* * *
As Deputy Marsters approached the State Trooper who stood at the accident scene, he thought this day had just become a whole lot worse.. He had a very bad feeling. Some said he had no real instincts… that he just kind of held on to the book and went by it and couldn’t “intuit.” But he had bad feelings and as a cop, he respected them. He had a bad feeling when he got the call and seeing her face, he knew his bad feeling was more than that now. For all of the problems he had with Sheriff Ben as of late, he couldn’t believe he was gone. It wasn’t right.
Verify. “Is it…”
The Trooper looked up at him. She never gave him the time of day unless it was official. She was working hard to stay official so she wouldn’t have to share even a moment of sympathetic loss with him. Bitch.
“Deputy Marsters, could you secure the scene? I need to go tell Gil…I mean the next of kin.” There was almost a crack in there somewhere where she was maybe able to see him as human. She was on the verge of crying and he thought he might offer a shoulder but then didn’t. She didn’t want it of him and wouldn’t accept it if he did. At the very least, she was the only one who didn’t call him Deputy Steve and treated him like a cop, so he would do what she wanted.
“Yeah. You go and do that, Officer Kennisaw. I’ll handle things here.” She nodded and headed toward her cruiser. He turned back to Ben’s car. He hated that Ben was dead, but maybe now that he was gone, people would stop thinking of that little idiot as a placeholder until Ben found his right mind and became sheriff again. Maybe they’d can the little idiot and ask Steven to be sheriff the way he should have been after Ben left.
He smiled a little bit at that. Just a little.