Over Tumbled Graves Read Free Page A

I didn’t hear,” he said, “was who called you.”
    “Joel.”
    He paused and she could feel the joke bubble up in him. She waited. Perhaps something about his penchant for working out. Dupree sometimes called Joel “Chippendale,” or simply “Meat.” But more likely, it would be about his age. Joel was twenty-four, twelve years younger than Caroline.
    “He need a ride home from school?”
    Caroline smiled. “That was actually funny. That’s unlike you.”
    He stood then, picked up the doll, and put it back in the stroller, which he righted for her. “In a week,” he said, “patrol will pick up your little drug dealer sniffing glue in a park somewhere. Guys like that always float to the surface.”
    “I suppose.”
    “No supposing. It’ll happen.” Dupree looked over toward the carousel, and for the first time Caroline realized someone was waiting for him. She looked back and saw a guy wearing Dockers, a tie, and a ten-year-old sports coat—the uniform of newspaper reporters, community college professors, and new homicide detectives.
    “Is that Spivey?” Caroline said grimly, forcing herself to smile and wave back. “Tell me that’s not Spivey.”
    “They got me partnered with him for a while. Training him.”
    “Chris Spivey made homicide detective?”
    He shrugged again. “They make monkeys into astronauts.”
    “Actually, I don’t think they do that anymore.” Caroline had requested a transfer to Major Crimes six months earlier and had been told that the only open position was going to be kept dark for at least a year. But apparently it had been given to Spivey.
    “I just train ’em,” Dupree said. “I don’t pick ’em.”
    She turned back to the river.
    “Hey…” He reached out and squeezed her forearm, just above the wrist. “So how’s your mom doing, anyhow?”
    “Fine.”
    “Good.” He let go of her arm, nodded, and began walking back toward Spivey.
    Caroline watched him go, then called out. “Say hello to Debbie.”
    Dupree stopped and turned back. “Okay. Say hi to Joel.” He walked away, muttering just loud enough for her to hear, “You know, when he finishes his paper route.”
    When he was gone, Caroline turned back to the river. She picked up the doll and turned it over in her hands. Fifty percent of babies are boys, but most dolls are girls. Ornaments and playthings. Caroline dumped the doll back in the stroller and began pushing it through the park. She checked her watch—almost five—and gave the stroller a big push, then walked to catch up with it, pausing alongside the steady river to replay the blown sting in her mind. Why hadn’t she just let the phone ring? She followed a walking trail up away from the falls and was about to leave the park when she stopped to look back over her shoulder at a stand of thick bushes. A woman in a tight dress and tennis shoes, a secretary walking home, stopped and bent over the stroller.
    “Can I peek?” the woman asked.
    Caroline couldn’t look away from the thick bushes. “No,” she said flatly.
    “Why? Is she asleep?”
    “No,” Caroline said. “Plastic.”
    She left the woman with the stroller and walked toward the thicket, thinking about the second suspect’s khaki pants. She brushed aside the bushes with her arm and then all at once the world exploded around her, Burn and the man in khaki bursting forth from the stand of bushes like birds being flushed. Something, either the force or the surprise, knocked her back, and by the time she regained her balance the two suspects were ten yards away and moving quickly, the man in khaki pulling Burn by the arm.
    Caroline ran after them, grabbing her cell phone off her hip and trying to punch in the numbers as she ran through the park. She followed the two men past the carousel and along the river, conscious of them pulling away. Caroline dropped her phone, but didn’t turn back for it, just kept running after the men, who crossed a widefootbridge over the still arm of