Excerpt
Tuesday, May 15, 1:25 p.m.
Officer Lorraine Conner was sitting in a red vinyl booth at Martha's Diner,
picking at her tuna salad and listening to Frank and Doug gossip, when the call
first came in. She was sitting alone in the booth, eating salad because she'd
just turned thirty-one and was beginning to notice that the pounds didn't
magically melt away the way they had when she was twenty-one, or hell, even
twenty-seven. She could still run a six-minute mile and slip into a size 8, but
thirty-one was fundamentally different from thirty. She spent more time
arranging her long chestnut hair to earn those second glances. And for lunches,
she traded in cheeseburgers for tuna salad, five days a week.
Rainie's partner that day was twenty-two-year-old volunteer police officer
Charles Cunningham, aka Chuckie. Known in the lingo of the tiny police
department of Bakersville, Oregon as a "green rookie," Chuckie hadn't yet gone
to the nine-month-long training school. That meant he was allowed to look but
not touch. Full authority would come when he completed the required academy
courses and received his certificate. In the meantime, he got to gain experience
by going on patrols and writing up reports. He also got to wear ... read full excerpt from: The Third Victim ebook
