Devil's Playground Read Free Page B

“This truck came out of nowhere, from the bushes on to the highway. I saw it a half a mile away but thought...I don’t know what I thought...maybe that it was on a cross road or underpass or something. By the time it reached our side of the freeway, it was too late. I tried to change lanes, but it seemed to come after us.”
    “What do you mean?” Sam asked.
    “I don’t know. It was all so fast. It seemed like he was after us. Or somebody.”
    “And trying to avoid the truck, you flipped over?”
    “Yeah. He took up the entire road, so I tried to slip by on the shoulder but my wheel caught the gravel and...after that we just hung on.”
    Debbie began to cry again, burying her face into her husband’s shoulder. He wrapped a protective arm around her.
    “Sam.”
    She turned to see Rosa peeking around the door.
    “Sheriff Walker’s on the phone,” she said. “Line three.”
    Sam excused herself and walked to the nurse’s station. She picked up the phone and punched line three’s blinking button. “Yeah, Charlie. What’s up?”
    “We IDed the people in the other car. It was John and Connie Beeson.”
    The words struck Sam square in the stomach, pushing acid into the back of her throat. Connie Beeson. Her third grade teacher. Her mother’s close friend before her mother had died. The Garrett jury foreman.

 
Chapter 3
    After leaving the hospital, Sam had gone home, showered, and crawled into bed, pulling the comforter under her chin. Scooter, the calico cat that had adopted her two years earlier, staked his claim to half of the pillow.
    As she lay in the darkness, the sounds of Scooter’s bathing and purring in her ears, she had turned her thoughts to the trial. How would Connie’s death affect it? Surely, Judge Westbrooke wouldn’t start the penalty phase over. He would replace her with one of the alternates and the jury would elect a new foreman and the trial would go on. That made the most sense, seemed the most practical.
    And if he didn’t? Another week of trial rather than one more day.
    As these thoughts tumbled inside her head, images of her mother, her father, and Connie Beeson assaulted her. Images that brought joy and pain and drew sobs and tears that she released into her pillow.
    Connie had been her third grade teacher. More than that, Sam considered her like an aunt, part of the family. Connie and her mom had grown up together, attended school and church together, and been each other’s bride’s maids. Connie had helped Sam weather the death of her father, and years later, had offered rock steady support through her mother’s illness and death. Connie was her last flesh and blood family. Memories and a shoebox of faded photos were all she had to remember her parents. And now, Connie.
    After tossing and turning for an hour or two, much to the irritation of Scooter, who flicked his tail in protest, she finally cried herself to sleep at 2:30 am. She awoke several times during the night, but with some difficulty managed to doze again. At 7:30, she dragged herself from bed, dressed, and headed for town.
    For the third day in a row, thick gray clouds hung low over the desert, promising rain, but as yet reneging on the deal. They did release a fine mist that peppered the windshield of her Jeep. Not enough that the wipers could be left on without squeaking, but enough so that she had to flip them on and off every thirty seconds. Irritating, given her current state of fatigue.
    After picking up coffee at Starbucks for herself and Charlie, she parked in front of the Sheriff’s Department. When she entered Charlie’s office, he was on the phone. She placed the two cups of coffee on the corner of his desk, stripped off her jacket, and dropped into the chair across from him, letting the jacket slide to the floor beside her. Lifting the lid from the paper cup, she blew across the steaming brew, and then carefully took a sip.
    “That’s what I hoped you’d say, judge,” Charlie said into the phone.