Read Online A Murder of Crows by Jan Dunlap - Free Book Online

combine land use and energy development with environmental responsibility, but, as usual, sometimes the strategies got ugly. I’d even heard that the wind company was accusing local residents of deliberately luring more eagles into the area to pad the numbers of potential bird deaths from the turbines. At the same time, the developer’s plans to remove nearby habitat in order to keep the birds and other wildlife away from the deadly turbines was getting a thumbs-down from state and federal officials. While putting distance between the towers and nests would save some birds, land-clearing would only displace the other critters in the area.
    Basically, what used to be simple utilitarian decisions about land use had become intricate balancing acts of a multitude of interest groups and subgroups. Depending on where in the state a piece of property was located, a real estate transaction could come under the scrutiny of a dozen agencies, not to mention public discussion and debate.
    And Sonny Delite had often been smack in the middle of a lot of those discussions, according to his wife, verbally slugging it out with the opposition, giving utility groups and project developers a painful, and often embarrassing, black eye.
    If Sonny was repeatedly going to step into the ring with big bucks energy providers, maybe he should have taken a page from the Bonecrusher’s book by wearing a mask and remaining anonymous. That way, if someone had decided to go after Sonny looking for payback, he’d still be looking.
    And Sonny wouldn’t be dead.
    In that case, I’d say anonymity was a huge advantage.
    “Mr. White!”
    Sadly enough, I wasn’t acquainted with that particular advantage in my own line of work. I turned to find Sara Schiller, Goldie’s missing mom, weaving her way through a row of parked cars towards me.
    “Where’s my baby?” she asked.
    I pointed at the bag of flour laying on the back seat. Sara peered through the car window.
    “That’s not safe,” she informed me. “You have to use a carseat with a baby. Just like you have to plug your electric outlets with covers and make sure kids don’t eat poisonous plants at the playground. We had a whole unit on child safety last week. It’s a good thing you don’t have any kids, Mr. White. Ms. Knorsen would flunk you in a minute for not using a carseat.”
    “I’m not taking the class, Sara,” I reminded her. “You are. Supposedly.”
    “What do you mean, ‘supposedly’?” she argued. “I show up… sometimes. It’s a stupid class. Ms. Knorsen just keeps harping about how important it is for parents to spend time with their kids. That’s ridiculous. My parents never spend time with me—my mom’s too busy with work and her club, and my dad’s always traveling for his job. I don’t need to spend time with them.”
    And I was pretty sure that was exactly why Sara didn’t like Gina’s class. As her counselor who was aware of her family situation, I could just imagine that every time Gina started discussing healthy family relationships, Sara immediately tuned her out. Not having experienced a nurturing bond with her own parents, Sara wasn’t interested in hearing about others’. Along with her truancy problems, Sara’s disciplinary issues in the classroom were directly related to her feeling that no one cared about her. To cope with that void in her life, she’d perfected deceiving her teachers—and her counselor—to an art.
    Which reminded me about the conversation I’d had earlier with possible-Crusher Paul Brand.
    “What about art, Sara?” I asked. “Mr. Brand told me you’ve been skipping his class. Is that a stupid class, too?”
    “Yes,” she snipped. “He wants us to scrapbook.”
    Well, okay, maybe she had a point there. Personally, I was still pretty much lost about that whole scrapbook thing, let alone it being high school art class material. To be honest with you, it sort of reminded me of trying to braid leather strips into key chains