The Ten-Mile Trials

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When a dead man is discovered in a house that’s being used as a grow house and meth lab, Captain Jake Hines pulls in all his detectives to investigate.  The victim carried no identification, but the discovery of a small Mass card, written in the Cyrillic alphabet, gives Jake an important lead…Jake must work fast, but economic cutbacks have hit the squad hard, and the detectives have conflicting agendas of their own…

“…an intriguing and entertaining police procedural.” –Booklist

Excerpt

Darrell told his dog to stay where he was, and walked over to see what we were looking at. He watched while the image scrolled across the crowded scene in the garage – leavy plants growing thickly out of identical plastic tubs, upward toward the big mercury-vapor lamps hung from the rafters.

‘Jesus,’ Darrell said, ‘it looks like the forest crime-evil!’

‘The what?’ Al’s face got the puzzled look so common to people talking to Darrell. Then he went back to watching the monitor, smiling with satisfaction. My olfactory nerves had begun to twitch, in anticipation of the syrupy smell waiting for us in the garage.

‘Boy, Darrell, give your pooch there a couple of extra treats for me,’ Al said. ‘He sure called this one right.’

‘Well, good.’ Darrell was watching the monitor curiously. ‘Where is he?’

‘Who?’

‘What?’ They were staring at each other, hurling mono-syllables back and forth like an Abbott and Costello routine run amok.

‘Darrell,’ I said, ‘all we can see in there is a grow house. Why’d you think your dog thought he’d found a person?’

‘Because all Sam goes after is people. He hasn’t done his drug-detection package yet.’

‘Trained or not, he found us a grow house this time,’ Al said. ‘Look at the monitor.’

‘I don’t care what the monitor shows,’ Darrell said, ‘and neither does Sam. He wouldn’t know weed from my Aunt Fanny’s fanny. What he does know is how to find a person when I say to do it. He’s really good at it, too.’ He looked at Al Hanenburger, standing there so proud of his electronic toy, and back to where his dog still sat anxiously in the driveway, grumbling in his throat. ‘If I was you,’ he said, ‘I’d call for some more backup. Sam thinks there’s somebody in that garage, and I’ve never seen him be wrong.’

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