Where Does a Hunch Come From
by
PJ Nunn
“Hey, Doc! Come on over!”
Shari was greeted by several colleagues as she entered the pub and veered toward their table.
“Oh good, I’m glad you’re here,” she pulled up a chair beside Chapman and nodded to Stoner, two of the officers she worked with in Crimes Against Persons at the Dallas Police Department. “What a day!”
Shari didn’t drink alcohol often, but the pub they frequented had good coffee, occasionally catered to her fondness for hot, green tea, and offered her the welcome chance to wind down from the intense, dark atmosphere they worked in before heading home. It was impossible to keep the two entirely separate since as the department psychologist and profiler, she was likely to be called out at any time of the day or night, but she tried to keep home on the more pleasant end of the spectrum.
“Green tea?” Shari asked when the waitress waved from the next table. She gave a thumbs up sign and Shari smiled.
“Anyway, I’m just glad we finally got this guy. What a pain in the ass!” Chapman resumed the conversation they’d apparently been having when she arrived.
“Ain’t that the truth! He’ll be out again next week though. You gotta wonder.” Ramsey voiced what they all knew.
“At least it’ll be harder for him to get off again,” Shari said, trying to find a bright side there somewhere. “Stoner, how’d you know where to find him?” She’d been wondering about that all afternoon.
“I’m a super hero,” he said, raising his glass with a smirk on his face.
“Oh yeah, I forgot,” Shari said, rolling her eyes. “Seriously,” she added when the snickering died down, “how’d you know? Nobody else thought to look there.”
Stoner shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess you could call it a hunch. I just tried to think like he thought. Arrogant cuss, thinks he’s smarter than everybody else…”
“Shari’s the shrink. Why didn’t she think of that?” Chapman interjected, teasing.
Honestly, Shari’d been wondering the same thing. “You get these hunches often?”
“Goes with the job if you’re any good at it. You’ll see,” Stoner smiled.
Shari thought about that for a while. She’d been on the job for nearly a year now. When she first started, she was so intimidated she tended to stay in her office unless something forced her to go out. Gradually her confidence grew and she got more comfortable around the team she worked with, but she was always painfully aware of the fact that although was the same age or even older than most, they had years of on the job experience she didn’t have. It made her doubt her judgment sometimes. Stoner must’ve noticed her silence.
“You guys think the Doc is any good? Think she might have a good hunch in there somewhere?” His tone was teasing but friendly and she offered a wry smile.
“Aw hell yeah,” Ramsey said. The others agreed with chatter and nods.
The waitress set Shari’s tea in front of her and took Stoner’s glass for a refill.
“All right,” Shari nodded. “I’ll take that under advisement and see if you’re right. Thanks.”
When Stoner’s beer was replenished, the three raised glasses for a toast. “To Shari’s hunch. We’ll be waiting.”
Title: Angel Killer
Author: PJ Nunn
Paperback: 286 pp.
Publisher: Dark Oak Mysteries
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1610090799
ISBN-13: 978-1610090797
Author: PJ Nunn
Paperback: 286 pp.
Publisher: Dark Oak Mysteries
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1610090799
ISBN-13: 978-1610090797
Purchase at AMAZON
Blurb:
The death of a child is every mother’s nightmare. But what if the child has no mother? What if their little bodies are discarded like garbage and no one even seems to care that they’re gone?
Shari Markham, psychologist for the Dallas Police Department, knows what it feels like to be unclaimed and unwanted. She can’t turn away, even if it means demons dancing in her dreams at night. But when her relentless pursuit of information to help apprehend this madman gets a little too close, he turns the tables, warning her that his next scheduled victim will be her own three-year-old granddaughter, Angel!
Excerpt:
Fog swirled around her, transforming everything into vague shapes and blurs. A small sigh escaped her as Shariparked her mocha Taurus next to the Grand Prairie squad car and got out. The sudden loss of heat prompted her to pull the front of her jacket closed
against the damp air. Texas was never this cold in November. Sleep had been elusive. She’d just settled in when the jangling of the phone chased away warm, fuzzy dreams and replaced them with harsh, cold reality. Now the distant sound of thunder matched her
mood and didn’t bode well for the crime scene. The sky, a creepy morning shadow with no delineation, met the ground while a fine mist settled on her without a single, discernible drop. Shari slammed the door and walked across the grass toward the officer securing the scene.
After more than a year as criminal profiler for the Dallas Police Department, she wondered if the time would ever come when she’d accept these early morning wakeup calls as typical rather than feeling as if she’d been thrown into a tornado. Emotional autopilot would kick in any minute though, separating her from the horrors to come
and allowing her to function within the safe realm of clinical objectivity. At least that’s how it worked in theory.
“Morning,” she greeted the uniformed officer as he walked toward her, headed back to his squad car. He didn’t look any more cheerful than she felt. Nobody liked to work crimes against children.
About the Author:
As with most things, PJ Nunn's career started out as something else entirely. She started out in retail then moved to property management. That led to teaching high school, then serving as a counselor and liaison to the local police youth services division. She also spent five years as chairperson of the Coryell County Child Welfare Board and spent years counseling abuse victims and serving law enforcement as a trauma counselor and consultant (something she still does today). When she moved to Dallas, a family illness caused her to leave a job teaching psychology at Dallas County Community College District to become a freelance writer, but found that a few favors she was doing for friends—writing press releases and setting up book signings—was better suited to her talents and her drives.
In 1998, she founded BreakThrough Promotions, now a national public relations firm helping authors, mostly of mystery novels, publicize themselves and their work. The business is thriving and PJ is excited about the release of her first novel, Angel Killer. PJ lives with her husband some of their five children near Dallas, TX.
Learn more about PJ and her work at www.pjnunn.com.
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