Before He Wakes by Jerry Bledsoe

Author:Jerry Bledsoe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: TRUE CRIME/Murder/General
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2014-04-07T16:00:00+00:00

On the way back to Durham that night, Buchanan thought about three calls he had received before the group left for Randolph County that morning.

The first had come from a contact Buchanan had developed at the County Health Department, a neighbor of Russ and Barbara’s. She said that the funeral home had requested a dozen copies of Russ’s death certificate. That usually was an indication of a lot of insurance policies.

But only twenty minutes later, another contact, this one in the clerk of court’s office, had called to report that Barbara had filed for probate on Russ’s estate.

She had come to the courthouse Friday afternoon, just four days after Russ’s death, less than an hour after she had reenacted the shooting for Buchanan. While he had been watching the videotape in the detective division, Barbara, her mother and her brother Alton had been just upstairs submitting Russ’s will, naming herself executor of the estate. On the preliminary inventory, Barbara had listed only $98,000 in life insurance. Was she trying to hide the true amount? If not, it seemed a paltry payment for murder.

If greed for insurance money was not behind Russ’s death, might the motive lie in the third call Buchanan had received that morning?

An informant who wished to remain anonymous had called to say that Russ had been having an affair with a black woman, a teacher at the junior high school, where he once had been director of athletics. Barbara, the caller said, supposedly had found out about it.

Jealousy, Buchanan knew, was often reason enough for a homicide, but most of those killings came in heated moments. Rarely were they coldly calculated and executed, as the murder of Russ now appeared to be.

As he considered the possibilities, Buchanan figured he could count on one thing at least. He likely would endure many long and frustrating hours and a lot of hard work before he knew why Russ Stager had died.

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