Free First Kill All the Lawyers by Sarah Shankman Page B

blond-brick county complex that had been built off to the side of the old red courthouse, which stood squarely in the middle of the road in the middle of town. Beau hadn’t had any dinner and had ruined a new pair of shoes. His mood could be summarized as mean.
    But he met his match in that category when he met Buford Dodd. Not that the sheriff wasn’t pleasant on the surface—and neither was he hard on the eyes. He stood level with Beau at six-foot-one, though he outweighed the doctor’s runner’s body by a good forty pounds, most of which was muscle packed in his thighs, arms, and shoulders. Dark-haired, black-eyed, with perhaps a touch of Cherokee blood somewhere down the line, Buford Dodd was one handsome country sheriff who hadn’t gone to fat. He didn’t sound like a typical cracker either, the kind who sold trucks on television commercials; his voice was soft, rumbling, and warm, with a good-ole-boy chuckle just waiting for an opportunity to surface. But there was a warning in his eyes, which could go suddenly small, shrewd, and piglike, and behind that chuckle was a serpentine rattle. Buford Dodd was not a man to cross.
    “Reckon we wasted your time, coming all the way up here from Atlanta,” Dodd said. Then he shook Beau’s hand, hard. “But I been hearing about you the past couple of years, so I’m glad we had this opportunity to meet.”
    “Glad to meet you, too. Never a waste of time—just our job,” Beau lied. “So, you’ve got the body here?” He glanced around the room, where three deputies slouched here and there like hunting dogs. The overhead fluorescent lights made everybody look dead.
    “Yep.”
    “Had anybody look at it?”
    “The coroner’s been and gone. We’re ready to release it to the family as soon as they get here.”
    “Who’s the coroner in this county?”
    “Doc Johnson.” Dodd grinned slowly, sharing the joke with his deputies, who grinned back. “He’s the vet.”
    Beau didn’t even blink. “Mind if I take a look?”
    Dodd hoisted his left buttock down off the counter where he’d been partially resting himself. “Not a’tall,” he said, and led the way to the morgue.
    Forrest Ridley had probably been a handsome man. But it was a little hard to tell after the vicious beating he’d taken—presumably down the almost 750 feet of rocky falls. Though the body was fully dressed, contusions and abrasions were apparent about the face; the nose and right arm and left leg were at angles that indicated fractures. The neck was broken. And the flesh showed that the body had been in the water for more than a couple of hours. It was fortunate that the weather had been cool.
    Even so, the little room, whose walls were painted mint green, was filled with a distinctively sweet and nauseating odor.
    “Guess they’ll want to get him buried pretty quick,” Dodd observed.
    Beau raised an eyebrow, then nodded. “Guess so. Of course, they can do that since there’ll be no autopsy. Do you mind?” He gestured toward the body.
    “Be my guest.”
    Beau reached over and opened Forrest Ridley’s mouth.
    “What you looking for?” Dodd asked.
    “Foam. You usually see it if the victim inhaled water while still alive.”
    “Huh.” Three beats passed. “See any?”
    “No.”
    “Well, I’d imagine he was already dead by the time he hit any considerable water, wouldn’t you? Banging himself down all those drops from the top.”
    “Probably. What do you think caused that ?” Beau was pointing at a round hole through the man’s shirt just below the right shoulder, inches above the heart.
    “Some of those rocks are awfully sharp. Fall like that, Doc Johnson said you’re likely to see all kinds of things. Said you can’t tell one thing from another.”
    *
    “So, could you?” Samantha asked.
    “Could I what?”
    “Tell one thing from another?”
    “I can tell you that what I was looking at was no puncture wound from a rock,” Beau said, his face grim. “It was a gunshot