Still Waters Read Online Free Page A

boys will love you.”
    The deputy made a sour face as he pushed himself away from the Lincoln. “You called the BCA? This is our case, Dane. We don't need them.”
    “Yeah, I can see how professionally you're handling it,” Dane said dryly.
    “Well, I sure as hell wouldn't have called in outsiders.”
    “It wasn't your choice, was it?”
    “Not this time.”
    Dane ground his teeth, biting back a retort. He didn't need to get into a fight with one of his own deputies in front of the press. He merely stared at Ellstrom. A flicker of uneasiness crossed Ellstrom's fleshy face, then he turned and swaggered away with his thumbs hooked into his belt.
    Tamping down his temper, Dane moved away from the car; ostensibly looking for clues, all the while wondering why Boyd Ellstrom had remained on the Tyler County force after he'd lost the race for the sheriff's office. The man had fifteen years experience; he could have gone anywhere in the state and gotten a better job than the one he had here.
    “Boyd says you called in the BCA.”
    “They're the experts,” Dane said, his voice soft and deadly. He turned his scowl on his chief deputy and ticked his reasons off on his fingers one by one. “We've got no lab, we've got no forensics team, we've got no one who has seen a murder anywhere but on television. I don't think anyone here has picked up enough from watching
Columbo
to do this right.”
    The state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension had been designed for just such circumstances as these. Comprised of specialists who had at their central lab all the latest technology for analyzing evidence, the bureau was at the disposal of every law enforcement center in the state. It was a sheriff's decision whether to call them in or not. As far as Dane could see, a country cop would have to have shit for brains to leave the BCA out of a murder investigation.
    “We've never handled a murder. I don't want this fucked up.”
    Kaufman shrugged and strived to look innocent, raising his hands in surrender. “Hey, me neither. I'll be glad to have them.”
    Dane's jaw hardened and his eyes narrowed as he stared over at Ellstrom, who was barking at the reporters like an ineffectual guard dog. “We don't all seem to be in agreement on that point.”
    “Yeah . . . well . . .” Kaufman cracked his knuckles and shuffled his feet. “You know Boyd.”
    “Yeah, I know Boyd. He couldn't find shit in a cow barn but he thinks he can solve a murder on his own.”
    Kaufman cleared his throat nervously and stepped a little to one side, diplomatically drawing Dane's eyes away from Boyd Ellstrom. “What do we do until the BCA boys get here?”
    “Pray it doesn't rain,” Dane said as thunder rumbled overhead and pain bit into his knee. “Don't touch anything. Don't let anybody else touch anything. They'll take care of all the photography, the fingerprinting, physical evidence. We just have to stay out of their way and do whatever they ask. Yeager will be here within the hour. So will the lab.”
    “Right.”
    “Where's the Stuart woman?”
    Kaufman motioned toward the mob of reporters and gawkers that were pressing in on the scene. “Tough lady. She made me take her back to her car so she could get her camera.”
    Dane snorted. “Compassionate, huh? Bring her over here.”
    As the deputy went off toward the crowd, Dane called to mind what facts he knew about Elizabeth Stuart, the new publisher of the Still Creek
Clarion
. Like most everyone in the country, he had heard about her divorce from Atlanta media mogul Brock Stuart. It had been impossible to escape the story. The headlines had been plastered across every sleazy tabloid, told and retold by the radio and television newspeople, detailed in every major paper.
    What a world. Every day people died horrible deaths, society was coming apart at the seams because of drugs and AIDS and the pollution of the planet. Wars were being fought with thousands of lives in the balance. And Elizabeth Stuart's