Bill Hopkins - Judge Rosswell Carew 02 - River Mourn

“Here comes the judge—he’s
stubborn, cranky, a bit sarcastic
and completely charming. Bill Hopkins nails the voice! This is a big-time
mystery in a small town—and you’ll fall in love with the place.
Courting
Murder
is guilty—of being terrific.” ~
Hank Phillippi Ryan
,
Agatha, Anthony and
Macavity-winner; author of
The Other Woman

“B
ill Hopkins’ debut mystery
Courting Murder
introduces
characters who are truly characters—
in the most entertaining sense of
the word. Even the judge turns every stereotype you may have about judges on
its head. And to think Marble Hill, Bollinger County, MO, is a real place!
Hopkins’ zany, delightful adventure turns this unsuspecting burg on its head,
too.” ~
Chris Roerden
, author of
Agatha winner
Don’t Murder Your Mystery

“
The verdict is in.
Courting Murder
is a winner! In his
entertaining debut mystery, Bill Hopkins transports us to Bollinger County,
Missouri, where Judge Rosswell Carew and a cast of colorful characters track
down missing bodies, drug dealers, and murderers using their wits and a few
extra-large dollops of homespun charm. A fun read!”
~
Alan Orloff
,
Agatha
Award-nominated author of
Diamonds for the Dead
and the
Last Laff Mystery
Series

“
Courting Murder
is a promising
series debut by
judge-turned-novelist Bill Hopkins. Lively characters, a crafty plot, and an
off-the-beaten track setting in Missouri make for a good read. The protagonist—plagued
by allergies, illness, and a cantankerous nature—is a humorous departure from
the typical macho-man mystery hero. I’ve got my eye on Courting Murder’s Judge
Rosswell Carew.” ~
Deborah
Sharp
, author of the
Mace Bauer Mysteries

River Mourn
by Bill Hopkins

Copyright©2013 by Bill Hopkins

Cover picture by Gregg Hopkins, a photographer and
a musician with
The
Melroys
www.themelroys.com

Cover and interior
design by Ellie Searl, Publishista
^®

 
www.publishista.com

Edited by
Patricia D. Smith

“Shoshiku” by
Shoshana Kertesz © 2011 Shoshana Kertesz

Foliate Oak Literary Journal,
November
2011

www.foliateoak.
uamont.edu/archives/november-2011/poetry/shoshiku
-by-shoshana-kertesz

All rights
reserved

No part of this document may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of Bill Hopkins.

River Mourn
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses,
organizations, places, events, dialogue, and incidents either are the product
of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Deadly Writes
and the Deadly Writes image and colophon are trademarks of Deadly Writes
Publishing, LLC.

Print Book ISBN-13:
978-0989345606

Print Book ISBN-10:
0989345602

Print Book LCCN:
2013938471

www.judgebillhopkins.com

www.deadlywritespublishing.com

Deadly Writes Publishing, LLC

Marble Hill, MO

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my first
readers
Christine Gunnin, Sondra Gockel, Carolyn Begley,
Dawn Rhodes Lincoln,
and Tim
Bollinger. And to those folks who patiently answered my questions, including Patricia
Winton, Frank Elpers, Terry Rottler, Mark Halacy, Melody Scott, Captain Joe
Kent, Marian Hutchings, Charles Hutchings, Michael Strong, Erik Klein, Steve
Rahm, Karla Smith Adams, Van Riehl, Mark McKinney, and Ken Steinhoff. Thanks to
my talented cousin, Gregg Hopkins for the great cover photograph, Patricia B.
Smith for her extraordinary editing, and Ellie Searl for her computer magic.

Thanks to Jill Mabli and Karyn Byler for lending their names. Although
they are portrayed here as evil, I assure you that they possess spotless
reputations.

None of this would’ve been possible without my wife, Sharon Woods
Hopkins, who is my toughest editor and most honest critic. She’s also the best
writer I know.

All the mistakes are mine

I love Sainte Genevieve, Missouri. I hope that the kind people there will
forgive me for changing some of the geographical details and otherwise taking
liberties with their beautiful town and picturesque county.
.

A skinny man tossed a body off the ferry.

The woman’s face loomed in the binoculars. “My God, she
looks like Tina!” Judge Rosswell Carew shouted, although no one else was on his
balcony.

He bounded from his room in the bed and breakfast almost
before the body sank. His presence of mind allowed him to pat himself down,
making certain that he had his cell phone, and also to clutch the binoculars in
one hand so that they wouldn’t bounce up and smack him in the face.

His lodgings were in a building that roosted on a
cliff over the flood plain of the Mississippi River. It would take too long to
drive down the road from his rooms to the ferry landing. Instead, he chose to
use his military training to scurry down the less steep parts of the bluff.
That would be faster than using his car.

He stumbled through the brush. Thorns tore at his face
and arms. He jumped sideways several times to keep himself from taking a
headlong tumble. Gravity was his friend as long as he kept his momentum under
control. The successful downhill maneuver was to maintain an erect posture,
lean forward a few degrees, and move with short, quick strides. It worked.

Until he fell.

