Past Master by Richard Stockford

Author:Richard Stockford [Stockford, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781951328016
Publisher: On the Beat Books
Published: 2020-03-30T22:00:00+00:00

Clipper was lingering over coffee with Janice when John Peters called. “Harold Petersen just got blown up in a gas pump explosion at his store,” Peters said.

“He dead?” Clipper stood and reached for his coat.

“Naw, ambulance guys say he’ll make it, but he’s pretty messed up. There’s a woman, too. Burned pretty bad, prob’ly won’t make it.”

There was one fire truck still standing by when Clipper got to the scene. Two maintenance men were already fitting sheets of plywood into the blown-out window opening, and Peters was just walking a young man towards his car. He changed direction when he saw Clipper’s truck; speaking to a uniformed officer, he put the young man into the back of a marked cruiser, which pulled out of the lot as Clipper parked.

“Getting interesting,” Peters said when Clipper got out. “That kid’s a clerk. He says Petersen was outside yelling at the woman for smoking at the pump, when it exploded and blew him back through the window. Curious thing is, he swears he saw a bullet hole appear in the glass just before it broke. Didn’t see anyone or hear any shots, but he’s sure about the bullet hole.”

Leaving Peters to supervise the scene, Clipper drove to the hospital and found an emergency room nurse he knew.

“They sedated him while they try to find an Orthopedic Surgeon,” she said. “His left shoulder looks to be pretty much destroyed.”

“Does it look like a gunshot wound?” Clipper asked.

She gave him an odd look. “Well, yeah. That’s what we assumed it was.”

“How ’bout the woman that they brought in?”

The nurse shook her head. “She never had a chance.”

Clipper got back in the truck, this time driving to the station to talk with the store clerk. Gabe Liberty was a high school senior, working part time for Petersen before and after school. He was intelligent and adamant.

“I’m positive,” he said. " Mr. Petersen was yelling, and I was looking at him, and I saw the hole in the window just over his shoulder—just for a split second before the explosion, but I know I saw it.”

Clipper was just wrapping up with Liberty when Peters called again. “Kid was right,” he said. “We found the bullet. It was in the back wall on a line with the window and the pump. It’s not jacketed, looks like some kind of hunting round. Randy’s here working the scene, so I’m going to take a look in the woods across the road.”

“Grab a uniform, and be careful. The hospital verifies that it was a gunshot wound, but Petersen’s already sedated for surgery. I’m going to get a uniform over there to stand by, and then see if I can find out where our friend Sergeant Rojas is this morning.”

Clipper called Nelson Miller and found out that Ramon Rojas was staying at the Howard Johnson’s in Bangor. He grabbed Caleb Cross, who had been reading the Amburg casebook, and Ellen Davis; on the way out of the station he stopped in to

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