Bad To The Bone by Katy Munger Page A

latte-in-progress.
    "Watch it," I complained.
    "Read it," he ordered. "Front page. Didn't
you say that guy who pulled the gun down at the beach was named
Boomer or something?"
    "Yeah, but I pray it's just a nickname."
    "That him?" Bobby placed a pudgy finger on a
portrait studio photograph of a respectable-looking local
businessman identified by its caption as Bernard "Boomer"
Cockshutt, owner of Cockshutt Motors.
    "What's he done?" I asked warily.
    "He died," Bobby said. "Thursday night. They
found him in his car out at Lake Johnston, at the back of the
parking lot. He'd been shot through the head."
    "Suicide?" I asked hopefully.
    "Doubt it. He was in the front seat. The gun
was on the floor of the backseat. Wiped clean. No
fingerprints."
    "Shit," I said. "Was it a Colt .45?"
    Bobby nodded. "That's what my source
says."
    "I think I saw that gun. He was holding it
on Robert Price."
    "I figured." Bobby pulled up my visitor's
chair and did his best to fit inside the allotted space. His thighs
popped out from under the arms like loaves of bread bulging from
their pans. "You gotta go to the cops, Case."
    "If I go to the cops, the first person
they're going to suspect is Robert Price."
    "They already do suspect him. They're
looking for him now."
    I groaned. "Please don't tell me I helped
get a man killed?"
    Bobby shrugged. "You were just doing what
you get paid for."
    "Or don't get paid for," I reminded him.
    Bobby nodded sadly. "We'll never get that
dame to settle up now. She'll milk the tabloid shows for every
penny she can get. Then she'll split and leave Price to rot in
jail."
    "Maybe she did it?" I asked hopefully.
    Bobby shook his head. "My source says she
was attending a church retreat in Winston-Salem at the time. Lots
of good folk can attest to it."
    "How convenient," I muttered, pulling the
paper closer. The article was short. Not much information had been
made public by the time the edition went to press. It confirmed
that Boomer Cockshutt was dead. It offered the tidbit that he had
been an Ail-American tackle from Wake Forest University in his
glory days. That figures. Surely the violence I witnessed at the
beach was a steroid-inspired flashback of some sort. The article
went on to say that he had been shot once through the head and was
killed instantly, that police were following several leads and
blah, blah, blah.
    The story ended with a few predictable
quotes from Lake Johnston neighborhood residents complaining of
night traffic at the lake and warning teenagers to stay away. Hey,
I thought, that's it: it's that mythical guy with the hook for a
hand that offed Boomer. The bloody stump is probably hanging off
the door handle of the car right now. Forensics must have missed
it.
    "I don't like this." I shoved the paper into
the trash can. "If I'd had to predict, I would have said that
Robert Price would end up the corpse, not this guy."
    "You got the photos?" Bobby asked.
    "What photos?"
    "The photos of Tawny Bledsoe with the shit
beat out of her."
    "Sure. Why?"
    "You've got to give them to the cops, babe.
They need to know Robert Price is violent. Plus, you were there at
the beach. You witnessed his motive for killing this guy. Boomer
was keeping Price from seeing his kid."
    "Actually, it was more like Boomer was
caving Price's skull in."
    "Whatever. You have to go to the cops. I
can't afford for them to find out later that we held anything back.
We need their goodwill and my contact says this murder has them
really pissed off."
    "Of course it's pissing them off," I said.
"It's not like two teenage punks shot each other over a bag of
dope. Hell, this guy was a member of the chamber of commerce. Lower
the flags. Bring on the bagpipes. Let's give him a state funeral,
why don't we?"
    "What's eating you? Maybe the guy was an
asshole, but he didn't deserve to be shot through the head."
    "You know what's eating me? This whole case
stunk from the start. It should have been simple. Instead, it
turned ugly. Now it's getting