Free Sundown on Top of the World: A Hunter Rayne Highway Mystery by R.E. Donald Page A

never seen. He couldn’t tell them what he did with the note, how he staged the scene so it wouldn’t look like anything but an accident. It was something he hadn’t told anyone, and never would.
    But Helen had known anyway. He had seen it in her eyes that first day, after he told her to go make coffee while he stayed with Ken’s body and called the police. He had seen it again a few months ago when he’d driven Helen and her son, Adam, to the Vancouver airport after Adam was released from hospital. The secret had created a wall between them that neither one had the courage to breach, each unsure and afraid of what damage the truth could do. Funny how little secrets could be fun, but this big secret wasn’t fun at all.
    He pictured Helen, her hair, her face, her eyes. He could recall the scent of her, the softness of her skin when her lips brushed his cheek as they said goodbye in February. They hadn’t seen each other for years, and they’d had no more than two hours together, in the company of young Adam, who only knew the official story, that his father had accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun. Conversation had been sparse and superficial. Their eyes seldom met, but when they did, they only telegraphed pain and sympathy, on both sides. On his side, sympathy for Adam’s growing up without a father, troubled and rebellious; sympathy for Helen being a widowed single mother trying to steer her son through adolescence whole and unbroken; sympathy for the nightmares that must haunt the widow of a man who had been unmistakably suicidal in spite of the coroner’s verdict of accidental gunshot.
    On her side, Hunter suspected she felt sympathy for him because of his divorce and the resulting separation from his two daughters – although he did see them now and then – and like many others, she probably didn’t understand why he left a good career as a homicide investigator for a solitary life as a long-haul trucker. So many people thought it was a come-down, a disappointment, an admission of failure on his part. In truth, it had been a blessed relief; it was like therapy for his wounded psyche after the twin tragedies of his wife’s demand for a divorce and his best friend’s death. Both events he had no choice but to attribute to him and Ken being police officers. He’d had to stop; he wasn’t sure if it was forever, but he had to stop.
    Ken’s face came to him, startlingly clear, in a scene from the past, about a year before Ken’s death. Ken sitting across from him in the bar at the Villa Hotel in Burnaby, just after they’d come from court. A case had just been dismissed. They’d worked for months to find enough evidence for an arrest. He could remember Ken’s voice, slurring slightly after a couple of double vodkas. “What the fuck is wrong with the system. You think what you’re doing is important. You think you’re making the world a safer place. You bust your ass trying to put these scumbags behind bars and then some slick lawyer in Gucci loafers has 'em back on the street before you can spit.” Another slug of vodka, then, “Well, fuck it, Hunter. Just fuck it!  Don't you get tired of being a fuckin' retriever? You bring your handler the stick, and then he throws it back for you to go fetch again. You’ve accomplished fuck all. You complain about it, and the big shots pat you on the head and tell you to go lie down, like some kind of idiot Irish Setter.”
    Hunter shook off the image and settled deeper into the truck seat. He finally dozed off, soon to be awakened by the sound of the roll-up door on the mechanic’s shed. He looked across the cab at the building, and saw a figure retreating into the dim interior. Hunter rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and opened the cab door. Time to find out what this clunking sound was going to cost him. He hoped it wasn’t going to cost him his entire paycheck for the trip, or even more.
     
     
    The news wasn’t good. Parts needed ordering and