Quiet Time by Stephanie Kane

Author:Stephanie Kane [Kane, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-48995-1
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-12-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter | Twenty

Ray could have ended his career with Peggy's murder but it would have meant giving up half his pension. He couldn't do that to Marion, not with the mortgage and their cabin in Torrance needing a new roof. And what about their plans to buy a used motor home, spend six months touring Lake Louise and the Cascades? Swallowing what was left of his pride, he agreed to transfer to the juvenile crimes division of the Hallett County Sheriff's Department for his last years before retirement.

Ray hated everything about juvie with a passion that surprised him, the car thefts and petty vandalism, the slashed tires and joyriding. Not to mention curfew violations; curfew violations were big. After six weeks he was so bored he went through every file in the office, even the ones that had been closed for years.

The cabinets in the storage closet adjacent to the juvenile division were crammed with reports from school board psychologists cautioning society against boys who were now adults, educators throwing up their hands and trying to avoid being sued by shunting failures to a criminal justice system so disaffected and overburdened, it made only cursory efforts to follow up. Most of the closed files were clumsily redacted, with names of miscreants blotted out by overzealous clerks with Magic Markers who misunderstood the meaning of laws sealing juvenile records and obliterated any information that might possibly be of future use. Occasionally Ray found things that chilled him to the core, tales of boys skinning live squirrels or drawings that provided windows into the violent fantasies of adolescent minds. As he examined one distressingly lifelike sketch of a blindfolded woman reclining on a bed with a breast cut off and a gaping hole where her privates should be, he reflected that some of these boys were dangerously sick.

He ran into Lew Devine once in a while, but they didn't have much to say to each other. The day after Ray was thrown off the Scott case he'd called Lew and invited him to Las Margaritas for a drink. That was before Lew was promoted to lieutenant, of course, and placed in charge of Investigations.

They'd sat at the bar, though the place was empty and they could have had a booth. Balancing the heels of his Tony Lamas on the brass rail, Lew ordered a Coors.

“Tough break, Ray…”

“I'm sure it's all over the Department by now.” He signaled for a Jim Beam.

“Little early in the afternoon for that, ain't it?”

“It's the right time,” Ray replied. “Change your mind and have one with me?”

“I'm going back to the office after this.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot. You're in charge of the Scott case now, aren't you? What was it Philips told the press, ‘The charges were dropped because of newly-discovered evidence?' ” Ray laughed. “What evidence was that, Lew, the phantom pickup truck?”

“Look, I know you're sore—”

“Damn right I'm sore! I never expected that from you.”

Devine stared into his beer. “What're you talking about?”

“C'mon, Lew, I may have been born at night, but it wasn't last night.

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