Halfway along, he lost his rhythm, plunging face
downward, his cheek connecting with a log, bruising his arms, scratching his
palms. Blood seeped from his hands. “Shit!” Rosswell wiped his right hand on
his pants leg while holding the binoculars in his left, resumed the pace, and
then switched hands, wiping the left one. His face stung.

At the bottom of the bluff, he shuffled down one side
of the steep road ditch and scuttled up the other side. After he crossed the
asphalt road, he halted on the gravelly sand of the ferry landing.

The scent of dead fish littering the bank stuck to the
inside of his mouth and nose, strong enough for him to taste the vile stuff.
Asian carp, the exotic scourge of the river, were caught by the dozens and
allowed to rot on land. Rosswell wheezed and gasped, sucking in as much air as
he could. He craved the oxygen. Someone on the ferry must have seen the woman
go overboard, but no one on deck appeared to have noticed. Binoculars to his
eyes, he scanned the boat. The skinny man climbed into the passenger side of a
white van. He focused on the van. The tags were smeared with mud—an old trick
for anyone who didn’t want to be identified.

Unable to signal any other way, Rosswell waved his
hands, losing a grip on the binoculars. “No. Tina, no!” It was futile. No one
paid any attention to his efforts. The ferry was a third of the way across, leaving
Missouri, heading for Illinois. Rosswell scolded himself for not knowing
better. Even if the man or anyone else on the ferry had superb hearing like
Rosswell’s, no one could ever hear him over the noise of the engine, especially
not at this distance.

When he called out the name of his beloved, his eyes
teared up. Five months earlier, someone kidnapped Tina from a hospital bed
where she lay recovering from a gunshot wound. Since then, searching for her
consumed most of his work time and all of his free time.

He returned the focus of the binoculars on the ferry, particularly
on the three vehicles it carried. The late September morning brought another
day of unusual scorching heat. The boat plying the river wavered in the hot air,
much like a mirage. An aroma of baking vegetation

increased with the rising of the day’s heat.

What had happened? Rosswell knew he’d have to write
this incident in the journal he kept concerning every detail of his quest to
find Tina. The points clicked in his mind like the tumblers of a lock opening.

He replayed the scene, mentally formulating the entry
he’d make later.

Rosswell had been perched on the balcony of the
third-story room he’d rented at a bed and breakfast in Sainte Genevieve.
Instead of glimpsing the rare Golden-Crowned Sparrow he’d been seeking, he spotted
the ferry. A loud thump sounded when the boat was leaving the dock on the
Missouri side. He’d checked his watch at 7:00 AM, which was an hour after the
first scheduled ferry run. That was when he’d seen the corpse dumped in the
river by the skinny man with dark hair dressed in Levi’s and a blue work shirt.

The woman’s face burned in his mind. So familiar. So
much like Tina. The woman was tall and slender. Strawberry blonde hair. Blue
jeans and a white tee shirt clinging to curves. Definitely female. Definitely
pregnant. Definitely looked like Tina. After the man dropped the body into the
river, he lounged against the guardrail, studying the water for a few seconds
before he climbed into the van.

Questions about the other people on the ferry chased
each other in Rosswell’s mind. He hoped the guy wouldn’t get away with the
crime. None of the other passengers paid heed to what the man had done. In
fact, the other passengers clustered in a knot on the other side of the deck,
their heads bent, staring into the water.

What was so interesting?

Rosswell refocused the binoculars where the woman had
been dropped. Nothing. He broadened his inspection to the area around the ferry
but couldn’t see her. Perhaps the body had been weighted down and sunk to the
bottom. Again, he tried to focus on the man who’d tossed the body, but he wasn’t
visible inside the van. Except for the steady chugging of the vessel’s engine,
Rosswell could not have sworn that there was any traffic at all on the river. Besides
the sound of the rolling water, little else made any noise in the morning air.
Even the birds swooped up and down without sound.

It wasn’t an option to stand on the ferry landing close
to the swirling current doing nothing. He had to do something. But what? He
removed his glasses and wiped his face with his hands. And sobbed.

Since Tina’s disappearance, Rosswell had taken to
chanting a mantra urged upon him by a New Age counselor. “Center. Center. Center.”
He played a game with himself in such stressful circumstances. Graph paper ran
from his brain like a seismograph reporting an earthquake. All Rosswell had to
do was inhale until his lungs filled, close his eyes, and allow his brain to carry
him to a secret calm place until the line on the paper inked itself horizontally.
The guru had called it centering.

The main problem was that centering didn’t work. Plain
old thinking worked. Not only were the facts of what he’d seen stamped in his
mind, he knew what else he needed.

Rosswell wrangled on his tri-focals so he could punch 9-1-1
on his cell phone. Tried to punch. His hands shook. Working his fingers was impossible.
After two more tries, he punched the three numbers in the correct sequence.

“What is your emergency?” the operator answered before
the phone finished ringing one time.

Rosswell swallowed. “I witnessed a…”

Recollection turned murky. Had he seen a murder?
Someone hiding the evidence of a murder? What?

After a few more moments of staring out across the river
without speaking, Rosswell heard the dispatcher ask, “Sir, what did you witness?”

Rosswell did an about-face, showing his back to the river
and closed his eyes. “I witnessed a man throw a woman off the ferry.”