The Blackstone Commentaries Read Online Free Page A

the kickoff for a revival testimony.
    Dugan raised himself slowly and with a flashlight peered in through the remains of the side window behind the driver. Glass twinkled on the seat and rear deck. Then he turned to the tall, heavyset state trooper whohad been the first person on the scene, just minutes after the shooting, and who so far had merely said, “Hello, Charlie, Eddie,” giving Trainor all the leash he wanted.
    â€œWhat are you thinking, Mort?” Dugan asked him.
    â€œOne of the shots took out the windows. That makes three at least. Suspect vehicle may be an Eldorado, maybe two-tone black and white, maybe even have opry lights. Carver thinks so but can’t swear to it. A number on the tag—a 4, North Carolina, though he won’t absolutely swear to that either. Also according to Carver, there were two men in the front seat of the vehicle and at least two women and maybe a third person in the back, wild looking and crazy, like they’d all been drinking. Billy Gaius Ford’s got a Monte Carlo almost identical to this one, Charlie. Maybe it was a case of mistaken identity.”
    â€œI thought he was still locked up in Burnsville.”
    â€œParoled two weeks ago,” the trooper said lazily. “Heard he was at Natty Moon’s the other night. Fire chief’s new wife was there, too.”
    â€œEdgar’s?”
    Mort nodded.
    Dugan shook his head. “So if Carver’s right on all counts, and it was an Eldorado …”
    â€œFour possibles: one from Fayetteville, another from New Bern, another from Cary. The fourth, Martin Pemberton, 403 Pine Terrace, Damascus.”
    Dugan looked over at Carver standing by the cruiser. It was one of the new Chevrolets with the six-cylinder engines, bought by the commissioners for fuel economy—geldings, everyone called them, when they weren’t laughing. Mort Riddell, the trooper, turned aside, the way one does to be polite when someone else is caught with more than his fly unzipped, for he knew how politically loaded this night had become for Dugan, if the car turned out to be Pemberton’s.
    â€œYou playing with yourself, Mort?”
    Mort laughed, but he was a good egg, and it was sympathetic. Dugan went back to trying to feign interest in something on the backseat of an automobile that could undoubtedly be repaired, where everyone had survived, where no one, miraculously, had gotten hurt, not visibly, not in a way anyone could medically treat. But it was the Titanic . He could feel the hull ripping open.
    The woman—Loretta Carver. Something about her. He’d wanted to talk with the officers before the family but couldn’t get her out of his mind—her face looking out the rear window of Trainor’s cruiser into the glare of their headlights when he and Eddie first drove up, a flash of pale skin, dark, disheveled hair, dark circles around wild-looking eyes, clutching her babies. He knew from experience the worst for her would be the shame, the being proven vulnerable, weak and powerless in the face of someone with a gun. Lord, he’d seen that shame time and again. Once, not too long ago, he thought he might have helped diminish it some—if not the shame, then maybe the opportunities and even the causes. He’d certainly wanted to, but for a while now he’d been feeling discouraged, just not willing to admit it.
    He remembered for an instant how he’d loved being a deputy. He’d loved the cool mornings inside the cabin the county had provided up on that first mountain beat of his. He’d shove aside the front door onto the porch, a barn-type door on a track, hear it rumble along with his stomach, and step out onto the rough boards and look down across the meadow, silver-blue with frost, at the sky, the mountains, the valleys below so clear it hurt as the sun rose golden over the forest and crept down the grass. He had felt all things were possible then.
    You scratch