Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 114820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114820 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
And last, what was on his mind was the fact he was relatively certain CK was in Washington, and what that meant about how closely he monitored Rus’s movements.
By the time he’d decimated his breakfast and sucked back the dregs of his juice, he’d sifted through all of this in his head, which meant he was able to set it aside.
He then made a plan for what was next for his day.
He called down to have the valet bring his vehicle around.
He grabbed his phone, his wallet, his credentials, pulled on a sweater and attached his gun to his belt.
He was not a gun person, even though he had to be.
And since he had to be, he made a point of knowing how to use it.
He was at the range a lot. He worked toward marksmanship awards, and had won a few. He scheduled time in the simulations. He took care of his weapons. And he did all of this solely because it was part of his job, and should he need to use his firearm, he wanted to use it right, and if he or his colleagues were in danger, he didn’t want to miss.
He did not own a personal firearm. He had only the two issued to him by the Bureau.
Though, when he was fully out of the game, he’d purchase one. He’d put enough people behind bars not to own one. But much more importantly, he knew how deadly a gun was, he respected that, and he’d own one responsibly.
During investigations where it was unnecessary for him to carry, he didn’t. The higher-ups weren’t thrilled with his choice, and leaned on him, but not too hard, because he produced results.
But it was Rus’s experience it intimidated witnesses.
He did not need to sit in Lucinda’s office with a gun at his hip while he talked to her staff. He needed them to open up and share. He needed people like Sherri to give him DNA. He needed people like Thea to trust him with information that was a threat to her livelihood. And along his journey in law enforcement, he’d learned carrying a gun did not help any of that, and in some instances hindered it.
Many cops thought a gun gave them authority or was an indication they held it.
Rus was of a mind, either you naturally had authority, meaning you knew what you were doing, and you could communicate that to people along with the fact they could trust you, or you didn’t.
And if you didn’t, then you shouldn’t be in the job.
If you needed a gun as a prop, rather than what it was—the very last tool you had no choice but to reach for in an urgent situation—it was a prime indication you had no business being a cop.
But the possibility of CK being close, he was going to carry.
He walked out to his SUV, drove into town and parked close to Aromacabana.
He got a coffee and sat outside on a chair that looked purchased at a yard sale, cleaned up, painted and set outside on the wide sidewalk next to a small table and another chair, neither matching, both also probably bought at a yard sale.
Rus then did what he’d been meaning to do since he got there, but he didn’t have the time.
He took in the town.
He’d driven through it a half a dozen times, and first impressions were, it was Mayberry.
There was no McDonald’s. There was no Starbucks. There was an old movie theater that had one screen. There was a diner that looked stuck in the fifties, and it was called the Double D, so it probably was. There was a five and dime, and Rus hadn’t seen one of those since he was a little kid.
A flower shop that had buckets of colorful blooms on the sidewalk under its front window.
A greengrocer, which also displayed its goods out front.
It was idyllic.
It was Americana.
It seemed safe and quaint and perfect for a weekend away from the big city, even though a girl was murdered five miles away in a motel where people daily broke their marital vows.
Even though it was a place where men still cheated on their wives regardless that, a year ago, four of them from this town had been nationally humiliated. This leading from an eight-year-old being brutally murdered in a way even Rus couldn’t finish the report, and as mentioned, he wasn’t squeamish.
Not to mention, the town’s foundations had been built on usurping Native land, killing animals for their coats, and otherwise raping its natural resources, all while fifteen-year-olds were pimped at bordellos.
And Rus felt all of it.
The seedy underpinnings that, no matter the coats of paint you slapped over it and coffeehouses you opened in it, never faded away.
It wasn’t the nostalgia of Mayberry.
It was the nostalgia of Hawkins in Stranger Things. Where, beneath it, every horror you could imagine was seething, working constantly at finding an opportunity to make it to the surface, and if that didn’t succeed, as was the case for Brittanie, pulling you under.