Busted Read Online Free Page B

got scared when he heard the sirens,” Will said, meaning the driver of the Chevy. “He ran out of the store, jumped into his truck. I pursued. You know what happened next.”
    “Everyone does. It’s all over Hooter.”
    Will hoped she meant Twitter.
    Amanda supplied, “The driver of the truck has been identified as Wayne Michael Walker. He’s at the hospital now. It doesn’t look good. The cop got off a shot before your little chase. Nicked the femoral artery. Of course, that pales in comparison to taking a full-body slam from a ten-thousand-pound motorcycle.”
    Will said, “It’s probably closer to seven hundred.”
    She pressed together her lips before continuing, “Walker’s fifty-three years old. He’s a high school counselor, recently fired from the Clayton County school system.”
    Faith gave a low whistle. It took a lot to get fired from Clayton County. “What’d he do, slap a kid?”
    “Yes.”
    Faith seemed a little shocked.
    “At any rate,” Amanda continued, doling out the information she’d obviously gleaned on the drive down, “Walker’s accomplice worked at the same school – Spivey Senior High. Math teacher.”
    “He didn’t look like a teacher,” Will said. “He looked like a homeless man.”
    Amanda picked her way across the debris littering the floor. Will stepped in to help her when she knelt in front of the dead body, then he remembered he was in handcuffs and that people in handcuffs didn’t tend to help the police.
    She pulled back the sheet. “Douglas Raymond Pierce. Doug-Ray to his friends. Coached girls’ softball. School-wide teacher of the year last year.”
    Will accepted that he really was some kind of idiot. The John Deere baseball cap was tilted back on Doug-Ray Pierce’s head, giving Will a clear view of where dreadlocks had been sewn into the rim. Likewise, the bushy porn mustache was a fake. The spotty goatee was all Doug-Ray. Take off the disguise, and he looked like every math teacher/coach Will had ever had.
    “What about their next of kin?” Faith asked. She was scrolling through the closed-circuit footage. Will looked at the set. He saw himself dive behind the Little Debbies. And then the film reversed and he ran backward. And then the film played out and hewent down again.
    Amanda supplied, “The driver, Wayne Walker, was born and raised in Forest Park. He got his degree from Clayton State College. He’s twice divorced, currently single. Both exes live outside the state – one in Idaho, the other in Massachusetts. He has a twenty-year-old daughter who’s stationed in Afghanistan. We’re trying to track them all down, but it’s rough going.” She paused, and Will could tell she was exasperated for other reasons now. “Walker has no history of violence except for slapping that student. He’s as financially stable as you’d think a high school counselor would be, usually pays his bills late, but he always pays them. He hasn’t been issued a speeding ticket in the last seven years. He has a master’s in social work, for what that’s worth. And I should add that universally, one word came up in all the interviews we’ve conducted so far: ‘asshole.’”
    “And Pierce?” Faith asked, not looking up from the TV. Will saw himself diving again.
    “On paper, Doug-Ray Pierce is more of the same. We found nothing on his record but a speeding ticket in Florida three years ago,” Amanda told them. “Personal details are still being filled out. He’s new to the area – been here less than two years. Before that, he taught in west Georgia. We’ve got people heading over to Spivey High to conduct interviews. Preliminarily, no one seems to know much about Pierce. His emergency contact is his father, who died three months ago. Pierce was a loner by all accounts, never talked about his private life. Except for Wayne Walker, he didn’t seem to have any friends.”
    “Gay?” Faith asked.
    “Not if you take off the mustache,” Amanda quipped.