Read Online Dark Paradise by Tami Hoag - Free Book Online

owners coming up here out of big cities. Most of these
    people don't know beans about handling firearms.
     
    They get all duded up in their L.L. Bean safari jackets, sling a big ol'
    elephant rifle over their shoulders, and off they go.
     
    "The guy that shot your friend?   He didn't have a clue.
     
    Didn't know he'd hit her. He didn't even see her. Took two days before
    the body was found."
     
    "Who was he?" Marilee asked numbly, needing a name, a face she could
    picture and attach guilt to. He hadn't even known. Lucy had died up
    there all alone, had lain there for days while the jerk who killed her
    went on with his vacation, oblivious.
     
    "Dr. J. Grafton Sheffield," Quinn said, swiveling his chair toward a
    black file cabinet that took up the entire width of the room behind the
    desk. "There's a trust-fund name for you," he mumbled as his thick
    fingers flipped through the files. He pulled one out and checked the
    contents. "Plastic surgeon from Beverly Hills. When word got out what
    had happened, he came in and confessed he'd been up there hunting. He
    was sick about it. Really was. Cried the whole time in court. Cooperated
    fully."
     
    "The ballistics matched up, I take it?"
     
    Quinn's brows sketched upward.
     
    "I was a court reporter for six years, Sheriff," Marilee explained. "I
    know the drill."
     
    He rubbed one corner of his mouth with a stubby forefinger as he studied
    her, considering. Finally he nodded, selected a thin sheaf of typed
    pages from the file, and handed them across the desk. She scanned the
    initial report, her eyes catching on familiar words and phrases.
     
    "There wasn't anything left of the bullet that nailed her," Quinn said.
    "It passed through her body and hit a rock. We couldn't test for a
    match. The shell casings in the area were consistent with the loads
    Sheffield had been using - 7mm Remington. He confessed he'd been in the
    area, didn't know he'd wandered off Bryce's land. He pleaded no
    contest."
     
    "You mean it's over already?" Marilee said, stunned.
     
    "How can that be?"
     
    Quinn shrugged again. "The wheels of justice move pretty quick out here.
    Our court dockets don't see the same load yours do down in California.
    It didn't hurt that Sheffield was a buddy of Bryce's. Bryce swings a lot
    of weight in these parts."
     
    "Sheffield is in jail, then?" Marilee said, sounding hopeful and knowing
    better. Plastic surgeons from Beverly Hills didn't go to jail for
    accidents they readily owned up to.
     
    "No, ma'am." Quinn's attention went to the squad room again. The biker
    was standing, the chair shackled to his wrists sticking out behind him
    like an avant garde bustle. Quinn started to rise slowly. "He pleaded
    guilty to a misdemeanor count of negligent endangerment. One year
    suspended sentence and a one-thousand-dollar fine.
     
    Excuse me, ma'am."
     
    He was out the door and barreling toward the melee before Marilee could
    react. She stared through the window at the surreal scene for a moment,
    Quinn and his deputies and the woolly mammoth tussling around the room
    in what looked like a rugby scrimmage. She dropped her gaze to the file
    in her lap. Surreal had been the theme of her vacation so far.
     
    She glanced at the notes made by the deputy who had originally been
    assigned to the case, then at Quinn's comments. The coroner's report was
    appallingly brief. Cause of death: gunshot wound. There were scanty
    notes about entrance and exit wounds, contusions and abrasions. A broken
    nose, lacerations on the face, probably caused by the fall from her
    mount. It seemed pitiful that the cessation of a life could be boiled
    down to two words. Gunshot wound.
     
    The battle raged on in the squad room, the biker smashing cups,
    coffeepots, computer screens with the chair attached to his butt. Good
    thing Quinn had experience wrestling enormous hairy animals to the
    ground.
     
    Across the desk lay the file folder that held whatever other meager
    comments on Lucy's