Read Online Murder on the Horizon by M.L. Rowland - Free Book Online

with such open hatred in his eyes, it frightened Gracie. If only an hour before she hadn’t seen the boy completely different, congenial, excited about reading J.K. Rowling and Mark Twain, she, too, would have thought he was nothing but a sullen, bad-tempered little punk on the fast track to prison.
    The sergeant picked up a manila file folder lying on the table. “Get him out of here, Kinkaid,” he said. With a final slap on the table with the file, Gardner strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

CHAPTER
    7
    â€œB RANDY, you’re a fine girl.” Gracie sang softly along with the radio. “What a good wife you would be.” She edged the Ranger out of the Sheriff’s Office parking lot and into traffic on the main boulevard.
    She glanced over at Baxter, who sat unmoving in the passenger’s seat, staring out the window. Since Sergeant Gardner had left the squad room, the boy hadn’t spoken a single word.
    The song ended and Gracie turned the radio volume down.
    She guided the Ranger around the curve in the boulevard. Through the trees on her left, Timber Lake flashed by, glittering cobalt blue.
    Gracie glanced at Baxter again. “They’re not all bad, you know?” she ventured.
    The boy made no indication he had heard her.
    â€œLaw enforcement, I mean. Deputies. Cops. I’ve worked with them, mostly Sheriff’s Department, quite a bit through Search and Rescue. Not that my opinion is that important, but I like, or at least get along with, the vast majority of them.I understand that you’re afraid of cops. I’m not sure why. Maybe your experiences so far haven’t been very positive.”
    She looked over again to see if she received any response.
    The boy didn’t move.
    â€œBaxter,” she said. “Sergeant Gardner is a class A jerk. I don’t like him either.” She added under her breath, “to put it mildly.” Then to Baxter again: “I’d hate for one experience to taint your view on law enforcement forever. There are some nice ones out there. They’re not all the enemy. In fact, most of them aren’t.”
    Baxter looked at Gracie, then turned back to stare out the window.
    â€œI mean it.”
    Gracie punched the radio button away from an ad about erectile dysfunction.
    â€œ. . . multiple brush fires,” a male announcer said.
    Gracie turned up the volume again.
    â€œ. . . just before four p.m. yesterday afternoon, west of the community of Shady Oak. Officials are investigating whether the fires, started within a quarter mile and hours of each other, are related in any way.”
    â€œShady Oak,” Gracie said aloud. Picturing the map of the area in her head, she mentally calculated that the fire was miles away on the other side of the valley’s southern mountain range.
    Still, she leaned over and looked out the window. There was no smoke visible above the mountain ridgeline. Not even haze. The sky was a clear, perfect cerulean blue.
    She sat back in the seat again, glanced over at Baxter, then back at the road. “I need ice cream,” she said suddenly and made a U-turn in the middle of the boulevard.
    That got the boy’s attention. He looked over at her. “What are you doing? Where are we going?”
    â€œWe’re getting ice cream.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œWe need a reason?”
    Gracie swung the Ranger into the entrance of the Dairy Queen.
    â€œI don’t think I’m supposed to have it. Ice cream,” Baxter said.
    Gracie swooped around into the drive-through line and stopped behind a banana-yellow Volkswagen Beetle. “Why not?”
    A shoulder lifted. “I dunno.”
    Gracie glanced over at Baxter. “Ever been to Dairy Queen?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWell, then, it’s about time.” At his face, she added, “You can have anything you want. It’ll be our secret.”
    A car horn drew her attention to