MOTIVE, BY MARC BILGREYThe call came in at midnight. I was asleep, dreaming of my ex-wife. In the dream she still loved me, and hadn’t run away with Morton Young, the town pharmacist. The phone kept ringing. I turned on the light on my night table, glanced at the alarm clock, and reached for the receiver.
“Sheriff Alden,” I said.
“It’s Deputy Douglas.”
“It’s after midnight, Deputy, what’s going on?”
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Sheriff, but there’s been a murder.”
“A murder?” I’d been Sheriff of Forest Grove for ten years. The last murder had taken place nine years earlier. Domestic violence case. A wife killed her husband in self-defense. He’d been beating her. The jury took half an hour to acquit her.
“Sheriff?”
“Yes. Who got killed and where?”
“The victim is Zak Olin. I’m at his f
