The chain was big and thick, and was padlocked with a hardened steel lock that would be hell to cut. Using an oxyacetylene torch might scar the tree, giving Falco added ammunition to his cause.
    He began shouting his message again, though louder—animals in peril, the poisoning of the environment—causing Walt to check behind him, wondering at his audience.
    He saw Fiona, with her camera gear, and a reporter, Sue Bailey. They crossed the street, suppressing grins. Everyone knew Dean.
    Falco strained the chains, working himself up to a lather.
    Brandon was on his cell phone, working with Elbie’s Tire and Auto to bring a cutting torch up there; no bolt cutter was going to handle that heavy-gauge steel.
    Walt’s father, Jerry, enjoyed ridiculing his son about the small-time nature of his sheriff’s job. Though Sun Valley had grown into an internationally recognized playground for the rich and famous, big-city crime had, for the most part, not found its way here yet. The Wood River Journal still carried stories on its front page about bands of sheep stopping traffic and the Senior Center’s vending machine being robbed. Jerry Fleming made fodder from all of it. For this reason, Walt hoped to avoid being in any of the photographs. Jerry subscribed to both local newspapers, the Mountain Express and the Wood River Journal .
    He shuffled over to Fiona. “I know you’re wearing another hat at the moment,” he said, “but I’d sure appreciate it if I didn’t end up in any of the pictures.”
    “Keeps your name in front of voters,” she suggested.
    “Makes me look like all I’ve got time for is babysitting tree huggers,” said Walt. “If I arrest him, I’m antienvironment; if I don’t, I’m a flaming