Page 70 of Justice for Samara

Cruz smiled. “You’re very welcome. Michael, Samara, and Carter, this is KSP Detective AlbertGriffin,” Cruz said as an introduction to the older of the two men.

“You can call me Bud. Everybody else does,” he said with a soft, slow smile. It made Michael nervous that a KSP officer would be there, and the way Samara gripped his hand under the table told him she was a little afraid.

“And this is Agent AmosFletcher. I thought of Amos because I’d worked with his brother, Jack, on a case. He was actually on the case for TrooperPalmer’s murder, but we never really got to meet. I helped him with another case too. But this is the first time we’ve really done a face-to-face.”

“And you are…” Michael asked.

“Oh, sorry. I’m KDCI. Jack, my younger brother, is a state trooper out of Post4.”

“Thanks for coming. Both of you. We appreciate it,” Carter said, and Michael nodded in agreement. Samara was being extremely quiet, and it worried him a little.

“So let’s eat and drink and then we can dive in, if that’s okay,” Cruz said.

Michael smiled. “It’s all on me.”

“You don’t have to?” Bud started.

“Oh, yes. I do. Not a problem. Just my way of saying thanks.”

“Well, thank you,” Amos told him. “So what’s good here?”

Lunch was nice, but Samara was still very quiet. Bud and Amos asked her a couple of questions and she answered them, but they were really general, like how she was liking the new job and where she was originally from. That seemed to help relax her a little. When there was a lull in the conversation, Michael asked Bud, “So you’re out of Post1?”

“Oh, lord, no. That would be a bad idea. I’m not sure who you could trust over there. No, I’m Post16.”

Carter squinted in concentration. “So that’s…”

Bud wiped his mouth with his napkin. “OhioCounty. Muhlenberg County. UnionCounty. That area right around Owensboro.”

“Oh. Got it. Amos, where are you from?” Michael asked.

“I work in our small field office in Louisville, but I spend some time at our headquarters in Frankfort. We live out in Shepherdsville. She owned the house before we met, and it has some property, so we kept it and sold mine. She’s got this menagerie of weird animals she’s rescued, and we wouldn’t have had a place for them at my house.”

Samara seemed to perk up. “Weird animals?”

“Yeah, weird as in something’s wrong with every one of them. She’s got a horse, Ivory, who’s totally blind and kept falling in the pond. We finally had to fence it to keep her out. There’s a goat named Azalea that some kid set on fire, and a donkey named Felix who’s had a broken back leg repaired and some idiot cut his ears off.”

Her eyes went wide in shock. “Cut his ears off?”

“Yeah. Stuff kept falling into them after they were cut off, so he got several ear infections that affected his balance and he kept falling down. That made the idiots mad, so they intentionally broke his leg. He wears these funny little tea strainer things Daesha made for him to keep debris out of his ears. And the goat had skin grafts for its burns. Its hair grew back, sort of, and it looks strange but it’s fine.”

“Is that all she has, animals with weird handicaps?” Samara asked.

“Yeah. She’s a physical therapist, but she was also military. Lost a leg in the war. So she has a real soft spot for broken things. She may be mine, but she’s the kindest person I’ve ever met.”

“That’s such a sweet thing to say,” the lovely woman sitting beside Michael said.

“Bud, what about you? Married?” Michael asked.

“Yep. Pretty little thing. I met her while I was investigating her daughter’s disappearance.”

Carter looked up from his plate. “Find her?”

“Yeah. Postmortem.”

Samara frowned. “Oh, that’s sad.”

“Yeah, it really was. Her husband had died, and her other daughter had died years earlier. Renita was her last immediate family member, so it was really difficult for her. And then she was shot as everything was coming apart.”

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