Justice for None: Texas Justice Book #1 Read Online Free Page A

face of the levee where it suddenly braked hard and veered off the gravel into the weeds, barely avoiding a collision with a Sheriff’s department cruiser that had popped up over the top of the levee. The cruiser stopped, blocking the road.
    “What the hell are they doing here?” Bastrop said as another cruiser topped the hill followed closely by an unmarked black SUV. The SUV angled off the road and went around the cruisers, plowing through the high grass. It came to a halt beside the van, its doors popped open and two men in dark suits climbed out, one short and broad, the other well over six feet. The pair approached the van’s driver’s side window. After a brief conversation, the driver climbed down and all three men went to the rear of the van. The driver opened the doors and stepped aside.
    “Hey!” Bastrop yelled as the two men in suits climbed up into the cargo bay and stooped down by Abby’s gurney. “Hey, assholes!”
    “That’s enough, detective,” Jack said as he watched the pair unzip the body bag and open it. For a few minutes the two men hovered over Abby’s corpse before the taller one finally zipped the bag closed and both men stepped down. They headed back to the SUV as the van’s driver slammed the rear doors closed.
    “What the hell are they doing?” Bastrop said.
    “I reckon we’re about to find out,” Jack replied mildly as the SUV cranked to life and came bumping down the track toward them, the two cruisers trailing behind.
    “I don’t like the idea of them messing with our body.” Bastrop said angrily.
    “Let it go, Phil,” Birch replied, his tone taking on a warning edge. “We’re all on the same team.”
    “No we’re not. They’re job is wiping convict’s asses; we’re cops,” Phil said, but he went quiet after that, scowling at the advancing vehicles.
    Victoria was only half listening to Phil as she warily watched the convoy of Sheriff’s vehicles approach. She suddenly wished that she hadn’t come out to the crime scene. This was not going to be pretty.
    Though the County Sheriff’s Department had the responsibility of patrolling the unincorporated areas of Dallas County, those rural corners that had yet to be consumed by the urban sprawl of interconnected cities that the locals called the Metroplex, their primary function was maintaining security inside the jail and the County courts buildings. The Dallas Police Department patrolled the incorporated streets within the city limits. In theory it was a practical division of responsibility. Unfortunately, jurisdictional tensions between the Sheriff’s Office and DPD too often interfered with the process. And Victoria had to work with both departments. She didn’t want to be caught in the middle of another confrontation, but it was too late to leave.
    The SUV came to a stop, taking the spot that the coroner’s van had just vacated. The cruisers parked beside it, bracketing it like bookends. The two men in suits stepped down and headed their way.
    The shorter one was dark haired and built like a car battery, square and low to the ground, with a head like a chunk of concrete and fists as big as sledgehammers. Your standard issue Sheriff’s Department bone-breaker. The other one was tall, heavily muscled and blond with a nose bent slightly out of skew and a neck like a tree trunk. Victoria didn’t recognize the shorter one, but she knew the blond all too well.
    She had almost married him twenty years ago.

4
     
    After bathing the twins, Valentine dressed them in shorts and T-shirts that were deliberately unmatched. Max got yellow with a skateboard logo and Kyle got a Troy Aikman Jersey. Val never dressed the twins alike, though Victoria sometimes fell into that little snippet of parental psychosis. Val’s attitude was: why buy two of anything? He saw twins as the ultimate way to economize. And money was tight. Val had a sixty-percent disability pension, but that was just a little more than three thousand dollars a