The Waves Break Gray (The Raleigh Harmon mysteries Book 6) by Giorello Sibella

Author:Giorello, Sibella [Giorello, Sibella]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Mystery, Fiction
Publisher: Running Girl Productions
Published: 2016-09-20T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The next morning, after exhausted sleep, I got up before dawn and sped over the Cascade mountains. The sky shifted from obsidian black to gray opals to the pink quartz that makes morning promises.

In the town of Wenatchee, I followed Gunn Road to Euclid Street, then parked outside the main office of the Chelan County Sheriff’s Department. Inside, that same bitter scent of cheap coffee stung the air. No receptionist was at the desk. But in the bullpen that spread behind that desk, dispatch radios crackled and in the far back, one man sat at a desk, sipping from a large white mug.

“Detective Culliton?” I asked.

He wore a collared shirt, no tie. As I approached, he rubbed a square hand across his jaw, back and forth, like somebody who had spent last night grinding his teeth.

“Raleigh Harmon?” He stood. He was tall and broad, dwarfing everything around him.

I handed him my card. While he read it, I glanced at his desk. Two binders sat front and center. One lay open. I’d bet four speeding tickets that the binder was labelled Engels or Heller. “Thanks for meeting me so early,” I said.

“Yeah, what else could I do? You call me eleven at night and say you can only meet early in the morning?” He looked at me. His eyes were a deep and dark, like the wrong end of a double-barreled shotgun. “You said the family hired you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How’d you hear about the Heller girl?”

“Her mother.” I wasn’t ratting out Wilcove. And Martha Heller had told me about her daughter. But as I said it, my phone buzzed. I’d turned off the ringtone before leaving Tacoma this morning. But in this empty office, the buzz sounded like a game show contestant giving the wrong answer. The phone buzzed again.

“You gonna get that?” Detective Culliton waited.

“Not right now.”

“Who told you before the mother,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“Before Mrs. Heller.” He gestured to a metal chair waiting next to his desk. “Who told you about her daughter before her?”

“Was I not supposed to know about Esther Heller?”

He sat and placed my card front and center on the desk. His elbows went on top of that open binder, his big arms crossed to prevent me from seeing anything on the open page. “I don’t like outsiders showing up and meddling in local affairs.”

“Even if that outsider is here to help?”

“Too many cooks turn dinner to crap.”

“Unless one of the cooks happens to know how to cook.”

One shotgun shell slid into the chamber of his dark eyes. “You telling me you how to handle this case?”

“Not at all. I’m just reminding you that Peter Rosser’s done great lab work. For just about every sheriff’s department in the state. And Rosser hired me.”

“Only now Rosser’s a free agent.”

“Yes, and?”

“And you ditched the FBI.”

No occupational clan was strung tighter than cops. Cops stuck with cops. And Peter and I had left the law enforcement fold. I’d also bet another speeding ticket that Wilcove talked to his brother-in-arms, Seiler or Culliton, maybe to assuage his guilt over giving me Esther’s name.

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