Read Turn to Stone for Free Online

business cards in his hand, and he glanced at the name: Hope Hamlin. She was a loan manager at the Shawano Bank.
    “Stride,” said a gravelly voice from the office doorway. Sheriff Weik, his uniform crisp and pressed, stood with his beefy hands on his hips.
    “Hello, Sheriff.”
    “I thought you’d be heading north on Highway 53 by now. Didn’t you say you were on your way back to Duluth?”
    “Change of plans,” Stride said.
    Weik didn’t look happy, but he waved Stride into the office and closed the door. The sheriff sat down and folded his hands in front of him. His brown beard made a trimmed line along his neck, which was pinched by the collar of a white uniform shirt. A mustache hid his upper lip. His hair was cut so short that it was mostly a shadow on his balding skull.
    The sheriff’s desk was neatly organized. The folders in his inbox made corners as sharp as an army bed, and he kept four matching pens and four matching pencils in a coffee mug. His walls were adorned with community-oriented anti-drug posters and local historical photos dating back to the 1970s. The only personal items in the room were a handful of framed photos on the credenza behind his desk. Stride saw a wife, as stern and round as Weik himself, three teenage boys, and a collage of fishing and hunting pictures.
    That was life for a rural county sheriff.
    “What can I do for you?” Weik asked.
    “I was hoping you could tell me a little bit more about Percy Andrews.”
    “Why?”
    Stride ran a hand back through his own wavy hair. “Well, his wife Kelli is a good friend of my uncle’s. They’re neighbors. Naturally, she’s distraught about Percy’s death. She doesn’t understand why this happened.”
    “I agree, blowing your head off is not what you’d expect a hero to do,” Weik acknowledged, with a hint of cynical emphasis on the word hero . “I’m still not sure how this involves you.”
    “Kelli asked me to talk to some of the people who knew Percy. She doesn’t feel comfortable doing so herself. She wants to know if he said or did anything that might give her a clue as to why he did this. According to her, it was completely unexpected.” He paused and then added: “I have to admit, I’m curious about it myself. I was there. I feel like I have a personal stake in this.”
    Weik combed his mustache with his finger. “Don’t you have a job elsewhere, Lieutenant?”
    “I told Kelli I would take a day, maybe two. No more. I don’t want to get in your way, but this isn’t a criminal investigation anyway. I just want to give his wife a place to start to make sense of this.”
    He could see that Weik looking for a way to object. The man’s eyes were droopy but focused, like the stare of a bloodhound. He was a smart, serious man, but he was a politician, just as Neal Gandy had said. In this case, one of his cops had committed suicide. That looked bad to the public. And a stranger asking questions about it was a wrinkle he didn’t need.
    “I’ll be discreet,” Stride added.
    Weik nodded. “No press. You don’t talk to any reporters. This place will be crawling with media as soon as word gets out.”
    “Of course.”
    “You have no official capacity here whatsoever. You’re a private citizen. Someone doesn’t want to talk to you, you leave.”
    “Absolutely.”
    “Don’t prolong this, Lieutenant.”
    “I won’t.” Stride leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Do you have any idea why Percy killed himself, Sheriff?”
    “None.”
    “You were his boss,” Stride said.
    “That’s right, I was his boss, not his shrink or his priest. Our relationship was professional. That’s all.”
    “I gather you didn’t like him.”
    “I neither liked nor disliked him,” Weik retorted. “I don’t know how you run things, but I make it a point not to get chummy with my officers. They’re my employees, not my friends.”
    “I get it. I just wondered if you’d had any feedback from colleagues about his