Posadas County Mysteries
22 total works
Good cops have no use for coincidence
When a driver slams his pickup truck—twice—into a tandem bike being ridden by Carlos Guzman and his fiancée, Tasha, in Briones, California, it's more than a simple hit-and-run; the driver clearly intended to harm them. Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman gets the call with the news of her son's accident and wastes no time racing to his side. She is greeted by Police Captain Eddie Mitchell, formerly of Posadas County, who allows Estelle to "consult" on the investigation—but only to a point.
While Carlos struggles with critical injuries, an employee at the bike shop where Carlos bought the tandem is found shot dead in a dumpster—the same man who had borrowed the truck that mowed down Carlos and Tasha. The local cops aren't convinced there's any connection between the two crimes. Not a believer in coincidence, Estelle pursues every possible angle with a cop's determination to solve the case, and a mother's resolve to keep her son safe at any cost.
"Havill...quietly continues a project virtually unique in detective fiction: anchoring his tales of crime and punishment as closely as possible in the rhythms of small-town friends, routines, and calamities." --Kirkus Reviews
Rolling stone Wesley Crocker seems a harmless enough free spirit when Posadas County Undersheriff Bill Gastner offers him a lift on the road and spots him a free dinner. Crocker beds down for the night with his gear on the high-school athletic field. By morning, 13-year-old Maria Ibarra is found under the high-school football bleachers a few feet away and Crocker goes straight to jail. His account of how he passed the night is full of enough holes to keep him locked down, but meanwhile a background check on Maria raises troubling questions about her life....