Still Waters Read Online Free

sheriff for two, but somehow he had never really believed he would have to face death in its most brutal form. Not here.
    Murder had no business in Still Creek. It had been a fact of life he had grown almost blasé about during his years in Oakland and L.A. The headlines had been so commonplace in the newspaper, he hadn't bothered to do much more than scan the stories on his way to the comics. But murder didn't belong here. People in Still Creek didn't lock their doors. They left their keys in their cars. They never hesitated to stop to help a stranger. Murder wasn't something that happened in Tyler County. It was something to read about in the city papers. It was something that occasionally shocked everyone in Rochester, the nearest “big” town of sixty thousand people. It was a fact on the nightly news that everyone frowned about and worried over in the most abstract of ways, something that happened out in the big world, where everything was going to hell in a hand basket. But it didn't directly touch the lives of the residents of Tyler County. Until now.
    Dane's broad shoulders rose and fell as he planted his hands at his waist and heaved a sigh. He tried to take in the scene with the eyes of a police officer—objective, observant. But he couldn't fend off the initial shock of seeing a man lying dead and knowing another human being had caused that death. The tremors reached the very bedrock of his life. His face, however, remained impassive as he squatted down beside the body.
    Jarvis lay bellydown on the gravel like a fat dead seal, his arms at his sides. His feet were still inside the car. With one hand he gingerly lifted the man's right shoulder and took a look. The wound was obvious and ugly, a deep slash across the throat that revealed more of the inner workings of the human body than Dane cared to see. The fine layers of skin at the edges of the gash had curled back slightly, giving the impression of a macabre smile on hideously distorted lips, lips painted with dark maroon congealed blood.
    He had died quickly, too quickly to have reconciled himself to his fate, Dane thought, tearing his gaze away from the wound and taking in the dazed expression in the dark eyes, the mouth open in shock, as if he had started to cry out, only to find it too late.
    Jarvis hadn't been a handsome man alive. Somewhere around fifty, he had a jowly, mushed-in face, thick lips that were perpetually curved into a horseshoe-shaped frown. He had worn his carrot-red hair slicked back with Vitalis in a modified pompadour that looked as incongruous on his big head as a beanie would have. Death had not improved him any. His skin had begun to lose the chalky-white cast of recent death, taking on a faint pink tint instead, a shade that clashed ghoulishly with his blood, the blood that had begun to harden on the front of his yellow dress shirt, stiffening the sodden fabric like an overdose of starch.
    For just a second Dane could see in his mind's eye what must have happened the instant the blade had sliced across the man's throat. His stomach tightened at the sea of blood flowing in his imagination.
    “Jesus,” he murmured, letting go of Jarvis's shoulder. Rigor mortis had yet to set in, and the body slumped back into place limply, two hundred sixty pounds of lifeless flesh and fat. Dane sat back on his heels and raked his hands back through his hair.
    “I guess Jarrold won't be cheating at poker anymore.”
    Boyd Ellstrom leaned against the back door of the Lincoln, his arms folded across his chest. The beginnings of a paunch strained the buttons of his uniform shirt and spilled over the waistband of his black trousers. At forty-two he had finally outgrown the baby face that had plagued him most of his life. Now he simply looked petulant, his full lips perpetually turned down in a pout that suddenly made Dane think of Jarvis.
    “Good job, Ellstrom,” he drawled sardonically as he rose. “Dust the car for prints with your butt. The BCA