Free Breaking Point by Jon Demartino Page B

for her little brother. I said as much to her.
                  "Well, Rudy, you have got to realize that it's time to move on with your life and get over that Caroline Bennett. You've wasted way too much time beating on that dead horse now and maybe, just maybe, your sister really does know what's best for you." She paused for a second before her final slam-dunk. "I admit that there is a woman I'd like you to meet."
                  I groaned into the phone.
                  "Stop that, now, Rudy. This is a really nice woman and it happens that she volunteers at the mission on every other Friday, so this may or may not be the week that she's there. We'll just leave that to fate and see what happens."
                  The chances of my sister leaving this meeting to fate were about the same as my chances of being drafted by the Steelers, maybe worse. She'd probably be on the phone to this civic-minded creature from the black lagoon as soon as we hung up. The only saving grace to the entire episode was that it would keep her mind off her wandering husband for a while. I was so bad, as a result of what I knew about that louse that I agreed to accompany her to the mission after our lunch the following day.
                  "I'll just tell you one thing, though, Sis," I said sternly. "I'll meet your mystery woman...but I will not marry her."
                  We bantered a little more and ended the conversation on a pleasant note. One thing I was sure of, at lunchtime on a Friday, I wouldn't run into my brother-in-law at his home. And maybe it was time I let my sister introduce me to someone for a change. She probably had a list of potential wives for me that was a mile long and she couldn't do much worse than I had done on my own, could she?
                  I didn't have anything pressing to do, so this seemed like a good time to take a stroll down to the police station and see if Officer Felton was on duty. I'd met Bill Felton a few months earlier when I was getting all my permits and licensing papers in order. He was a young policeman and one of the first group of officers hired by the city of Oak Grove this past year. Prior to that, the County Sheriff's Department had provided law enforcement to the small town. There were only five officers in the new police department, so there was a decent chance that Bill would be manning the station this evening while one of the other four was on patrol.
                  The police department was housed in the first floor of a vacant warehouse three blocks west of me, on Pine Street. A new stoop, framed from treated lumber had been attached to the crumbling concrete beneath the front door but the peeling paint hadn't been scraped from the old window frames and the rotting wood was showing through. I forced the warped door open and stepped inside.
                  Bill was in the chair behind his desk and greeted me with a handshake and a smile.
                  "How's business? Are you picking up some clients?"
                  I nodded. "That's why I'm here. I was wondering if you were in on the case where a guy fell into the conduit over by the dam last April. Name was Wilson."
                  Bill sat back and put his feet up on the desk. "Yeah, I took the original call and got there about the same time the State Police and ambulance did. What's your interest in it?"
                  "Probably just a routine guilty wife case. She wants to make sure he didn't kill himself and asked me to check all the information. You know, just the usual regrets after the guy is gone. I read the article that she'd saved from the paper but thought it couldn't hurt to hear it firsthand."
                  "Well, we found his car parked in the lot right below the dam, where the water's released. The keys were still in it but the motor was shut off. There