Gun Shy Read Free Page A

so sad.
    My view was of one corner of the room. Broken glass on the floor from the window Wyn had broken. A log-frame bed covered with a polka-dotted quilt. Beside it one of those laurel-wood chairs that are so popular for their rustic appeal, but impossibly uncomfortable to sit in. Someone had chosen to sit in it, though. And she had never gotten up.
    A bloated arm covered in chambray hung over the side of the chair, fingers just visible. Beneath those fingers on the floor lay a large-caliber pistol, the kind that could literally blow a person’s brains out if fired at close range. And that, I realized as I looked again at the quilt, was exactly what it had done.
    I closed my fingers around the scruff of the dog’s neck and pulled him with me as I staggered, senses reeling, toward the front door. He followed without protest, as though he had been rendered as helpless as I had been by the sight.
    I made my away across the small yard to my SUV, oblivious to the uniformed officers and the looks they gave me, oblivious to the flurry of activity as Buck stood on the front porch and began to relay orders, oblivious to the flashing lights and crackling radios and to everything, in fact, except the now-complacent, brokenhearted creature on the other end of the leash. I opened the back of the SUV, where I kept a wire dog crate in order to safely transport my own and other people’s dogs when I had to. When I opened the door of the crate, the yellow Lab jumped in, just as though he had been doing it all his life.
    At the time, I barely noticed.
    I secured the crate, closed the door of the SUV and got behind the driver’s seat. I even turned on the engine and adjusted the vents so that the dog would have plenty of fresh air. And then I just folded my arms over the top of the steering wheel and sat there, trying to breathe deeply. It was a long time before I felt steady enough to drive.

Chapter Two
    My name is Raine Stockton, and I have been around law enforcement all my life. Most people still think of me as “Judge Stockton’s daughter,” since my father was a district court judge here in Hanover County for the last thirty years of his life. My mother’s brother, Uncle Roe, has been unopposed for the post of sheriff since he first took office back in the seventies, and everyone seems to like it that way. I married Deputy Buck Lawson not once but twice, and though we currently live apart—and I keep my maiden name—we still can’t quite make up our minds whether we are better off with or without each other. When I put on my forest service uniform, people often call me “Officer,” and I don’t always correct them. I have a deep and natural respect for the work that law officers do. And after what I had witnessed today, I was more convinced than ever than I wanted no part of it.
    Which is why, I suppose, I found the persistent questions of people who always assume I know more about police matters than I actually do more annoying today than usual.
    To be fair, it was not Ken Withers, our local vet, who bombarded me with questions, although he was the one who probably had the most right to do so. After all, I had burst into his office without an appointment or even a phone call, dragging a strange dog and blurting out an even stranger story about his having been locked inside a cabin for days with a dead body. Doc Withers, in fact, didn’t even raise an eyebrow. He was what you might call a man of few words, who preferred to gather his information through the tools of his trade: the stethoscope, the microscope, his own expert touch and powers of observation.
    His wife, Ethel, ran the front office and acted as assistant when necessary, and their daughter, Crystal, now a senior in high school, acted as vet tech on the afternoons and weekends. It was they who, big eyed with shock and curiosity, couldn’t ask me questions fast enough.
    “Good Lord,” exclaimed Ethel, coming quickly from behind the reception desk. She was a