Free Dumping Grounds (Joshua Stokes Mysteries Book 1) by Lila Beckham Page A

to get him on the examination table for years. Joshua said that if he were going to die, he would rather do it at home in his own bed.
    His deputies were busy with the paperwork and the business of notification of the Blackwell boy’s next of kin. They were also measuring and marking off the skid marks and so on. Joshua asked James to get all of his personal belongings out of his patrol car before they towed it away, including his 8-track tape player and tapes, if he could.
    Joshua did not want them to wind up out in a junkyard. It would take him months to replace them, if ever. They were irreplaceable in his mind, especially with the invention of the cassette tape and the new cassette players they were installing in vehicles these days.
    James grabbed a screwdriver out of his toolbox and did as Joshua asked and then drove him home. As they drove into Joshua’s yard, Joshua thanked him for helping him and for the information on the boys he believed may have mutilated his goats.
    After James toted all of Joshua’s personal effects to the house and put them on the porch, Stokes told him to apologize to his wife Ilene for taking up his time and to tell her and the boys that he had said hello.
    James assured him he would tell them and then asked again if Joshua was sure he did not want to go to the hospital and let them check him out, but Joshua flat out refused to go. Reluctantly, James left him and drove off.
    Joshua watched James until he lost sight of him going out the drive. Then he unlocked the back door and put his belongings inside on the kitchen table. He got a glass out of the cabinet, poured it half full of whiskey, and then walked out onto the back porch.
    The back porch faced west toward the river. He sat down in his cowhide rocker, lit a cigarette, and then took a big swallow of the whiskey. The hot liquid burned going down; it was a familiar feeling. He’d had some narrow escapes before. He had been shot, kicked, cussed, and waylaid, but those brushes with death did not seem as close as it was this time. This was the first time Joshua had ever lost conscious.
    Joshua Stokes had not given much thought to God in the last 30 years, but sitting on his back porch watching the sun filtering through the trees, he felt a need to thank him.
    Of course, he believed in God. He was raised in church, but he had never reached down deep into his soul and dug around to explore his feelings. His churchgoing had ended when his mama ran off…
    He knew he should shower. He needed to wash out the blood that had run down into his hair as he hung upside down from his car window. The knot on his head throbbed angrily. Hell, for that matter, his entire body ached, but now that he had sat down, he did not have the energy to get up. Therefore, he sat there and rocked a spell, watching the slow flowing river and the squirrels at play.
    He wished he had no worries other than chasing tail and squirreling away a few nuts for the winter, but that was not the case. With the recent murders, he had enough to keep him busy for a very long time.
    About an hour later, Deputies Cook and Davis drove into his yard. He had been half expecting them to show up because he had told Cook to keep him informed. If anything, Cook was a good deputy and he took his job seriously.
    “What brings you two out here?” he asked, as they came walking up to the back porch, although, he knew good and well why they’d come.
    “I figured you’d be in the bed Sheriff,” Cook said smoothly.
    “Now why would you think that, Deputy? Just because I was in a wreck, or do you just think I’m too doggone old,” Stokes replied grumpily, his fifty-year-old body feeling its age after the wreck.
    “Well, you were knocked out cold, Sheriff. The paramedic on the ambulance said it can be dangerous, especially with a head injury like yours,” Jim Davis said, injecting himself into the conversation.
    Jim Davis had only been with the force since December of the previous year. He