Voodoo Daddy (A Virgil Jones Mystery) Read Online Free Page A

sound almost like the cycling action of a semi-auto. Then she thought, no, exactly like the cycling action of a semi-auto . Muffled pops after the ratcheting sound. It took her a few seconds to process, but when she did, Sandy took off full tilt toward the gate.
     
    * * *
     
    By the time she got there it was over. She tried to push the gate open, then remembered she had to input a code into the box, which she did, then waited as the gate swung open with a slowness that made her blood boil. She ran to the street and tried to process what she saw: A white panel van as it turned the corner a half block away. Couldn’t get the plate. No more than a glimpse of the vehicle itself. A man across the street on his back, his limbs jutted outward at difficult angles, his paisley robe askew, a leather slipper missing from his foot, a pool of blood that seemed to grow darker the closer she got, glassy eyes staring at nothing. Gone.
    A banker, she thought? Where did that come from? She let it go.
    A look to her left. The squad car. Windows down. Engine off. Seat empty. Reddish tint on the front windshield.
    She ran to the car. Pulled her cell out along the way, and hit Virgil’s number from the speed dial. At the first ring she was almost there. At the second ring she looked inside the squad. At the third ring she had the phone pinched between her shoulder and her ear. At the fourth ring she had the door open and pulled the trooper out of his vehicle, her hands wrapped under his armpits. She lost the phone then as it clattered to the ground, but she thought she heard Virgil answer.
    Sandy pulled hard until she got Barney clear of the vehicle and flat on his back. No pulse. Not breathing. She began CPR, counting with each chest compression, then pausing to breathe her air into his lungs. Her hair hung in a pony tail over the front of her shoulder and every time she bent forward to give Burns mouth-to-mouth the ends of her hair landed in the pool of blood next to Barney’s head, like a paint brush. Eventually she gave up on the counting and began to swear as she compressed his chest….“shit shit shit.” Five shits then a breath. Every time she compressed his chest a few drops of blood seeped out of the hole in the side of his head.
    When that didn’t work, she crawled to the cruiser and grabbed the microphone and started transmitting. “Officer down. Shots fired. Officer needs assistance. Governor’s Mansion. Repeat…….Officer…….Down. Officer……needs……” Out of breath. She dropped the microphone and started back in on Barney. She tried to remember something personal about him. Wife? Kids? She didn’t know. Couldn’t think. The microphone she’d just used dangled from Barney’s squad car, hung out over the edge of the bottom of the door jamb, smeared with blood. Sandy watched it sway back and forth as she worked on Barney. Somewhere in the back of her mind it registered as one of the saddest things she’d ever seen—Barney’s microphone hanging upside down from the door of his car.
    He was gone—she knew it—but she kept at it anyway. Didn’t know what else to do. Heard the sirens. They sounded far away. The blood from her hair painted her chest as she worked on Barney.

    Five shits, then a breath.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
     
     
    I am not a believer in God. Except, well, that isn’t quite right. I am not an atheist, not by any stretch. I do believe in something bigger than life…something bigger than myself, I just can’t quite define it. As a child, I was raised catholic, but it didn’t stick, and by the time I’d turned eighteen—a full twenty-two years ago—I’d never gone back to church at all except for weddings and funerals. And , I am hitting the age where I have begun to notice there are fewer of the former and more of the latter. Well….life. Can’t live without it.
    It seemed almost everyone wanted to believe that all they had to do was talk to God, ask for their prayers to be