Page 1 of Shelter for Martina

Chapter 1

Eyes darting at every sound,he waited in silence, the big gun shouldered. Movement on the left caught his eye, but he didn’t turn, just followed with his gaze. As soon as the creature stopped, he swung slightly to his left and pulled the trigger.

BOOM!Birds rose from every branch in the woods, but the animal in front of him lay dead. Thank god. One less of them. When he reached it, he toed it with his boot, then took one of the garbage bags he’d brought with him and wrestled the carcass into it. He’d take it home and bury it with all the rest.

Unfortunately, the chances that it was the right one were slim, but Albert“Bud” Griffin didn’t care. He was damn sick and tired of them carrying off chickens, neighborhood cats, and even small dogs. The bigger pets fought the coyotes, and often lost. One neighbor had even been forced to put his Labrador retriever down because of its injuries sustained in a fight with one of the nasty canines. Being loaned out around the state to posts that were short a detective had seemed like a good diversion, but it was clear his community and neighborhood out in Robards needed him. That moving around would have to stop.

He left the woods, one hand holding the shotgun he’d shouldered and the other gripping the garbage bag he was dragging behind him. He’d no more than laid the shotgun on the front seat of the truck and tossed the bag into the bed when a gray car pulled up. “Hey, Bud!”

“Hi, young‘un!” he answered. He loved calling the younger troopers that. It made them recognize his tenure and age, and that was something they should do anyway. “What are you up to?”

TrooperTyler Bridges grinned. “Patrolling. Got a call of a gunshot out here. Guess that was you, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Get one?”

“Yep.”

“Snatching chickens?”

“Yep. Among other things.” The younger man wrinkled up his face in disgust. “I’m determined to keep them away from the neighborhood. One of my neighbors has a little granddaughter who’s just two. I can’t imagine what would happen if one of them wandered up while she was playing outside.”

“Yeah, that wouldn’t be good at all. Have you by any chance seen our favorite person out here today?”

Bud knew exactly who he was talking about. “No, thank god.”

“Yeah. His mama called the sheriff’s department to come out here. Said he was crying and carrying on, told her he was going to take a handful of pills, walk into the woods, and never come out.”

“Oh good lord. I hate to say this, but we should all be so lucky,” Bud ground out through clenched teeth. He knew exactly who Tyler was talking about. MartyBurgess was a pain in the ass of every law enforcement officer in that part of the state. He was surly, angry, unpredictable, usually hopped up on some kind of drug, and worse yet, he had weapons. Of course, he wasn’t supposed to have them. Felons legally couldn’t possess weapons. It seemed somebody had forgotten to give Marty that little detail. No one wanted to encounter him unless they absolutely had to.

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Oh, well, if you see him, know they’re looking for him. Have a great day.”

“You too, young’un. See ya around.” He watched as Tyler pulled away in the steel gray state police cruiser. The young trooper gave him a little wave, and Bud waved back.

Helluva way to spend my day off, he thought as he dug the hole out in the back of the scrub pasture and dumped the coyote’s body into it. Instead of throwing dirt into it, he dumped some lime on it, threw a tarp over it, then secured the tarp with four concrete blocks. He’d throw the dirt in over it when he had a few more carcasses to add to the hole. Why waste a perfectly good hole with one dead coyote when you could get ten in there? Hunting for them was open and with no limit. You see it, you shoot it, and he wouldn’t mind shooting every one of them in those woods.

After dinner that evening, he sat down and turned on the TV. The ballgame was shit—the other team ran away with it in the second half—and by the time it was over, he was too. One glass of bourbon later, he was ready for bed.

Bud lay there, staring at the ceiling in the darkness, and willed Becky to be there beside him. Of course, she wasn’t. God, he hated cancer. It had taken his mother and his aunt, but he’d never dreamed it would take his wife. She’d been diagnosed when she was thirty-seven, and she’d even been declared in remission at one point, but then it had returned with a vengeance. Her last few months… no one should have to suffer that way. No one.I’m forty-seven, he told himself.There’s no one out there for me. I should just forget about that and concentrate on my job and the kids. Their son, Blake, and his wife, Maeve, had two small children, Maddie and Sammie, and their daughter, Riley, had one little boy, Critt, short for Crittenden, the county Riley lived in. He’d been against Riley’s marriage to Dimitri at the beginning because of the difficulty he knew they’d have as an interracial couple, but Dimitri had won him over. His son-in-law was smart, funny, skilled with a rod and reel, and loved Riley and Critt. Dimitri was a great dad, and Bud’s daughter-in-law, Maeve, was another daughter to him.I have family. That should be enough.

But sometimes in the night, when his broken heart cried out, there was no one to soothe it. Worse yet, he feared it would always be that way. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could go on.

* * *

“This isKSP PostSixteen dispatch. Unit seven twenty-three, do you copy?”

Bud picked up the mic on his radio and pressed the button as he drove down the highway. “Unit seven twenty-three responding.”

“Unit seven twenty-three, please proceed to Fordsville JiffyMart. Repeat, please proceed to Fordsville JiffyMart. Requested by unit nine eighty-two.”

“Roger, central dispatch. Unit seven twenty-three en route to Fordsville JiffyMart.” Fordsville was a wide spot in the road in OhioCounty, and he was very familiar with the area. He had a nagging feeling he knew why he’d been called there, but he was hoping to be wrong.

When he pulled up in the parking lot, he was greeted by at least three other KSP cruisers and half a dozen OhioCounty Sheriff’s Department cruisers, but unit nine eighty-two, DetectiveAtkins, was nowhere to be found. Apparently he didn’t want to be bothered. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he mumbled to himself as he got out of his car and headed toward the knot of people standing near the side of the highway. “What’s up, gang?”

One of the deputies, ArlenCole, and a trooper, EldredMichaels, turned and greeted him. “Missing person,” Eldred announced.

“Let me guess. Marty.”

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