You Can’t Stop Me Read Free Page A

dark hair framing her face. Two holes darkened the shirt like a huge snake bite near her left breast.
    Kneeling beside her, only vaguely aware of the tears running down his cheeks, he checked for a pulse, knowing already he would find none. Her skin felt cool and slightly rubbery—like meat left out to thaw on the counter.
    No pulse.
    Also, no wedding ring. It wasn’t like her diamond was anywhere near big enough to inspire a robbery.
    He swallowed and rose. Moving, Harrow looked through the entryway and saw David crumpled on the floor in front of the stairs to the second floor, a dark puddle around him too, the butcher knife on the floor nearby.
    David was on his back, eyes closed peacefully, two black holes piercing the first A and the D in the Nevada T-shirt that he wore over knee-length denim shorts.
    Looking at the knife on the floor, as clean as it had been in the block, Harrow knew instantly that David had been in the kitchen when he heard the first shot and had grabbed the knife in a vain attempt to protect his mother.
    Harrow checked for a pulse, found none, paused long enough to run a finger through his son’s fine brown hair, then rose and checked the rest of the house.
    Assured that he was alone, he punched 9-1-1 into his cell phone.
    Then he found a chair and positioned it between his dead wife and son. This was a crime scene, and even that small act was out of bounds, but he did not care. He was not about to leave them alone.
    Harrow felt empty inside, hollow, but the emptiness, the hollowness, was Grand Canyon vast; echoes of screams and gunshots he’d never heard filled the abyss within him.
     
    Cops were crawling all over the house now, every light turned on, the windows bright in the darkness. The first uniforms to arrive, in a blur of flashing red and blue were Johnson and Stanowski, the deputies who had worked under Harrow when he had been sheriff. Johnson confiscated his gun and walked him outside to take his initial statement in the yard.
    Under the garage light, Lon Johnson, a rail-thin twenty-year vet with light green eyes and sandy hair, shook his head as he looked toward the house, his skin pale and a sickly yellow under the mercury vapor light.
    “J.C., I’m sorry. Christ, I’m sorry. Do you have any idea what the hell happened in there?”
    Harrow shook his head.
    Night-shift sergeant Stanowski, another longtime vet, was heavyset, his crewcut tinged with silver. “No questions, Lon. Not till the detectives get here.”
    “Jesus, Stan,” Johnson said to the sergeant, “this is family.”
    Stanowski gave Johnson a sharp look that said, Family or not, he’s still a suspect. In the sergeant’s place, Harrow would have done the same.
    Johnson seemed about to say something to his sergeant, and Harrow held up a hand. “Lon, take it easy. Stan’s just doing his job. Wants his ducks in a row.”
    “I know, J.C., but…”
    “No buts,” Harrow interrupted. “You want to do me a favor? Do this by the book.”
    The sergeant tried to hide his embarrassed smile at the show of support from the man who, if you went by the book, was their prime suspect.
    Looking at Stanowski, Harrow said, “Any chance I could get into my truck?”
    “Not before it’s processed. Why?”
    “Cigarettes in the glove compartment.”
    Stanowski pulled a pack from his shirt pocket and shook a smoke out for Harrow. The sergeant knew Harrow supposedly had quit, but had the decency not to point it out, and lit up the former sheriff.
    Harrow took a long drag, letting the smoke fill the emptiness, as he wished nothing more than for cancer to strike him instantly, right at this moment, right here in the goddamn yard, and kill him. A second later, however, the thought dissolved, like a hailstone battered by rain, replaced by another one: Someone had to find the person who had killed his family.
    And in that moment, the decision that would inform years to come was made: if it took every second of the rest of his life, he