SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set by Billie Sue Mosiman Read Free Book Online Page A

force, Jack had seen plenty of good kids influenced by their peers who got into trouble with the law. Every thinking parent in the country feared for their children’s future. Drugs were in the grade schools. Juvenile offenses were on the rise. Violence was becoming an accepted part of everyone’s life.
    Jack dried himself roughly with a towel as if to rub off all memory of the day before. He glanced at the clock radio to see he had spent twenty minutes in the shower. Jesus, the kid’s death was getting to him. He knew he was going to have to forget it. Maybe if he talked to Sam about it. After work tonight, maybe Sam could tell him how to erase the guilt he felt for the eleven men who were only doing their jobs.
    On Jack’s return from duty in Vietnam, Willie had asked him why he wanted to be a cop, but Jack had no pat answers. It was a combination of things, and to say one ideal or one ambition made a man want to be a policeman was too simplistic. He had not been able to answer Willie then, so he had said something silly, trying to bring a smile to his son’s face. “To keep you in line, jock, what do you think?” And Jack had to admit part of the reason he had joined the force was to set an example for Willie. They had been alone since the divorce when Willie was two. Being a single parent was not easy, and his responsibility sometimes weighed heavily on Jack.
    “Hey, Dad. You gotta run that thing with the bathroom door open?” Willie stood in the hall scratching at a recent mosquito bite behind his ear. His sleepy eyes looked up at his father. Jack turned off the electric razor and grinned.
    “Okay, sport, you tell me how to get my whiskers shaved without a little noise?” Willie shrugged and grumbled all the way back to his bedroom.
    “Time to be up and at ‘em anyway,” Jack called as he turned the razor back on. “I’ll have to leave soon.”
    Willie groaned and pulled the pillow over his head.
    Jack finished shaving and stroked his cheeks. The three-inch raised scar that ran horizontally below his right cheekbone always looked inflamed after shaving. Within minutes the redness would fade, but the ridge of skin still bothered him. He often caught himself tracing the scar with a fingertip while thinking. A Viet Cong sniper grazed his cheek, the open gash hastily sewn up with a field medic who had two severely wounded men awaiting his services. It was not the worst wound Jack might have received. It was far less of a battle scar than some of his friends would carry with them the rest of their lives, but it served as a daily reminder that life was a precarious business—a reminder that served him well as a rookie patrolman.
    He looked at his wristwatch: 6:45, Mrs. Lawrence, his housekeeper-babysitter, would be arriving in another few minutes. She would raise holy hell if Willie was still in bed.
    “Willie!”
    “Yessir, I’m getting up,” came the muffled voice.
    “Five minutes or I drag you up.”
    “Okay, Dad, okay,” Willie burrowed farther into the pillow and prayed for sleep to return. No kid he knew had to get up at seven o’clock in the morning during the summer.
    #

    Mrs. Lawrence was a punctual woman. When her employer expected her at seven in the morning, she arrived at seven on the dot.
    She knocked smartly on the DeShanes’ door before entering. As she closed the door behind her, she announced in a loud voice, “Mrs. Lawrence is here and on time. Jack, ready yourself for breakfast. Willie, outta that bed, boy. It’s a brand-new day!”
    Jack grinned into the bathroom mirror when he heard his housekeeper’s voice. When was she not on time?
    And when had she failed to announce it?
    Willie grumbled and slid from his bed. “Oh, geez,” he muttered, blinking away sleep. “Dad?”
    The call brought Jack to his son’s bedroom. “What, son?”
    “Never mind.”
    “Yeah, I know. You don’t want to get up. You don’t want to be cheerful and polite. You think it’s unfair.”
    Willie