Free Blood Money (Joe Dillard Series No. 6) by Scott Pratt Page A

law enforcement officer who recently had half his head blown off.”
    “While he was committing a rape. That’s an important detail, don’t you think?”
    “You’re positive he was a rapist?”
    “I’ve already talked to the young woman he was raping in the park when Jordan shot him. She’s the daughter of one of Raleigh’s best friends, an old high school buddy. Raleigh had been at her house the night before. That’s how he knew she would be in the park early the next morning. He knocked her off of her bike, dragged her into the bushes, and was raping her when Jordan told him to get off of her and then shot him. So yeah, I’m sure. I’m hoping to get DNA samples from Raleigh and have them compared to samples that were taken from some of the other rape victims so I can prove he was a serial rapist, but I’m not too optimistic about it. My understanding is that Raleigh was cremated. The pathologist should have samples from the autopsy, but I doubt the judge will allow me to test them.”
    “There ain’t gonna be any samples,” Leon said. “If Todd Raleigh was a serial rapist, Peale and Raleigh’s daddy will have destroyed the samples by now.”
    “Sounds like a fine, upstanding bunch of folks they’ve got running the show over there,” I said.
    Leon pointed a long finger at me. “You listen to me, brother Dillard,” he said. “I know when you set your mind to something you ain’t afraid of the devil himself, but you be careful messing with those boys. Sticking your nose in the middle of their business will be like crawling under a rock to catch a rattlesnake with your bare hands. The chances are good that you’ll wind up getting bit.”

Chapter 13

    ZANE Barnes entered his father’s house quietly through the kitchen door. It was just after dark, the night outside quiet and still. He could hear the television in the den where he knew Roscoe would be sitting in his recliner, either sleeping or watching the Atlanta Braves play baseball.    
    Zane had been a millionaire until the recession and the credit crunch started bleeding him dry. He’d been building upscale houses in the western North Carolina mountains for years, but when the economy went suddenly and unexpectedly into the toilet, he was unprepared for the fallout. He had four houses under construction when George Bush announced, near the end of his term, that the federal government was about to embark on a massive bailout of the Wall Street financial industry. The credit crunch that ensued shut down the real estate market. All four houses were still vacant. Building them had cost him nearly two million, and he’d been paying interest on that money for so long now that even if the economy turned around and he was finally able to sell them, he wouldn’t turn a profit. His stock portfolio lost sixty percent over a six-month period in 2008 and still hadn’t recovered. His gold-digging wife had taken his two teenaged children and left him a year ago when she realized how much trouble he was in. Between the alimony, child support and mortgage payments, he was paying out more than thirty thousand a month and nothing was coming in. Another year and he’d be broke.  
    But back in January, Zane had discovered, completely by accident, what he hoped would be his ticket out of the financial morass. He’d gone to Buck Mountain hoping to talk to Roscoe about borrowing some money, although he wasn’t sure how much money Roscoe had. Zane rarely saw the old man, despite the fact that he lived less than an hour away. He’d never cared much for his father. He thought Roscoe a simpleton, a lazy redneck content to squat on the land he’d inherited and waste his life teaching English to teenagers who didn’t give a damn. Since his mother had died, Zane had made only perfunctory visits at Christmas, and those had been brief.  
    He was desperate, though, and he thought he might be able to use Roscoe to get him past his financial woes if he could talk him