Chapter 8

William Young and Veronica Moore were waiting patiently for Chief Roberts and Grace to arrive. They had been waiting for about fifteen minutes before they finally had arrived. The two of them had not worked together before but they knew who each other was. It is always uncomfortable to be sitting with someone who you don’t really know. William did not want to have people ask him about where he had come from. He would always tell them that he was from Chicago and just wanted a change of pace of life but that was not entirely true.

William had been a detective with the Grangeville Police Department for only six months but he already had a reputation of being hardcore. He would not put up with anything or anyone for any reason. He wanted everyone to know that he meant business. It was hard to move to a new town where no one knows you. He had moved from Chicago to restart his life. He didn’t want to have to remember what had happened to him in his other life. No one needed to know about that.

At the age of 24, he had already suffered greater losses than a person should in their lifetime. He was raised by his grandmother because his mother had been unable to take care of him. She had been a teenage mother and never really wanted to have him. His was grateful that his grandmother had taken care of him, without her he did not think that he would be the man that he was now. He had grown up in a well to do neighborhood but never knew that his grandmother had money. She always made him have a good work ethic so that he would always work hard. He was glad that she had raised him that way.

When he was 19 he had fallen in love with the girl of his dreams. They had so many plans but he wanted to make sure that he had a stable job before they settled down. There was just something about her that made him realize that he was going to be happy with her. When he first met her she was a nurse at the local hospital. He had come to the hospital with his partner who had gotten shot in the leg while chasing an offender. It was not life-threatening but he knew he should be there to support him. She had caught his fancy from the very beginning. He told his partner that she was going to be his wife someday. His partner had just laughed and told him he would wait to see if it was true.

Two years later, Sarah and William were engaged to be married. It was two weeks after the engagement party that everything started to go downhill. Sarah had been on her way to a party when a stray bullet pierced the windshield of her car and lodged in her head. She had been rushed to the same hospital that she worked at, but the prognosis was not good. There was swelling on her brain and the doctors did everything possible that they could for her. She was on life support for 3 weeks before her family came to the understanding that there was nothing that could be done to help her and they let her go. It was nothing that he would ever want to go through again.

It was from this incident that William decided to move to Grangeville and join up with their police department. He wanted a new life and he had found it here. No one knew where he came from or what his previous life had been like, and he wanted to keep it that way. Small town life was just the thing that he needed. He was grateful to have found a town that had an opening in their police department and quickly moved to start his life over. This case was going to be his opportunity to show everyone what a brilliant detective he was.

As William and Veronica sat in the conference room, they both were pleased to see Grace and Chief Roberts come through the door. They both knew that it was going to be time for them to buckle down and figure out what everyone’s role was going to be during this investigation. It was obvious that everyone in the room was anxious to start the process and to try to figure out how they were going to find the person who was causing so much confusion among the inhabitants of Grangeville.