Dead to Rights by Jack Patterson (fiction book recommendations .txt) 📕

“Is your cousin working the case?” Cal asked.

“Who? My cousin Betty? She’s lucky if she can find her way out of bed in the mornin’.”

Cal wasn’t sure if he should laugh or not, deciding to go with a forced smile. He craned his neck around Arant to see a large figure coming toward them. It was Sheriff Sloan.

“You mind givin’ me a statement?” Arant asked as Sloan approached them.

Sloan stopped and exhaled. He glanced at his watch and looked back at the scene. “Not at this time, gentleman . . . and lady,” Sloan said. “We still have to sort through this scene, so I’m afraid I wouldn’t be much help anyway.”

Cal furrowed his brow. “Can you at least give us the victim’s name?”

“Not until we can confirm his identity,” Sloan answered.

“So, it’s a male?” Cal asked again.

“It’s a dead person, Mr. Murphy,” Sloan said, his gaze bouncing back and forth between Cal and Kelly. “Didn’t I tell y’all it was time to get out of town?”

Cal nodded.

“He’s not very good at following directions,” Kelly said, throwing her hands in the air. “I ought to know—I live with the man. If I’ve asked him once to pick up his dirty clothes in the bathroom, I’ve asked him a thousand—”

Sloan narrowed his eyes. “The last thing Pickett wants is another media frenzy descending on our little town, so I strongly suggest you skedaddle back to Seattle and let the local newspaper editor here handle the story.”

“Do you have a suspect in custody?” Cal asked.

“I’m beginnin’ to get concerned about your hearin’, Mr. Murphy,” Sloan said. “It seems like you’re havin’ a hard time with it. So, I’m going to say this again slowly and loudly: Get out of my town, and don’t come back.”

Cal remained undaunted. “Why? Afraid of what little secrets I might unearth about you? Scared I might tell Larry here about how you covered up the fact that you were out of the office the night of Susannah’s murder at the exact time of her death?”

Larry’s eyes bulged out as his mouth fell agape. “Sheriff, is that true?”

Sloan waved dismissively at Arant but maintained his steely gaze on Cal. “Better stop talkin’, son, before you dig yourself a hole that you can’t climb out of.”

Cal fished his recorder out of his pocket and dangled the device in front of Sloan’s face. “I hope nothing happens to me because this conversation will be challenging to explain.”

Sloan spun around and stormed off in a huff.

Arant watched the sheriff for a few moments before turning back to Cal and Kelly. “I’ve rarely seen him that rattled,” Arant said. “Usually, he’s so even keel.”

“That’s not the Sheriff Sloan we’ve come to know and love,” Cal said.

“Yeah, he’s been on edge since we came to town,” Kelly added. “What could possibly be bothering him?”

“Aside from you two picking at the old wounds this story conjures up for people around here? I’m sure he would’ve preferred to leave it buried along with Susannah all those years ago.”

“Wait,” Cal began. “You aren’t the least bit curious about what we found out about the night of Susannah’s murder?”

“I am,” Arant said. “I’m not gonna lie. I’m a journalist. But I’m also a small town journalist. I live with these people, and I have to get along with them. If I wrote about every secret I knew about and put it on the front page of The Searchlight, I’d hardly have a friend left, much less any subscribers.”

“But this is murder,” Cal said. “And it’s being pinned on a guy who might be getting executed very soon for something he didn’t do. If there was ever a time to cast aside your neighborly approach when it comes to running your paper, this is it.”

“You don’t live here, Mr. Murphy, so I don’t expect you to understand.”

“You’re right. I don’t live here. But I do have some level of expectation of you as a journalist when it pertains to something as serious as this. This town needs to know about this. Everybody needs to know about it.”

Arant took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He stared off at the scene behind Cal as an ambulance pulled up next to the blockade before it was allowed inside the perimeter.

“What if I told you things aren’t always as they seem?” Arant asked. “Appearances can be deceiving. Maybe he has a good reason for not wanting that information to get out.”

“Yeah, like he murdered someone and tried to cover it up,” Cal said, his voice rising with each exchange.

Arant held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Look, I know what this may look like to you, but I’ve known Sheriff Sloan for a long time, and he’s never shown even an inkling that he might have violent tendencies. He’s a gentle giant. Add that to the fact that he was always doting on Susannah, I just can’t see him having the gumption to murder his own child like that.”

Cal shook his head in disbelief. “Would you have thought that about Isaiah Drake if the roles were reversed? Would you believe that he could’ve killed Susannah either?”

Arant remained pensive for a few seconds, crossing his arms before looking down at the dirt. He kicked at a rock with his foot. “I wouldn’t have predicted him doing something like that, but I can’t say I was completely surprised.”

Cal’s eyebrows shot up. He glanced at Kelly, whose expression matched his own.

“And why would you say you weren’t completely surprised?” Cal asked.

Before Arant answered, a couple of black Suburbans screeched to a halt near the crime scene, knocking down the sawhorses.

“What the—?” Arant muttered, ignoring Cal and walking toward the scene.

Cal turned around to see what he figured to be several federal agents hustling toward Sheriff Sloan and the dead body being hoisted onto a stretcher by a pair of EMTs.

The trio of journalists watched from afar as the conversation between the feds and Sloan involved